Tag Archives | tools

Browse Faster with SmarterFox

Jun/24 in Add-ons Reviews

SmarterFox Helps You Browse Faster Another jewel in the ruff I discovered when browsing around the Mozilla add-ons site was SmarterFox.  What does this add-on to the browser do for you?  It helps make browsing the web just that much faster…and smarter!

Where are the features?  Here are some of the thinks I liked about this awesome add-on to your browser:

  • Search by selecting/highlighting text and then clicking on the popup bubble
  • Google results automatically show up in the Awesomebar/URL bar as you type (faster than going to google.com)
  • Easily switch between search engines during a search with a single click
  • Convert text URLs into clickable links
  • Automatically copy on select / paste on middle click / paste on right click (NOT enabled by default)
  • Visit bookmarks quickly with keyboard shortcuts using qLauncher
  • Adds "related articles" side-pane to Wikipedia

There is definitely a lot of browser tweaking to be loved here.  It is that type of extension that does many things well, instead of focusing on doing one thing really well.  So if you would like to kill several birds with on stone – this is the pick me up your browser has been looking for. 

Want to give it a shot?  Pickup SmarterFox on the Mozilla add-ons site and let me know what you think.  Has it helped you browse the Web any faster or smarter?

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Reframe It in Firefox

May/13 in Add-ons Reviews

Want to be able to comment on any web site out there on the Web, without the permission of the web site in question?  Reframe It opens up a new portal of communication, by allowing you to communicate through specific comments next to the web site you are referencing. 

Why just send a simple text-based note, when you can send that and the web site you are talking about all in one swift, easy to access movement?  Here is the extension in action:

Reframe It Screenshot

It also supports sharing via Facebook, Twitter, RSS, HTML, and direct email so you can quickly share your comments.

Reframe It allows you to simple say what you want to where you want to.  This extension would be perfect (as an example) if you were working on a web site re-design, and wanted to show your boss the areas you wanted to work on.  Another example, would be citing research, when working on an article.

You can learn more about Reframe It via the Reframeit.com web site and pick up the Firefox add-on for the service on the Firefox Add-ons site.

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Quickly Capture and Save Screenshots

May/05 in Add-ons Reviews

Pict Uploader for Firefox

I am always taking screenshots of this, that and the other for all the various writing projects I have going on the Web.  For me, finding something that makes that job even a little ‘bit easier, is a great thing indeed.  This is where the Pict Uploader comes into play.

This Firefox add-on integrates with your browser to provide a way to make screenshots with one click, and if you wish upload them to the Pict.com image hosting service. 

Here are some of the other features Pict Uploader will provide:

  • Capture screenshots of websites
  • Capture screenshot of whole website
  • Capture screenshot of visible area
  • Capture screenshot of custom selected area
  • Edit screenshots
  • Save screenshots in jpg/png formats

Well worth trying out, especially if you do any daily screen captures.  You can pick up the Pict Uploader on the Firefox add-ons web site.

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3 Best Translation Tools for Firefox

Apr/07 in Add-ons Reviews, Best of Firefox

Translation Tools for Firefox What is the best Firefox add-on to help you translate languages?  Well I am going to do more than just share one extension with you.  I am going to give you the choice of three.  From the most basic, to the advanced – here are the three best translation tools for Firefox.

gTranslate

With gTranslate you can translate any text in a webpage just by selecting and right-clicking over it. The extension uses (one of my personal favorite translation tools) the Google translation services to translate the text.

Translator

There is a lot to be said for being easy to use.  The translator add-on is web translation extension that allows you to translate any web page into nearly any language at the click of a button.  It supports Google’s translation tools, Yahoo!’s Babelfish, PROMT, freetranslation.com, Altavista’s translation tools, and Im translator.

FoxLingo

If you want a powerful translation tool, look no further than FoxLingo.  This add-on for Firefox will do web page translation, search translation, auto translation, has resources for learning languages and much more.  Powerful is the key word here as it can translate full web pages (over 1,500 different language pairs).

