The State of the Firefox

[innerbrat]

Because weaverandom did a list of her favourite Firefox extensions and I've been thinking of doing a post like this anyway: here's a handy guide to how I use Firefox and other tools to make my internet life easier. And as most of my internet life is Livejournal - well, you get the picture.

First of all we have Firefox itself. I know other people use other browsers, but for the life of me I don't understand why. Different strokes, I guess, but if you're not going to be converted, there's not a lot of point reading on. Firefox on its own is nothing special (except the find on page function already makes it miles better than I.E.), but it's the available add-ons that make it indispensable to LiveJournal Users in particular.

Add-ons

• Adblock
  Filters ads from web-pages.
  Useful for: Everyone
• Better Gmail 2
  Enhances the new Gmail interface with Greasemonkey user scripts. The best part of this as far as I'm concerned is the nested labels available.
  Useful for: Everyone; RP (see also: IB's guide to GMail for the RPer)
• ColorZilla
  Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies.
  Useful for: Webdesign
• Copy All Urls
  Copies and pastes all urls of open tabs inclusive history in structured and well defined form to and from the clipboard.
  Useful for: Blogging (specifically Link Bloggers)
• Deepest Sender
  Post to blogs directly from SeaMonkey/Firefox. Personally I use Semagic as my LiveJournal posting tool of choice, but D.S. is also compatible with WordPress and Blogger, and has the very useful feature of auto-creating a blockquote and link to the site in question.
  Useful for: Blogging
• Define
  Search the definition of the highlighted text at Google.
• del.icio.us
  Keep, share and discover all your favourite things. I was late in starting to use my del.icio.us account, and now I love it. A little widget in the toolbar means everytime I want to remember this link or share it with anyone else, I can do so with a little click. It's also good for sharing links - if I see anything that I think is relevant for my friends, I can tag it for:[username] and when they check their 'links for you' post they have a handy list of links people want to share with them.
  Del.icio.us accounts each have their own feed, with each feed as an entry - which can be subscribed to in the normal ways for a link-by-link feed, (such as delicious_beng), or can be set up to produce a daily aggregate of links for your blog. To get this to work with Livejournal as I have done, one needs to use a little tool called Delicious Glue.
  Useful for: Networking, Blogging (especially Link Bloggers)
• Download Statusbar
  View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar
  Useful for: Filesharing
• DownThemAll!
  The mass downloader for Firefox. I don't know how I lived without this: downloads from most servers (including sites like Megaupload, Box and Mediafire) happen like that. *snaps fingers*
  Useful for: Filesharing
• Extension List Dumper
  Dumps a list of the installed extensions. Which is exactly what I used for this post here.
  Useful for: Posts like this
• Fasterfox
  Performance and network tweaks for Firefox.
  Useful for: Everyone
• Firebug
  Web Development Evolved. This is fantastic for inspecting the code for pages ("how did they do that?") and for tweaking your own viewing. Edit .css, identify elements, and more!
  Useful for: Webdesign
• Flashblock
  Replaces Flash objects with a button you can click to view them. This not only makes flash-heavy pages quicker to load, it also serves as a handy adblock and keeps things secure.
  Useful for: Everyone
• FoxClocks
  Displays local times around the world in the statusbar/toolbar. Supports virtually all time zones. Handy for knowing what time it is for your girlfriend. And Weaves as well, I suppose
  Useful for: Networking
• FoxyTunes
  Control any media player from Firefox and more... I mostly use this for the FoxyPlanet search function that brings up nifty pages for each song.
  Useful for: Music
• Gmail Manager
  Gmail accounts management and new mail notifications. Great for managing multuple accounts - I only just yoinked this from Weaves but as I use Thunderbird and POP, I'm not sure I'll use it much.
  Useful for: Everyone; RP (see also: IB's guide to GMail for the RPer)
• Google Toolbar for Firefox
  Take the power of Google with you anywhere on the Web! - uh, I just use this for a quick page rank.
