New Tab Homepage is a very simple and lightweight add-on for Firefox.  When you open a new tab in Firefox, it will open your default homepage – rather than an empty tab. While I am using Firefox, I frequently go back to my homepage to check my mail or the latest updates in my RSS reader – so this extension seems like a very obvious evolution of the opening a new tab process.

You can also get very creative with this, such as setting up your homepage as your favorite calendar website or maybe even your favorite online to-do list host.

Without this fantastic add-on, there is one more way you can get this task done.  All you need to do is hold the Ctrl key down while left-clicking on the house icon in your navigation toolbar.  That too will open your homepage in a new tab.

You can pick up New Tab Homepage for Firefox from the Firefox Add-ons web site.

Here is what QuickDrag looks like in action, as well as more details on how you can use this great extension for Firefox to speed up your browsing.

Now, some might look at this add-on and say that is not much, however after you start using it, you really start to realize how much more functionality this adds – just be adding a few tweaks to the browser.  For more help, you might also check out the author’s FAQ.

You can pick up the QuickDrag add-on via the Firefox Add-ons web site.

Searchy, a new experimental add-on for Firefox will allow you to do that in a very stylish and unique way.  Once you get it installed, just hit Ctrl+Shift+K to bring up the Searchy search box, then type in what you are looking for.  You will get the results in real time as you type.

Also, another neat tip is that you can use “@” before your search to just search the web site you are on at the time.  If your not in love with the keyboard combo you must use to get it to search – that can easily be changed in the options.

It might not re-invent searching, however Searchy does give a pretty (and unique) new face to something we all do every single day.  To learn more about the development of the extension, be sure to check out the Searchy’s official web site.

Right-click on your bookmarks toolbar, and select “New Bookmark”.

The name can be anything.  To keep things simple, for now we will just call it “Unsorted Bookmarks”.  You might want to shorten that to “ubooks”, “ub” or something like that if you want to save bookmark toolbar space.  Now for the location, type this smart bookmark string in:

place:folder=UNFILED_BOOKMARKS

Now hit the “Add” button, and you should see a new folder popup on your bookmarks toolbar named “Unsorted Bookmarks”.  Click on it as you would with any other bookmark folder, and you can see all of your bookmarks that have not yet been categorized into the rest of your bookmark folders.

UPDATE: For Firefox 3.5 (or for any version where this is not working) try to restart Firefox, then see if it works.  So add this bookmark, restart Firefox, then re-launch Firefox and it should work.

Which blogging scripts and services are supported?

Blogger, Drupal, LiveJournal, Movable Type, Radio Userland, TextPattern, TypePad, WordPress, journalspace, b2evolution and BLOG:CMS and more!

If you want the latest and greatest version, pick it up from the add-on’s official web site. You can also find the latest “Mozilla tested, mother approved” version on Mozilla’s own add-on site.

Drag and Drop onto the Downloads Toolbar Icon

Instead of right-clicking on a download link, choosing “save to target” and pressing enter, just drag the download link to the “downloads icon” in the toolbar. The download will start automatically.

Very nice quick trick to get around the “Save as..” box when downloading.

tip courtesy of makeuseof.com

Have any other tips you’ve written about or found via the Web? Share them with me and I’ll be sure to give them their day in the sun.

Toolbar-less StumbleUpon
I love StumbleUpon as much as the next guy, but the toolbar they provide is quickly becoming cluttered with stuff I don’t really care about viewing.

Gmail This!
If you find yourself as a user of Gmail sending a lot of stuff back and forth to friends, this is a bookmarklet that is as handy as any extension out there. Get a pop up window with an e-mail ready to go with the link of the web site you are on. You could use it right now to send this article over to Bob down the street. Go ahead and do it, I promise he won’t mind.

ShareThis
This service makes it super easy to get to sharing just about anything at just about all the biggest bookmarking and social link sharing web sites out there. Digg, delicious, and more.

GooTube FLV Retriever
Want to steal barrow a video you find from YouTube? This bookmarlet will give you quick and easy access to download the video from the Web in the .flv format. From there you can do with it what you want or need to do.

Del.icio.us Bookmarklet Generator
Create your own bookmarklet for the del.icio.us social bookmarking service. Need more del.icio.us bookmarlet fun? Check out Post.icio.us.

Google Reader Bookmarklet
To grab this one, login to Google Reader, then go to Settings and then Goodies. Both the Next (which takes you one by one through your recent items) and the Subscribe are neat to play with and use.

Submit to Digg
Here is a quick and easy bookmarklet that will allow you to submit a link quickly to Digg. The really neat feature is that whatever text you have highlighted will also be in the body ready to go for the Digg post.

TwitThis
Couldn’t forget about the Twitter fans out there. This bookmarklet allows you to quickly twitter about any web page you are currently viewing, so you can share it with others.

MooURL
This is just one of the many URL shortener out there today. Another one I really like using is urlTea. Both of these come bookmarklet ready right on their front pages. Nice to have when you want to pass along that really long web address.

Know of any more that I might have forgotten about? Feel free to drop them in as a comment and share them with your other Firefox Facts fanatics. Bookmarklets are kind of like underwear, everybody has a few favorites and some people don’t like to change. Give these a shot though and I promise you will feel the pulse of productivity grow from within.

With Speed Dial, you can easily access your most used websites. To show the Speed Dial tab, use the Speed Dial button (which can be added to the toolbar), or enter “chrome://speeddial/content” in your location bar.

One more cool thing about this tools is it will automatically load in blank new windows or my favorite selection in blank new tabs. To configure this, and other options, use the extension settings panel.

+ Download and Install the Speed Dial Extension for Firefox!

This week, Roman writes in and wants to know of a way to do quicker searching via Firefox and not have to start at the beginning of the document to do it.

In IE, because it doesn’t search as you type, you can highlight a piece of text, and then press ctrl-F and have it search below your selection first, then it gets to the bottom of the page and searches the part of the page before your selection. in firefox, i find that the search as you type feature always starts at the top of the page. Is there a workaround?

For the quick searching that you need, I have found that using Firefox’s quick search would be the best way to go. It isn’t the same as the search that you get with Ctrl+F though. For this one all you need to hit is the / key.

This one will give you the search you need to start where you are on the page. Also after you are done with it, it disappears out of sight. Hope that helps!

Have another feature request or suggestion you’d like to see built into Firefox by default or added by an extension? Let me know about it and I’ll feature it on Firefox Facts and maybe even find you a solution to your problem (if you have one).

Press ctrl+shift+D (or) double-click (or) right-click after selecting a word to see its meaning. This extension is ideal for those who doesn’t like to switch their window to see the meaning of a word.

Want to look up what a word means? Dictionaries are really good tools to do just that. I tried asking a chicken once… but it never gave me an answer. The real question here is, does this extension lay eggs?

+ Download and Install the Dictionary Tooltip Extension for Firefox!