MacGyvering your browser

ex-ten-si-ble [adjective] capable of being extended.
Dictionary.com

One of the reasons for the popularity of the Firefox browser is its extensibility. (see Lessons from the Toppling of Interent Explorer) Using "add-ons," one can customize the tool to meet one's personal style of working.

My favorite feature is being able to add various tools to the search box in the upper right corner of the Firefox window. By clicking on the logo, a drop down box appears with some default search engines, but what is really fun is the link to "Manage Search Engines."

Add a site you commonly search, then it's always there in just one click.

Of course there are hundreds of Firefox "Add-Ons" that do different tricks. GoogleGears, which allows one to work on GoogleDoc applications when off-line, is a must have. This looks like a useful listl: Best Firefox Extensions for E-Learners by Edutastic, but I've not tried most of the recommendations.

And I would add these caveats: It's tempting to spend a larger amount of time dinking with these little programs than the amount of time they actually save. And quite frankly, I've installed more than a couple, played with them instead of doing work, and then promptly forgot I even had them. Add-ons can cause conflicts and need to be updated (GoogleGears is still not available for the latest version of Mac Firefox as of this writing.) So, think, "Do I REALLY need this?" before hitting the install button.

Favorite "add-ons" and extensions?

How do we make the school experience more extensible for kids?

Comments

[Cheryl Martin]

What a timely post! I installed Firefox this morning and just asked my FB friends for recommendations on 'must-have' add-ons. I'll be interested to see what comes up in the responses here. Now I'm going to add GoogleGears....

[Michael Doyle]

Great, another big chunk of my mortal coil shot.
Thanks, buddy.

[Miriam]

The add-ons I use the most are the search engine options, Google preview, and IE Tab (for websites that don't work properly with FF but do like IE such as my power company's site, our government's MyStudyLink site), but my favourite add-on without a doubt is AdBlockPlus. Constantly flashing, obtrusive ads that take up valuable screen 'real estate' drive me batty. AdBlockPlus + the EasyList filter does a fab job of removing all that, and the nifty UI makes it so easy to get rid of other bits & pieces (such as Facebook's 'social ads'). I highly recommend it.

[Jacquie Henry]

My favorite is "copy in plain text". Invaluable when you are writing web pages or blogs and would like to copy in a quote from a web page - without copying the font, text size or color.

The delicious add-on is nice too. I can highlight pertinent text on a web page and when I click the delicious icon, the highlighted text is automatically placed into my delicious bookmark summary. Very cool.

And of course, I like the spell checker which heps me to spall batter wen commentng on thes blug =)

[Susan Tanner]

Hi, Doug,

I love my extensions, too - of course my favorite ones are the totally non-work related Personas for Firefox and Colorful Tabs, which make your browser look nice! But I also like Zotero - it's great for gathering all the bits for citation when you're working on a project. It says about itself that "Zotero is, at the most basic level, a citation manager. It is designed to store, manage, and cite bibliographic references, such as books and articles. In Zotero, each of these references constitutes an item." It also manages other items, like pictures, video, etc. Lives right in the browser, so it's easy to access.

Sue

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Cheryl,

Glad this was helpful.

I believe this is the first time I've heard someone suggest that their Facebooks are a resource for this sort of question. Interesting...

All the best,

Doug

HI Michael,

Did you want to learn about how you can tweak your iGoogle page too?

Always glad to be of help ;-)

Doug

Hi Miriam,

Thanks for the suggestions. The IE Tab sounds very useful since they don't make IE for the Mac any longer.

Take good care of my "baby" 23-year-old son working in Wellington!

Doug

Thanks, Jacquie. I'll give these a try. I believe there is a spell checker built into the MacOS now since I get stuff underlined in about every application!

All the best,

Doug

Thanks, Sue. I'll check these out!

Doug