So which is the best translation toolset for Firefox? I will leave that up to you.  If you want something powerful, I would say go with FoxLingo.  If you want something quick, gTranslate is the way to go.  Translator sits in the middle, as a good balance between the two.

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10 Popular Search Tools for Firefox

Mar/30 in Add-ons Reviews, Best of Firefox

Searching in Firefox is a very easy thing to do.  Just type a phrase into the search box in your upper-right corner of the browser and hit the “Enter” key.  Now the trick is, how can we make searching in Firefox better?  Here are ten of the most popular Firefox add-ons to revolutionize the way you search the Web.

  • Googlepedia – delivering relevant Wikipedia articles along with your search results.
  • Google Assistant – Surf Canyon – helps to unleash the power of search by helping you find relevant information buried in the search results of Google, Yahoo!, Live Search and more.
  • VideoSurf Search Plugin – Use VideoSurf’s visual search engine to find videos from all over the web.
  • Add to Search Bar – Make any pages’ search functionality available in Firefox’s built in search box.
  • Advanced Dork – Get quick access to Google’s advanced operators (such as site:, intext:, and others) directly from Firefox’s context menu.
  • AutoPager – Automatically load the next page of any site that has inline results.  When you reach the bottom of one page go to the next!
  • CustomizeGoogle – Add tons of extra information and tools to Google and remove unwanted information you don’t need.
  • Infoaxe – Full text history search synchronized between multiple computers and multiple browsers.  Think of it as bookmark syncing for your browsing history.
  • Who Is This Person? – Highlight any name on the Web to see matching information from services like Wink, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Facebook, Google News, and more.
  • BetterSearch – An add-on for Firefox and Flock which enhances Google and Yahoo! with all their international flavors, MSN and Delicious by adding previews (thumbnails) and additional functionality.

Have another favorite search add-on for Firefox that did not make it onto the list?  Leave it in the comments, because I would love to hear your opinion on which would be the king of the search extensions.

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10 Popular Web Designer Tools for Firefox

Mar/24 in Add-ons Reviews, Best of Firefox, Resources

Thanks to Firefox and some of the great add-ons that have been developed for it, your browser is your best friend when it comes to web site design.  From CSS tools, to promoting your domain, here are 10 of the most popular web designer tools for Firefox.

Any of these add-ons would be great to add to your own proverbial web designer’s toolbelt.

  • ColorZilla – This advanced eyedropper and color picker will help you find out exactly what color is being used on somebody else’s web site, so you can use it on your own.
  • Firebug – Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.
  • FireFTP – Looking for an FTP client you can reach from inside of Firefox?  FireFTP is a free, secure, cross platform FTP client built into and for Firefox.
  • IE Tab – Quickly embed Internet Explorer into an open tab of Firefox, for cross browser web site checking and testing.
  • Picnik – Get quick access to your own online image editor with this add-on.  It adds a menu option to import images right into the Picnik online image editor.
  • Stylish – This add-on is often considered for web site tweakers, however it can also be used to add or remove CSS and design elements on the fly, without even having to login to your web site.
  • Web Developer Toolbar – By far, the king of the web development Firefox extensions.  It adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.
  • User Agent Switcher – Another good one to have for cross browser testing.  It adds a menu to the toolbar so you can quickly change the user agent of the browser.
  • FireShot – Take a screenshot and also add notes to it.  If you are a designer, wanting to highlight key features of a design to a client, there is no better Firefox add-on out there to do just that.
  • SeoQuake – Aimed at the search engine optimization crowd, this extension will help webmasters deal with the promotion side of their domains.

What Firefox add-ons and services help you get the job done when it comes to web design?  Drop in a comment, and give me your own “best of” suggestions.


Welcome Digg.com Visitors! Appreciate you stopping in to check out the list. If you have any other suggestions for web developer Firefox add-ons, please add them to the comments, and I’ll be putting out a “reader-inspired” version of the list soon!

While your here, remember to subscribe to the RSS feed to get all of our updated delivered to your favorite feed reader. You can also get our posts delivered to your e-mail inbox once a day, so you never miss another Firefox tool, add-on, theme or tutorial!

