Captain's Log

Firebird extensions

So if you aren't using Mozilla Firebird yet, you are behind the times. If you have no idea what it is, go here for the FAQ. I could rant on about why reasons why you should switch but we'll save that for another post. Until then, you read about why you should use it here or the Firebird page. Even though it's only at version 0.7 it's pretty solid. Much more solid than Mozilla was at 0.7. Anyway on to the real topic of this post.

For those of you who do use Firebird, you should check out all the extensions available. Go to the extensions page to install any of these and read the summaries, if you don't need to full scoop at the author's homepage.

• Gestures are the cream of the crop when it comes to extensions. They let you perform tasks by holding a mouse button and moving the mouse instead of using menus and toolbar buttons. You might think it's not very useful, but once you try them out, you'll be hooked. (My favorite version is All-in-One Gestures. It has other additions like rocker gestures and use of the scroll wheel to navigate through the history or through tabs.
• One of the neat features of Firebird is the integrated search bar just right of the address bar. It makes a Google search a lot easier. Well I just learned that you can search a bunch of different places, like IMDb using the same bar. Just click on the search icon in the bar, and hit 'Add engines...' which takes you to the Mycroft page at mozdev. There you can choose from a ton of popular search engines/sites to add to your bar. Searching for things just got even easier...
• Flash Click to View is a great way to avoid the ads that you can't block because they are flash applets. Instead of automatically running a flash applet when a page loads, it displays a button in its place, which you can click to start the applet. It can be a hassle on flash-only sites like Homestarrunner, but otherwise I think it's really useful.
• Paste and Go is a really simple extension that takes a URL you have in the clipboard, and automatically loads the page if you press Ctrl-Shift-V. Or you can right click and choose 'Paste and Go' instead of just 'Paste' from the context menu in the address bar. Again doesn't seem that useful, but it saves time.
• Text/Plain is in the same vein of Paste and Go. Sometimes people write urls or site names without linking them. (e.g. cnn.com). With Text/Plain, you can highlight the text which makes the site address (it doesn't have to have the http) and open it in a new tab or window or in the current tab. Another handy little extension.
• EditCSS is a useful tool for people developing pages. It lets you edit the CSS for the page you are viewing in realtime. It keeps you from having to make changes to your live web page just to see what something might look like. The CSS comes up in a sidebar and changes are instant. Very useful for developing.

There are a bunch more extensions that are cool, so you should check the extensions page yourself. You might find a new plugin you like.

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