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.

After you have installed the Feed Sidebar add-on for Firefox, you will gain a new sidebar for feeds in your browser.  This is really intended to be a lightweight extension of the built in RSS capabilities of Firefox.  When you open the sidebar, you will see all the new updates for all the Live Bookmarks you have subscribed to.

Single-clicking on a headline will bring up a little preview of the article in the bottom half of your sidebar, like this:

Double clicking the headline will take you to the page for that item in your main Firefox window.  Once the page has been loaded, it is removed from your list of new headlines you have not checked out yet.

The toolbar buttons across the top of the Feed Sidebar can also:

• Open All in Tabs
• Mark All as Read
• Set maximum age for feed items
• Stop current update
• Reload feeds
• Change update interval (reload button dropdown)

For updates and news, make sure you follow the developer on his own blog found at chrisfinke.com.  Overall, I think this is a great addition to Firefox, and a definite contender for people looking for a lightweight way to keep up with some of the best feeds out there (like the one for Firefox Facts). You can pick up the Feed Sidebar add-on for Firefox at the Firefox Add-ons website.

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.

I would suggest you go sign up for bit.ly.  They are one of the best link shortening services out there today.  They have been around a while, so you know they are not going away (and breaking all your short links) anytime soon.  They also give you tons of statistics for all the links you shorten too.

The bookmarklet is the best part about the service.  As you can see in my screenshot above, it opens up a pane on top of the page you are looking at with the text all ready to copy, paste and share.  You can even use it to tweet your short link via Twitter too – if needed.

To grab the bookmarklet, all you need to do is register for bit.ly, and then drag the bookmarklet to your links toolbar in Firefox.

So there is your quick and easy extension-less fix for an everyday browsing problem.  While I still fully love all the Firefox add-ons and extensions out there, sometimes there is a better or easier way to do things without installing one more addition to the browser.

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.

Why hide iGoogle content?

I really didn’t want to hide everything you see in the screenshot, I mainly needed a way to hide the left sidebar, because I really only use one page on iGoogle for my calendar, RSS links and e-mail.  Once you get Super iGoogle installed into Greasemonkey, the tool itself is pretty self explanatory.

What about other Google links, settings and more?

You get a drop down menu added to the iGoogle web page, where you can choose to hide or show the header, the sidebar, the footer and the mini search the script adds to the very top of your iGoogle page.  Other menu items include:

• Advanced Search
• Search Preferences
• Language Tools
• iGoogle Settings
• Change Theme
• Get artistic themes
• Themes for Causes
• Add Stuff
• Classic Home
• My Account
• Sign Out

So all the usual iGoogle settings are there, they are just tucked away so they are not a visual distraction to you.

Download the Super iGoogle user script on UserScripts.org.

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. 

It shows you more than your standard name and address, as Firefox does by default.  Once installed, you can see:

the last visited date, the tags associated with the link, the description and the keywords

It shows the tooltip for and in:

all links, folders, bookmarks, RSS items in the bookmarks toolbar, bookmarks menu, history menu and sidebars

This is a great simple extension for those who just need to have a little more information handy about the links they have saved to the browser.  You can pick up the Places’ Tooltip add-on on the Firefox Add-ons web site.

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.

How do you make it happen?  Drag this link to your bookmarks bar:

• iPhone iGoogle Homepage

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.

How do you make it happen?  Drag this link to your bookmarks bar:

• iPhone Google News

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.

Here are some of the other Tab Sidebar features:

• Provides navigation options for each tab including history, stop and reload
• Allows you to move tabs around with drag and drop
• You can drop links, local files and bookmarks anywhere you like
• Displays the security status of tabs
• Automatically refreshes the tab preview whenever the page changes

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. 

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?