[photopress:Firefoxlogo2.png,thumb,alignright]
First, if you haven’t upgraded yet, Firefox 2.0 is out. It’s a quick and easy download and will update itself from that point on. Some of the new treats include a spell checker, faster speeds, and an improved rss handler.
Second, if you’re using Firefox to avoid viruses (and for the spellchecking), that’s great, but you might be missing some of the best add-ons. My list includes:
Adblock – blocks ads from websites and makes the web a much more pleasant place. The drawback: you have to pick the ads. The fix…
Adblock Filterset.G – gives Adblock a huge list of ads to block and updates itself every time I open firefox
BugMeNot – lets me log in to free sites that require a login (like the New York Times) by right clicking and clicking “login with bugmenot.” Others have signed up with fake email addresses so I don’t have to.
Customize Google – tons of google choices, but my favorites are secure gmail and “Google suggests” from the search box as I type
easyGestures – lets little mouse gestures control the browser. (Pretty geeky)
Google Calendar Notifier – unobtrusively pops up in the lower right hand corner whenever I have an event on my calendar (they text message me too)
Google Send to Phone – highlight any text on a page, click send to phone and you have a text message. Very useful for addresses and directions. (they haven’t upgraded it to 2.0 yet!)
Viamatic FoXpose – shows me a snapshot of all of my tabs (when I remember it’s there)
For web development:
FireBug – javascript debugger. Yuck. Javascript.
ColorZilla – tells me the web color for any color on any page (web colors look like #6685AF)
IE View – opens any page in internet explorer so I can remember why it’s such a pain
Web Developer – lets me look at a page from many angles. My favorite use is to highlight a little text and clicking “View Selection Source” to see the html for a part of a page
Internet Exploder 7 just came out too. Reports say it’s much better than Explorer 6, but I’m keeping 6 so I can keep testing ShackPrices on it. If you don’t want Firefox, for security’s sake you should at least upgrade to Internet Explorer 7.
I’ve found Firefox 2.0 to be buggier than good old Firefox 1.5 (crashes more often) and faster then previous versions. I’ll have to upgrade to RTM now that it’s out. However, Firefox 2.0 is still the gold standard of web browsers (until IE 8 or Firefox 3 anyway).
Thanks for the Firefox add-in list. I’ll have to check ’em out!
Robbie, do you know a simple way to use ie6 and ie7 next to each other? I’d like to test on both.
I haven’t tried it yet, but I’d check out http://tredosoft.com/IE7_standalone and http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE. I’d also consider MS Virtual PC or VMware Player (which are both free) and have separate virtual machines for beta OSes, browsers, etc.
If you are a mortgage broker, I offer a very valuable add on as well. Dustin commented about it here:
http://www.raincityguide.com/2006/01/28/happy-birthday-lenderama/
Thanks Robbie – that looks like a great solution.
Todd – cool plugin. I just sent that link to a friend!
Great picks here! I’ve loving all the polish in Firefox 2.
For web development, I’d also recommend the MeasureIt extension. It’s basically a on-screen ruler for webpages.
Jack, that’s a killer extension. What a great idea!
Just thought I’d mention that the: #26685AF is not a valid web color. I chuckled when I saw the typo, but figured most of your readers wouldn’t really notice. It’s 7 hex long instead of 6. Might want to remove one of the 6’s or just hack off the end F. Up to you 🙂
Jesse, how embarrassing! I definitely know that web colors are 6 hexadecimal characters, so I must have added another while making that color up.
I am not so intimately familiar with web colors that I could tell you what that color would be without the 2 or the F.
Thanks for the heads up. I just downloaded 2.0 and an IE Tab plugin. I like the ability to open up the NWMLS in an IE tab in one Firefox window. So far, the NWMLS site working pretty well.
I downloaded the IE Tab plugin as well and that has turned out to be so darn useful! Very cool!
I really like the bug me not add-on. I hate clicking on a link and then finding that I have to signup to read an article.
This is a great time saver.
Here is a great video demonstration of “All in one gesures” and firefox. “How open many tabs at once with a single gesture”
http://one.revver.com/watch/135913