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Tab Mix Plus

Mar/20 in Add-ons Reviews, Tabbed Browsing

Tab Mix Plus It has been a long time since I have taken a look at Tab Mix Plus.  I know a lot of people who use it, and it continues to be one of the most popular Firefox add-ons out there.  So the first question to ask is, what makes it so darn special?

Well, the main goal of Tab Mix Plus is to give Firefox’s tabs more capabilities.  You can quickly duplicate tabs, control the tab focus, you get all kinds of tab clicking options, undo tabs and windows, and that is just scratching the surface. 

It also includes a full-featured session manager with crash recovery that can save and restore combinations of opened tabs and windows.

Tab Mix Plus Options

Need help using one Tab Mix Plus’s features?  They have a handy set of user forums here:

All in all, Tab Mix Plus is still a great addition to the Firefox browser if you need to do “more” with your tabs than the default Firefox install or any other add-ons give you. 

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Convert YouTube Videos to MP3

Mar/16 in Add-ons Reviews

The experimental add-on YouTube 2 MP3 will convert and download YouTube videos in the .mp3 audio format.  There is no doubt that YouTube has a large collection of music videos, so this type of service was bound to happen eventually. 

Download YouTube Videos as MP3 files!

Once installed, the add-on will add a link to each YouTube video page that says, “Convert & Download as MP3”.  Once clicked, the extension takes you to another web site where the mp3 will be available for you to download.  The only downside I could find, is that it takes some time to convert the videos to the .mp3 format. 

As a bonus, if you want to use the YouTube video to mp3 converting service without the add-on you can do that too.  Just bookmark this link:  http://youtube2mp3.wmn.eu/

You can download YouTube 2 MP3 extension on the Firefox Add-ons web site.

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TwitterFox Rocks

Feb/23 in Add-ons Reviews

Twittering with TwitterFox After posting a review of Twitbin last week, I got a lot of people e-mailing me to check out another favorite Twitter tool in Firefox called TwitterFox.  This add-on for Firefox notifies you of your friends’ status on Twitter. 

Isn’t that what Twitbin did?  Yes, but Twitbin lived in your sidebar.  TwitterFox lives in your status bar.  The ever-so-small icon in the status bar will notify you when your friends update their own Twitter profiles.

Some of the features added to TwitterFox 1.7.6 include:

  • Supported Firefox 3.1b2
  • Added a context menu to each tweets which has: copy, re-tweet, open this tweet in new tab , delete tweet
  • Auto extract is.gd and bit.ly links.
  • Added Mark all as read menu item to main context menu.
  • Increased contrast of background color of read/unread messages.
  • Added in-reply-to-status-id parameter for status update.
  • Added da-DK, th-TH, vi-VN, ar-SA, ar, and kw-GB translations.
  • Bug fixes.

Need your first Twitter friend, or want to follow me and my Firefoxing ways? 

Follow me on Twitter at:  http://twitter.com/mitchkeeler

As you can see, there is a lot to love here for any Firefox/Twitter fan boy (or girl).  You can pickup TwiterFox via the Firefox Add-ons site or the official web site at TwitterFox.net. 

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Twitbin – Best Twitterer for Firefox?

Feb/20 in Add-ons Reviews

Twitbin Need an add-on for Firefox that will allow you to keep up with the latest news or posts from your Twitter friends?  Twitbin is probably the best and most popular Twitter extension for Firefox.  Now let me tell you why.

Twitbin sits in your Firefox sidebar, showing you all the latest tweets from your friends.  You can join in the conversation yourself too.  You can send messages, receive messages, share links and more. 

Some features of the newest 2.0 version of Twitbin include:

Apart from design changes, you can now favorite people as well as view only facorited posts. You can now Retweet by clicking the icon under the avatar, as well as favorite, @ reply, and go to the persons homepage (if they have one).

Here is a video showing you the how Twitbin works:


Twitbin Screencast from brbreslin on Vimeo.

You can pick up the extension on the Twitbin.com web site or the Firefox Add-ons site.  If you are new to Twitter, or if you just want to see what I am up to, feel free to follow me there as well. 

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