If you use the built in feed reading capabilities of Firefox, the Live Bookmarks feature, you might be missing the fact that you do not have an organized list of new entries to go through like you would have in a traditional RSS reader. The Feed Sidebar add-on for Firefox is here to take your Live Bookmarks and display them all in your sidebar.
Needing an extension-less fix for converting long links into short ones? Now, we all know there are dozens of Firefox add-ons that could do this for you, but do you really need another extension to your browser? Maybe not.
I got an e-mail from a Firefox Facts reader who asked…
"What way do you suggest is best for link shortening? I don’t want to install another add-on if possible. Thanks!"
I’ll share with you the way I handle all my link shortening needs.
Want to hide all the stuff you do not really need on your personalized iGoogle homepage? Thanks Super iGoogle, a handy Greasemonkey script, you can simplify iGoogle to only show you the content you need to see.
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.
Want to store notes you have taken across the Web in your bookmarks?
Net Notes will allow you to easily store notes on specific sites in your bookmarks. Once you install Net Notes, you can start taking notes about the active tab you have open. The Net Notes sidebar can be toggled (shown and hidden) via Firefox view menu, with a toolbar button, or with a customizable keyboard shortcut. The notes themselves are edited in a simple textbox in your Firefox sidebar. In the options, you can also set it to open your notes in a bottom bar instead.
When you close the sidebar or open a new window, the content of the notes textbox will automatically be saved for you. To help you organize, web sites with notes are automatically tagged with a customizable, comma separated list of tags. Since the notes are stored with your bookmarks, to backup, restore, import and export your notes just backup, restore, import or export your bookmarks.
So if you are searching for a decent note taking add-on for Firefox, Net Notes is well worth checking out over on the Firefox add-ons web site.
I start every one of my Firefox browsing adventures with iGoogle loaded up as my home page. However, I would like to check up on my iGoogle page without going to the homepage over and over again through the day. Can I just load it up into the sidebar? Yes, we can!
How do you make it happen? Drag this link to your bookmarks bar:
Now, right-click the bookmark, and select Properties. Click the check mark box for loading this bookmark in the sidebar, and then click on the Save Changes button. Now when you click the bookmark, it should open up the iPhone version of the iGoogle Homepage.
If you have RSS items on your iGoogle page, they show up very nicely (you can see them in the screenshot above) and some items, like weather will be click-able to show you more information on whatever they are about. The search box is about useless (due to it being so small) but other than that, another fine iPhone/Google/Firefox hack-around bookmark.
Bonus Tip – drag this link (iGoogle mini) to your bookmarks bar to make it a popup version instead. If you like that, you can read more about the Top 5 Google Popup Bookmarklets on Mitchelaneous.
You can load up Google News in your Firefox sidebar. This quick tip and tweak will give you the ability to check out the iPhone optimized Google News in your Firefox sidebar. This makes scrolling through the day’s news an even quicker and easier experience.
How do you make it happen? Drag this link to your bookmarks bar:
Now, right-click the bookmark, and select Properties. Click the check mark box for loading this bookmark in the sidebar, and then click on the Save Changes button. Now when you click the bookmark, it should open up the iPhone version of the Google News.
To use it, click on Front Page to get all the big news stories of the day, and then click on Sections to find specific news about a certain topic, such as World News, Sci/Tech, and more. The search is also usable, to find news about anything you might be thinking about at the time.
Bonus Tip – drag this link (mini news) to your bookmarks bar to make it a popup version instead. If you like that, you can read more about the Top 5 Google Popup Bookmarklets on Mitchelaneous.
The Tab Sidebar add-on for Firefox does a simple change, but after I can promise you you’ll get a whole new perspective for the way Firefox works. It acts more like a replacement for the tab bar and includes an always visible thumbnail preview of all the tabs you may have loaded up.
Here are some of the other Tab Sidebar features:
To activate the extension, just go to View and then Tab Sidebar to see it. On the down side, some have complained that CPU usage goes way up when using this addition. On the good side though, hey – you get pretty thumbnails for all of your tabs! In the “what would I like to see” I would like to see if work flawlessly with the scroll wheel on your mouse.
There is a lot of promise and a lot to already love, so give Tab Sidebar a download either via the Firefox Add-ons site or the official web page for the extension.
Time for another one of those awesome, put “insert web site here” in the Firefox sidebar tips. This time around, it is the Google Reader iPhone version we are going goofy about. Open up this link here:
http://www.google.com/reader/i/
After doing so, drag it to your links bar or bookmark it. Then right-click the bookmark, and select the Load this bookmark in the sidebar checkbox. Now save and your good to go.
You should know I love the “Open a Tool in Firefox’s Sidebar” tips by now.
This one crossed my feed reader, and I couldn’t pass up the chance to send it to all of you. With a ‘bit of a work around you can now open your “compose a new e-mail” link from Gmail in as a Firefox sidebar. Here is how to get it done:
You’ll want to login to Gmail, and then click on the “Compose Mail” link. When the new message page comes up, you want to click on the popout icon in the upper right corner. When the popup comes at you, go to the address bar of the new window and copy the URL for it.
If you can’t see the address bar then just right click on the page, and select “Bookmark this Page”. Add the bookmark to a location you can remember and hit the “OK” button. Then you need to right-click the bookmark, select Properties and then hit the check mark to “Load this bookmark in the sidebar”.
There you have it, now you can compose Gmail messages right from your Firefox sidebar. Thanks goes out to Digital Streets for pointing this neat sidebar hack out. Does this work better for you, or would you rather have the popup?
