(Skip the text and just watch the video)
I think I might do a little mini-series on Firefox add-ons, because I’m geek like that.
If you don’t use Firefox, then wise up and start. You can get it here, it’s a tiny little download, and it’s just about the best browser out there.
There are a few minimalists who will disagree with me, and some of those people actually spend a lot of time on the web, so I won’t denigrate their opinion, but I’ll say this: I spend a lot of time on the web: multiple-digit hours of every day in my browser. I don’t want minimalism. I want a flexible, full-featured environment that provides cool tools for me to build efficient work flows and have all the information in the world at my fingertips.
Firefox does that, through its “add-ons”, and this video demos a couple of my current favorites:
Delicious: Delicious is an online bookmarks site, sort of “social bookmarking” place where you can store bookmarks and tag them up, and you can share them with others or keep them private. They’ve got a really cool add-on for Firefox that does a whole bunch of neat stuff, but in this video I’m only demonstrating one: The delicious toolbar.
I use on average three or four computers a day, and until recently they all had their own toolbar, and the ones I didn’t use much didn’t have anything in the tool bar at all. Today, I use the delicious toolbar to maintain two different toolbars–one for work, and one for home–and to access those toolbars from any computer.
Personas: Personas is a theming system for Firefox that lets you pick popular themes from a pop-up menu, changing the theme on your browser at the touch of a button. Their website has a simple facility where you can make your own themes and share them with others. It’s surprising to me how much a tasteful theme can relieve the monotony of staring at a browser all the time.
