Looking for more options and tools when it comes to viewing pictures from within Firefox? The very obviously named Image Tools add-on for Firefox will give you a few more basic controls when it comes to viewing images from within the browser. 

This add-on adds a toolbar across the bottom of the screen when you are viewing stand alone images inside of Firefox.  In the toolbar, you can fit the image to the window size you are viewing, zoom into the image, zoom away from the image, save the image or rotate the image around.

The author has also mentioned on his Firefox profile for the add-on that if you have any ideas for the add-on and how to make it better, let him know.  I always like to see Firefox add-on authors that are open to ideas from the public.

You can pick up the Image Tools add-on for Firefox from the Firefox Add-ons website.

Do you remember when picture in picture TV watching was going to be the next best thing?  You could watch one show, while another one was going on in the corner of your screen.  Well, picture in picture browsing is here and is on Firefox thanks to CoolPreviews.  This add-on from the developers of CoolIris is a great browser add-on that will let you preview links and media without leaving the page you are on.

Some of the features included are:

• Preview web links, images, and videos without leaving your current page or tab.
• Automatically subsearch Google, Wikipedia, and others
• Temporarily bookmark items to the right column with our unique “stacks” feature
• Instantly send links to friends and family with just a click.

If you spend a lot of time surfing around to random sources, the CoolPreviews add-on for Firefox could save you a lot of time.  You don’t even need to click the link to preview the content inside – just use CoolPreviews.

By far this has to be one of the most useful add-ons to come to Firefox in a long time, and it is amazing it wasn’t developed by Mozilla themselves.  To try it out for yourself, go download it over at coolpreviews.com.

It is known as one of the most popular, lightweight and reliable external download managers out there.  The real benefit with the FlashGot add-on is being able to download multiple files from multiple links at the same time, all at once.

Here are some of the other features worth diving into:

FlashGot Link – downloads through the default download manager the link under the mouse pointer.

FlashGot Selection – catches links in highlighted text/images, attempting also pure text to anchors conversion, performing some “smart” replacement like turning “hxxp://” into “http://”.

FlashGot All – grabs all the links found in the current page and dispatches them to the default download manager.

FlashGot Tabs – performs a “FlashGot All” on every tab open in the current window.

FlashGot Media – it’s enabled only when a streaming video or audio clip is playing in the current browser tab: this command intercepts downloadable addresses of the content pieces played so far in the page and sends them to the download manager.

Here you have five different ways to download files, that you do not have without the add-on in question.  You can download the FlashGot add-on from the Firefox Add-ons web site, and learn more about it on it’s official web site – flashgot.net.

TinEye claims to be the world’s first reverse image search engine.  Rather than typing in a phrase and looking for a picture, you type in a picture and get other pictures like it – or something like that.  Thanks to the TinEye add-on for Firefox, you can get instant image searching done right from the browser.

Here is a little more about TinEye from it’s developers:

TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks.

When you submit an image to be searched, TinEye creates a unique and compact digital signature or ‘fingerprint’ for it, then compares this fingerprint to every other image in our index to retrieve matches.

TinEye does not typically find similar images; it finds exact matches including those that have been cropped, edited or resized.

Once installed, you can right-click on any image, and select “Search Image on TinEye”.  When you do, you’ll be taken to an TinEye web page, that will display your search results.

It might not be a tool for everybody, but I do find the idea of reverse image searching very interesting and fun to play with.  You can learn more about it at TinEye.com.

Taking a screenshot of the various web sites out there on the Web is usually done for a slew of reasons.  Sometimes it is done to help you debug a web application, other times it might be done to show off a future design.  No matter what your reason, I have six great Firefox add-ons that will make capturing an image of a web site a very easy thing to do.

Screenshot Pimp – Need a screen shot? Screenshot Pimp lets you easily save images of web pages with multiple options for selection, output destination, and image type.

Abduction! – Adds a right click option to take screenshots of an entire web page or just part of a web page to save as an image.

