How are you surfing the web?

My guess is about half of you reading this are using Internet Explorer to browse websites. While this is ok, you might actually have a better experience with Firefox. Not only can you have a better experience, you can also be more productive. The following is a list of extensions I use to help me be more productive when surfing on the web. Don’t get me wrong, I still get lost reading too many sites. If you have any self-discipline tips for that, let me know

Built-in

Before I get to the extensions I use, let me highlight some of the wonderful built-in features of Firefox. If you have never used Tabs when browsing, you are truly missing out. Once you tab, you’ll never go back! There are a couple of different ways to open a link in a new tab. First, you can right-click on any link and select Open Link in New Tab. My favorite way is to hold the Control (CTRL) key down and click on a link. This will open it in a new tab and allow you to keep your place on the page you were browsing.

Firefox gives you full control over your RSS Feeds (those orange feed icons that allow you to read all your favorite blogs in one place). You can subscribe to feeds using Firefox’s built-in Live Bookmarks or you can add the feed to another feed reader you use.

Extensions

Because Firefox is open source, there are a ton of ways you can extend it — personalize it for you and how you work.

• Do you do a lot of research on the web? You have to check out ScrapBook. ScrapBook allows you to capture whole web pages, little snippets of information, or an entire website. It allows you to add notes to what you capture and to organize it in folders for different research projects. When I say capture — it actually downloads the web page (images and all) to your computer. When you look in your ScrapBook, you are viewing the page as stored on your hard drive. It stores the information for the original site if you need to go back and see any updates.
• Do you blog? Do you blog at more than one blog? Then you need ScribeFire. In ScribeFire you store your account information for various blogs (or possibly your clients’ blogs!). While you are browsing, you might come across something you want to reference, link to or quote. You can open ScribeFire from within Firefox (it’ll appear at the bottom of your screen). You can still browse while you are filling in your title and content. When you are finished, be sure you have the right blog selected that you want to publish to — then click Publish! You can also assign categories here, save drafts or just make notes.
• Do you find yourself getting into the more technical aspects of design or development for your clients web pages? Then you need to have the Web Developer’s Toolbar. Maybe you need to know approximately how big a graphic is on the screen. You can show the ruler from the Toolbar and change the size to measure anything on the screen. Maybe you are checking for missing images? If you select the Broken Images option, it will give you a list of the images that are missing. There are many, many tools on the Toolbar so go check it out!
• Have you ever need a picture of a web page? Download Screengrab! You can grab an entire web page (even the parts you’d have to scroll to see) or just the part you can see in your window. You can include your browser window or not — it’s up to you. When you grab a web page, you will save the picture as a graphic file. This is great for showing a portfolio of projects you’ve worked on or simply to show someone how to do something.

This is just the start for Firefox extensions. Take a look around the Firefox website and find out what other cool things you can do with Firefox.

Happy Browsing!

Lisa B.
Open Source Maven