  Useful for: Everyone
• Greasemonkey
  A User Script Manager for Firefox. This is a great little gizmo for little scripts that make life easier. My own scripts are, except the very first, all LJ-specific- and is compatable with all LJ-software using sites, too.
  Useful for: Everyone; Blogging (specifically LiveJournal)
• Text Area Backup - to avoid losing things typed into text areas.
• LJ Instant Tag - add tags with one click straight from your journal page
• LJ Parent Quick-View - give a quick click link to LJ comments so you can read the parent in a pop-up. Great for following complex wank debates
• LJ Taglister - gives a list of tags on your update journal page.
• Show Latest Post on LJ Userinfo - does exactly what it says on the tin.
• Delete Multiple Subscriptions- deletes subscriptions in batch from the LJ message centre, instead of having to do them all. One. At. A. Time.
• Twitterless - hide LoudTwitter posts on your friendslist
• Linkification
  Converts text links into genuine, clickable links. In case you visit a lot of places (I wonder what they could be) that uses text links. Use this with No-referrer
  Useful for: Filesharing
• Linky
  Open/download/validate links and pictures in tabs or windows. I don't use this, but I feelll it could still be useful.
  Useful for: Research
• LiveJournal Addons
  Add some facilities to LiveJournal: Ha, 'some'. This gizmo lets you unfold lj-cuts, comments, reply, track, memory all from your friendspage. It lets you pre-code useful HTML like bolding, italics, small-caps (should you play Death somewhere), LJ-users directly from your friendslist. It checks your friendspage. It lets you unfold comment threads more quickly and easily than the inbuilt LJ expand. One click to view any post in Light Format. It rocks!
  Useful for: RP; Blogging; Everyone (who uses LiveJournal)
• LJlogin
  Tells you which LiveJournal account you're logged in with, and lets you switch between them. No one with more than one LiveJournal account has any excuse not to be using this - and it works with InsaneJournal and GreatestJournal, too.
  Useful for: RP
• No-Referer
  Lets you open a tab without sending the HTTP referer information.
  Useful for: Filesharing
• Openhxxp
  Handles h**p links
  Useful for: Filesharing
• RealPlayer Browser Record Plugin
  Detects all recordable content on the browser. Occasionally I download flash elements and embedded videos to view offline.
  Useful for: Everyone
• Shareaholic
  Just recommended to me today by matgb - combines Delicious and other bookmark-sharing sites like Facebook
• Stop-or-Reload Button
  Turns the stop and reload buttons into a single one. When you can stop, you have a Stop button, otherwise you have a Reload button. (Like Safari)
  Useful for: Everyone
• Stylish
  Customise the look of websites and of the user interface. Um - I'm sure this has more uses than the one to remove all ads from Livejournal, but eh. Here's how to do it.
  Useful for: Everyone
• Sun Cult
  Worldwide Sunrise, Sunset, Twilight, Moonrise and Moonset Times. Uh - I kind of only use this when I'm RPing a werewolf? still, Lunar cycles are nice to know.
• Tab Mix Plus
  Tab browsing with an added boost. This lets you decide how links are opened, arrange the order and look of tabs, decide what happens if you double-click or middle-click on a tab, and more! Really makes tabs worth it.
  Useful for: Everyone
• TabRenamizer
  Rename all your tabs so you can find what you're looking for easily. Designed to hide activity from onlookers, it's great for labelling RP threads.
  Useful for: RP
• TwitterFox
  This extension lets you know twitter statuses. It turns all of twitter into one ongoing party in your browser. Weaves and I kinda use it to chat. A lot. If you want to have twitters exported to your LiveJournal, go here.
  Useful for: Networking
• Web Developer
  Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.Until I found Firebug, this was my .css investigative tool of choice. I still use it from time to time in writing stylesheets.
  Useful for: Webdesign

And one more thing:


Firefox and LiveJournal Feeds
I have for as long as I've known what .rss feeds were, used my LiveJournal friendspage to follow my blogs of choice. I thought finding them through LiveJournal's syndication page was easy enough, but you can also set up Firefox to subscribe through Livejournal in two easy clicks.
Just Look Here.

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