UrlbarExt is one of the new experimental addons for firefox that is expected to make the web experience of heavy web surfers like me pretty smooth & simple than ever before. It is a set of six little gray icons, pretty smooth in themselves. These icons are placed on the right side of the firefox address bar & shorten a lot of processes that will otherwise require multiple keystrokes. Few of the functions that this light firefox extension toolbar can perform include :
Copying the current URL to clipboard: Now you won’t be right clicking a segment to select the ‘copy’ or ‘copy link location’ again. UrlbarExt will copy the complete URL your web page is currently on, by simply selecting the copy URL little icon placed in the toolbar.
Create tinyurl of the current url: tinyurl is an online service that allows you to shorten up a long url with a short, unique tinyurl version, which when opened up in a web browser redirects to the long url. UrlbarExt has allows to automatically create the tiny url of the page we are currently looking at with a simple mouse click.
Google Site search: Lets you perform a Google site search through the toolbar.
Go Up or Go Root: It lets you go up one level from the current level of url with a single mouse click. Double click to go to root(homepage) of the url.
Add Tag: Lets you add tags to the local bookmarks.
Anonymous surfing: This is one of the most important feature provided in this extension. Now you can surf anonymously via a proxy server right from the convinience of a little toolbar.
Mini Maps is a new extension for Mozilla Firefox web browser that lets you search places, find direction & search your local neighborhood with the convenience of not going at separate places for different work. Mini Maps can locate any place on the world inside your Firefox window with just simple drag & dropping areas or address links on its interface(refer the below screenshot).
Moreover the Mini Maps firefox extension is already integrated with services mapping & location finding services like local search, Google Maps, Yahoo, Live Local directions, google earth, tagzania, platial, geourl and many more.
Mozilla has released another firefox addon called Geode which enables your firefox web browser to gather information about where you are present currently. Geode is an experimental firefox addon & is currently supported by a single experimental Geo-Location povider to allow you tasting it with your current Firefox version 3.1.
However, the fully functional feature version will be released later on alongwith the firefox updates. It will be supporting the completre W3C Geolocation Specification which will enable websites to request, & you to grant access to them to know about your present location.
Joey is a free web-to-mobile service which integrates the firefox usability on your mobile phones. It is not a web browser or just another addon for Firefox. Mozilla labs has developed a new technology that will enable you to aggregate content on your firefox web browser & consequently have it displayed on your mobile phone in the same web browser layout with the help of Joey.
The core concept is: Joey allows you to send pictures, text clippings, RSS content, videos, and Live Bookmarks to your phone through the Joey Server.It then transcodes & keeps all of the content up-to-date which can be later on viewed on your phone’s web browser or the Joey application.
There have been many Firefox extensions which claim to make your web browsing relatively easier and we have one more extension making the same statement. Kwiclick is a new Firefox extension which is still in experimental stage and those who are hypercritical about your systems need not use it or even read further.
I will no more trumpet my love for Firefox because that has become something like an universal truth which doesn’t need to be repeated time and again. I tried Google Chrome and I do believe that the future of Google Chrome is promising but it should not be considered that Mozilla Firefox would just sit on their bottoms and keep on witnessing Chrome taking away its share.
It would definitely be easy for Google to do the initial marketing of its web browser while Mozilla tried hard to come to the position where it has reached now. Mozilla had to made its way the hard way while Microsoft could just put IE along with the Operating System.
I like Firefox for Freedom rather than anything else. It allows me to screw it so that I can perform better and more efficiently. The plugins are just great and now we have this mother of all extensions ever made called “Ubiquity”. Remember this name because it will become the standard part of Firefox after few updates. (more…)
Firefox has just released a series of surveys to determine the popularity of Mozilla Firefox in your country. Firefox will be holding six such surveys and the motive of all of them would be to know how it is being perceived by the people of a particular country. Firefox is calling it Community Surveys.
The Firefox Community Page states that:
With your help, we would like to understand better how well Firefox is doing in your country: who is using it, why do people use it, and how do they use Firefox.
I have completed one survey and I will be looking forward to more such surveys. I must also admit that it was one of the coolest online survey I have ever given. I urge all the Firefox users to please take that anonymous survey.
The surveys are available in six different languages- English, Spanish, Polish, German, Brazilian Portuguese and Indonesian.You can go to the survey site and answer the simple questions. You can change the language by scrolling all the way down and selecting the main language of your country. Oh yes the survey is being called “Firefox in your country.”
It is no more rumor now that Mozilla Firefox is bringing a private mode in its next update. Firefox was definitely under pressure because both Internet Explorer 8 and Google Chrome have p0rn mode which allows users to browse privately without leaving any trace of their web activity.
Safari had similar mode since its launch and Google Chrome has Incognita mode while Internet Explorer 8 has what it calls InPrivate browsing to let users do activities they don’t want others to know about.
The private mode is usually used (or often abused) to surf porn but there are also some arguments that users might need this to buy online gifts for their loved ones and keeping it surprise or something like that. By the way, there can be many such arguments in its favor but it would be interesting to see how does this development changes the equation in the just-gotten-hot browser wars.
It doesn’t happen very often that it takes me more than few minutes to review an add-on. Outwit hub is one add-on which really made me to slow down my pace because there were no clear instructions or help about the particular add-on. I had access to some of the video tutorials regarding this particular extension but they were not as clear as I would have liked. So, I had to use it for some time before getting convinced that this add-on is useful and worth a try.
We were so busy in all the hustle bustle around the iPhone launch and the Shri Krishna Janmashtmi festival that we missed to inform you about a very important news. The winners of Extend Firefox 3 have been announced and the result are not disappointing in my view.
I am sure it must have been tough for the judges to shortlist Best new, updated and music add-ons out of 100 submitted ones. I was not sure what was the category of “Best Music Add-on” doing there until I found that Last.fm was one of the sponsor of the event. The aim of the contest was to felicitate the work of developers who have created add-ons which utilize the enhanced capabilities of Firefox 3.
Following are the winners of Best New Add-On :
Pencil is a new add-on created by Dương Thành An, it lets you do GUI prototyping and simple sketching without any technical know how. I actually used this add-on almost a week back and I was very impressed with it. I created an error message like the ones we see in Windows xp in five minutes flat. Highly Recommended. Good time pass too.