FireShot – This is a Firefox extension that creates screenshots of web pages (entirely or just visible part). Unlike other extensions, this plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools.

Talon: Screen Capture & Aviary.com Quick Launch – Take screen shots and edit images directly from your browser with Aviary.com applications.

Snapper – This add-on allows users to designate an area of a web page for a focused snapshot, cutting out the additional work needed for cropping unnecessary information.

Screengrab – It will capture what you can see in the window, the entire page, just a selection, or a particular frame.  You can then save the screen capture as a file or to the clipboard.

Have another favorite, or which of these tools have suited your needs the best?  Be sure to let us know in the comments which one you like best.

I am always taking screenshots of this, that and the other for all the various writing projects I have going on the Web.  For me, finding something that makes that job even a little ‘bit easier, is a great thing indeed.  This is where the Pict Uploader comes into play.

This Firefox add-on integrates with your browser to provide a way to make screenshots with one click, and if you wish upload them to the Pict.com image hosting service. 

Here are some of the other features Pict Uploader will provide:

• Capture screenshots of websites
• Capture screenshot of whole website
• Capture screenshot of visible area
• Capture screenshot of custom selected area
• Edit screenshots
• Save screenshots in jpg/png formats

Well worth trying out, especially if you do any daily screen captures.  You can pick up the Pict Uploader on the Firefox add-ons web site.

That is the only places where Xoopit for Gmail shines.  It also lets you:

• Search your stuff, not your messages. Xoopit upgrades Gmail search to show you the photos, videos and files that match what you are looking for.
• Browse photos and videos from YouTube, Flickr, Shutterfly, Kodak and Picasa. Links sent to your Gmail account are automatically collected, saving you the hassle of going to these sites.
• Easily find and access your files in Gmail. Never misplace an attachment again.
• Quick share to friends, Facebook or your blog.
• Do a web search while composing a mail in Gmail and add results directly to your message.
• Get information, contact details and more about the people in Gmail’s conversation view.

All this from your Gmail inbox.  In the long haul, this add-on will not only make your inbox more social, but will also make it more useful as well.  You can learn more about the service at xoopit.com or pick up the add-on directly on Firefox’s Add-on web site.

The thing that makes OutWit Images different than other image browsers, is it allows user to save images right to the hard drive and browse from there.  From within Firefox, you can collect images from various web sources  with just a simple click of the button. 

The sleek design (as you can see above) is also worth pointing out.  It can also be personalized by selecting different background colors and views for the thumbnails themselves.  Here is a little more about this extension from the developers:

The images can be dragged and dropped into the collection basket, “the catch,” from which they can be saved directly onto the computer, displayed in a slideshow, or shared with others. It also offers a variety of other options including filters for viewing and saving the images, as well as, visible source information.

OutWit Images is designed for the collection of images, plain and simple.  You can pickup this add-on for Firefox on the Firefox Add-ons site or the official OutWit site too.

Once installed you can browse all linked images of a page one after another or all at once.

On the positive side of things, Browse Images does make it rather easy to browse through multiple images when a web site might not make the job all that fun to do (thanks to bad design or bad organization of the links. On the negative side, I really could do without having yet another toolbar in Firefox. I think a lot of this functionality could have been kept in a statusbar icon.

What is FireShot and Why Do I Need It?

FireShot is a Firefox extension that creates screenshots of web pages. Unlike other extensions, this plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify captures and insert text and graphical annotations. Such functionality will be especially useful for web designers, testers and content reviewers.

Some of these newest features include:

• Screenshot can be uploaded to server for resizing, commenting and blogging.
• Added Undo/Redo feature
• Added “Resume editing” option
• Line width can be specified
• Improved page extents detection mechanism (now supports GMail, E-Bay and other frame-based sites)
• Improved memory management routines and error handling messages.
• Added MS Outlook support
• Working folder can be set up and periodically erased.

As you can see there is even more to love here. More now than ever before! Give the FireShot extension another shot. It is the perfect compainion for anybody who works with screen grabs a lot.