I have a quick and easy tutorial you can all do (as long as you are on Facebook, that is). I have started up my own fan page for Firefox Facts and my other projects – and here is how you can make sure you do not miss any of the awesome tips, links, videos or anything else I post there for you.
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.
When you mix simple and Firefox together, you can get my attention every time. The Simple Links Counter add-on for Firefox shows the number of internal and external links on any given page in the browser status bar. This makes it the perfect companion for all your other web developer tools and add-ons for Firefox.
Once upon a time there was a tiny Twiter tool called, TinyTweet.
This littlest add-on of them all spread joy a harmony throughout the Internets by allowing all those in Twitter land to send tweets to their friend, families and that guy who keeps spamming affiliate deals. It didn’t do this by any normal means. Oh no. It did it’s work by simply highlighting text on any page.
File this add-on under awesome. The Places’ Tooltip add-on for Firefox adds more detailed information about the bookmarks and links you have saved to your browser.
Over the weekend I started checking out the newest project out of the Mozilla Labs, Raindrop. To some it might sound a little like Google Wave – however it offers much more, and is also much easier to wrap your mind around.
Here is more about the program, in a nutshell, from the developers:
When a friend’s link from YouTube or flickr arrives, your messaging client should be able to show the video or photos near or as part of the message, rather than rudely kicking you over to a separate browser tab. Notifications from computers and mailing lists should be organized for you, not clutter your Inbox or require tedious manual filter setup. It should be easy to smoothly integrate new web services into your conversation viewer entirely using open web technologies.
I am all about the “making things easier to manage” so I eagerly anticipate learning more about what Mozilla has planned for this service. If you want to learn more about the fundamentals of Raindrop, watch this video:
Raindrop UX Design and Demo from Mozilla Messaging on Vimeo.
What do you think? Are you excited, or does it look like another web trend that is doomed to trip over itself? Leave a comment and let me know how excited you are about Raindrop.
Need to save a list of links, but don’t want to copy each one, one by one, individually? Then you might check out Multi Links. This Firefox add-on will let you open, copy, or bookmark multiple links, rather than having to handle each one individually.
To get started, all you have to do is right-click and hold to drag a box around the links you want to effect or “take action” on. When you release the mouse button, you will have opened, copied and/or bookmarked those links.
Now how do you decide which of those actions you take? You can customize that in the options. Overall, Multi Links is a great add-on that simply adds a lot of functionality to your links and how Firefox relates to them. If you spend a lot of time copying and pasting resources, this is an add-on you can not do without.
Some people may find the fact that Firefox opens a new tab on the far right of your tab toolbar a blessing and some might find it a curse. It really has to do with how many tabs you are look at, in one single browser. For those who are cursed today, I have your solution. The Tabs Open Relative extension changes how new tabs open up, which means no more tab surfing for you.
Once installed, the Tabs Open Relative add-on for Firefox will make all new tabs open to the right of the current tab, rather than the far right of the tab bar. Of course, this only applies when you are clicking links on a page. In the case where several new tabs are opened in a row without switching tabs, each subsequent tab will be opened to the right of the previous one, so as to keep them in order.
So if this sounds like the solution to the tab navigating curse you’ve been living under, be sure to pick up this extension via the Firefox Add-ons site. It is an easy way to fix this tabbed browser nuisance.
The idea of having a Firefox extension that gives you content related to what you are looking at is nothing new really, however I have found a Firefox add-on that will help you get it done in a new and exciting way.
Headup underlines words on pages when you browser. When you hover over those words, you get relevant content from popular web services.
Technically speaking, they “presents you with textual and rich media content related to the objects and terms it identifies on the pages you browse.” Here are a few more examples from their web site:
Use Headup’s ability to recognize objects and relationships to discover all kinds of information quickly and effortlessly. Here are some examples:
- Discover which of your friends like a particular band and gain access to the band’s videos and lyrics.
- Find blog posts and stock news about a company and discover which of your contacts work there.
- Get alerted about your friends’ birthdays and see which books they’re likely to enjoy as a gift.
Overall, I have to say it is an interesting idea – and a cool tool. Sometimes these semantic plugins kind of confuse the general public, so I would really recommend playing with Headup to see if it is right for you. You can pickup the Headup add-on on Headup.com or the Mozilla Add-ons web site.
There are dozens of add-ons for Firefox that will generate any number of tiny URLs from any number of link shortening services. With that said, I have one more to toss into the category, that may be a little more visually pleasing than some others I have shown you in the past. The TinyURL Generator is a tiny extension in its own right that allows you to quickly.. well, generate a TinyURL to share.
It creates a TinyURL for the page you are currently viewing in the background. The URL created is then copied to your clipboard, so that you can paste it anywhere you might need it instantly. Here are a few more ways you can generate your sharable links:
You too can pickup the TinyURL Generator add-on for Firefox on the Firefox Add-ons web site. For more link shortener extensions be sure to check out our list of the best URL shorteners for Firefox.
