I've put this off for too long, but with Firefox 2.0 coming soon, now is
a good time to do a little writeup about how I use Firefox. The Firfox
webpage has nice list of the
features that make Firefox a much better browser than IE6, and
probably also IE7, but here are a couple I find particularly useful -
-
Internet Searches:
One fo the main things people do on the
interenet is search for information. Firefox offers a few ways to do
that more efficiently.
-
Quick Searches - Firefox comes with a dedicated
search box, but the Quick
Searchs feature is simpler - type in keyword (I prefer
keyletter, much quicker!) hit enter and off you go! (Install a tab
customization extension - such as Tabbrowser
Preferences, and configure it so that your search opens a new
tab, instead of overwriting yout current tab.)
There are a few
quick searches built
in, but you can make your
own to suit your needs. In addition, you can assign keywords
to any bookmark, and type that in to open the site (e.g. type
'bbc' instead of news.bbc.co.uk to open the site, by assiging the keyword
'bbc' to the link)
Another result of this is efficiency of
screenspace - you can have a much
more functional toolbar, giving you more space for your
webpages.
-
Search Extensions - There are probably hundreds of these, but the
two I like are -
Context
Search, which makes your search-box engines available
in the context menu, and
Unwrap
Text, which isn't really a search extension, but is very
useful to quickly search street addresses in Google Maps, and
launch URLs in text form
-
Extensions:
One of the main attractions of Firefox is the ability
of users to increase its functionality through the huge
library of extensions. Here are a few that I've found the most
useful -
-
Forecastfox
- itself highly customizable, gives you information about weather
conditions right in
your status bar.
-
All-in-One
Gestures - I use it only to go back and forward, but it offers
a lot of other useful gestures. (Another way to go back and
forward - use Alt+ left-arrow/right-arrow)
-
Fasterfox -
Reduces page load time.
-
Foxmarks
Bookmark Synchronizer - A great extension to keep your
bookmarks synchronized between Firefox on different computers.
Doesn't require your own server, unline some other extensions, and
you can access your bookmarks online too. On the other hand, if
youo'd rather keep your bookmarks on your own private server, use this
extension BTW, while on the subject of bookmarks, do you know
that you can group your bookmarks in folders subjectwise, and keep
all the folders on the bookmarks toolbar folder? (like you saw here)
That makes browsing so much easier!
-
Gmail Notifier
- Check your GMail account without opening a tab for it...
-
Download Statusbar
- see information on downloads instead of in a seperate window.
-
IE Tab - If
a web-page is coded for Internet Explorer, and doesn't show up
well in Firefox, use (click on the small Firefox symbol in the
statusbar) this extension to open a new tab in the Firefox window.
The new tab uses Internet Explorer to render the page, so that it
shows up as intended. There's also IE
View Lite which can be used from the context menu to open a
link in a seperate IE window.
and we already talked about
-
Tabbrowser
Preferences
-
Context Search
and
-
Unwrap Text
Also see the
tips
and tricks page and
other
useful information at the Firefox site. If you have any other Firefox tips
(or webpages with such tips) that I would find useful, let me know!
Now
that I've pointed out the reasons (more
here)
to use Firefox, I'm going to put a little code on this page, which will
point to this post and urge future visitors to switch, in case they aren't
already using Firefox.
update:1)
for developers : Firefox is probably the most developer friendly browser
around because of numerous useful extensions.
- Ajit
2) right mouse button + scroll wheel = history menu
I just discovered by accident (while trying to see if there was a way
of changing text display size using the scroll wheel) that if you keep the
right mouse button pressed and then scroll the wheel, a
menu
pops up showing the history (back and forward) of the tab you're on,
enabling you to go back of forward multiple pages. To go to a page in the
history, keep scrolling the wheel till you highlight the page you want to
go to, and release the right button. Even though the mouse gesture is
useful to go back/fwd a page or two, it gets quite tedious to use it for
skiping more pages. So I used to keep the back and fwd arrows on the
window.Now
I've removed them. Let's see if I can use this newly discovered feature
effectively.
Caveats:
a) this might be an effect of some
extension I've installed. I haven't tested it on a bare Firefox install.
b)
the maximum height of the popup is limited to the current height of the
Firefox window, so if you've been browsing in the same tab for a while,
things might get tricky, as your recent history might be hidden from view.)
3)
VideoDownloader - another useful extension. Say you watch some vidoe website like
YouTube, or
GoogleVideo, and would really like to keep it. Right now these sites don't usually offer a way to save the file to your computer. VidoeDownloader lets you do exactly that, and with just a single click.
- Chinmay
