Small Business Tech

I like the Firefox browser from Mozilla. It is fairly fast but still feature rich, but my favorite trick is the extensions. I thought that I would make a list of my must-have extensions.

Must-Have: They must be installed on a computer that I use more than once.

• IE Tab - Once in a while you have to use Internet Explorer for a web site. This plug in simply gives you the right-click option of viewing the page in Internet Explorer. You can save a list of frequent sites as well.
• Google Toolbar - My workflow revolves around Google Apps, so this is a must for me. It does much more than search including indicating if you have new email and listings your universal bookmarks.

Cool-To-Have: These just make using your computer more pleasant.

• Forecastfox - This small utility resides in the right-hand status bar showing you weather data for your chosen location. You get a small indicator if the National Weather Service has issues a warning for your chosen area.
• Cooliris - This is a fullscreen experience to looking at videos and images. Web sites have to be Cooliris capable, but the good news is that many popular sites are already on board.

Trying Out: Still in my personal testing phase.

• Tree Style Tab - This is an alternative to the tabs appearing across the top of your browser window. They appear in a bar on the left in a smaller format and broken in to hierarchical trees. Very handy if you are doing a lot of research.
  

Netbook only - Really useful on a netbook computer.

• Autohide - This extension allows you to choose the when and what disappearance of toolbars in Firefox when you use fullscreen mode on a netbook. Using fullscreen mode is a must for Firefox on a netbook, but it allows you to keep the status bar or even the taskbar available. The top bar slide down without resizing the page which is also nice.

There are lots of other extensions for Firefox. Some are mundane to making Firefox a completely different browser. Tell me about a few of your favorites.

Labels: extensions, Firefox, Google Apps