best guide to add-ons, themes and tips for Firefox
In a day where we have fantastic website designs, terrific layouts and tons of stuff to check out on the web – we sometimes forget that some people have more readability problems than most. The Readability add-on for Firefox looks to change that. It strips all the fluff from the webpage you are looking at – and delivers pure content.
Page zooming is a Firefox feature that is often overlooked. It was a new feature added to Firefox 3, which in turn allowed you to increase or decrease the size of a web page to help improve the readability. So, how can you take advantage of this magnificent feature inside of Firefox?
Many web designers and search engine optimizers will tell you that it is important to keep a high text to code ratio when developing a web site. I have just stumbled upon an add-on that will help you do that very task. The Text to Code Ratio add-on will provide you a simple percentage based score at the bottom of your Firefox browsing window to tell you what your text to code ratio is.
Do you find yourself typing the same snipits of information over and over again? Maybe it is a form you need people to answer, or perhaps it is just your e-mail signature. With Clippings, an extension for Firefox, you can quickly archive all your most used blocks of text to be used anytime.
Once you have this add-on installed, you can save frequently entered text for later really easily. All it takes is two mouse clicks and your text is there. Just right-click in the textarea, select clippings and then select the name for the text you wish to paste in.
Filed under, “not sure if I need it – but thanks, just in case” we have Texto. This add-on for Firefox will allow you to launch an external text editor to edit text forms in Firefox.
Here is a little more about the add-on from the Texto developer:
This add-on strips out much of the Mozex functionality to focus on launching external text editors. Features the ability to customize editor behavior for different websites, and uses the asynchronous process support in Firefox 3.6 to update textareas automatically when the external editor is finished, without polling.
Ever lost something you just typed into a web form, and wanted to get it back? Lazarus: Form Recovery, a security related add-on for Firefox, will auto-save anything you type into forms as you type.
Have a server crash?
Did the page timeout?
Did Firefox go down an a blaze of glory?
No matter what the problem, you can go back to the form, right-click your mouse, choose “recover form” and get your information back.
Here is a little more information about Lazarus: Form Recovery from the add-on developer:
Lazarus works on web forms, WYSIWYG editors and AJAXified forms and will save you from almost any given server, browser, or connection problems that might otherwise cause you to lose your work. Lazarus now comes with 2048-bit RSA and 256-bit AES hybrid encryption so your data is more secure than ever! Lazarus 2.0 also includes search functionality so you can recover text even if you can no longer find the original form you entered it into.
If you often run into the situation where you just lost what you typed, this add-on for Firefox is your perfect proverbial right-hand man. You can pickup the Lazarus: Form Recovery add-on for Firefox from the Firefox Add-ons site.
Looking to make drag and dropping a little more functional in Firefox? The Firefox add-on QuickDrag will let you load URLs, do web searches and more just by highlighting text, grabbing it and dragging it to the right location.
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.
Want to remove all the clutter from your favorite site to read, and get right to the text? TidyRead, an extension for Firefox, removes all the extra stuff from a web page or article that can make reading on the Web difficult at times.
This browser add-on does a simple, yet effective, job of stripping away the extra content from news or blog article pages, leaving you with nicely formatted text to enjoy. Since the new version is overlaid on top of the old version, switch between the two is very easy. You also have the options to customize it to suit your own reading style too (white on black, black on white, white on green, ect).
Well worth trying out, if you find some of the content on the Web a little hard on your eyes. You can pick up TidyRead on the Firefox Add-ons web site.
Here is a tip I randomly ran across via Smart Productivity. Want to quickly copy and paste a text-based list of your bookmarks? All you need to do is right-click a folder icon in your bookmarks and select Copy. After doing so, you can right-click and select Paste to paste the list anywhere you need it. It will be saved to your clipboard, organized by folder names.
Here is one more tip from the Smart Productivity blog:
One other great use of this tip is that if you right-click any of the items at the top of the Bookmarks folder, such as Organize Bookmarks and select Copy, your complete library of bookmark URLs will be placed on the clipboard as well as the folder names.
Very neat discovery, I must say. Check out more Smart Productivity here:
http://www.smartproductivity.com/firefox-tip-easily-copy-your-bookmarks
One of those pesky things that bug me is when somebody writes a link in that I want to click, but there is no HTML code included to make it into a click-able link. Thankfully several add-ons for Firefox have figured out how to turn URLs and e-mail addresses not marked up as a link into things I can click on.
There are eight add-ons for Firefox that do this job very well. The only problem is that there is not that much difference between them.
Know of a number nine I might have missed? I wouldn’t be surprised. This seems like a very popular idea to do for a Firefox extension for some reason. Since today is my birthday, just consider these eight gems your present from me.
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Mitch Keeler is nothing more than your average Joe trying to leave his mark on the world though both his professional work and his online projects, articles, podcasts and more.
