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8 Firefox Add-ons I Can't Do Without

Charles Hamilton — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:00:52 +0000

Whenever a new version of Firefox arrives, I know that a certain number of the add-ons I use will break. Most of them aren’t that important; my colleagues kid me that I use way too many of them anyway.

But when I upgraded from Firefox 3.5.7 to 3.6 the other day, I discovered that a few of the add-ons that weren’t yet compatible were important to me. In fact, they had become such an integral part of my daily workflow that I was significantly slowed down without them. Luckily, almost all of the add-ons were updated within a couple of days so I’m back up to speed now, but I realized how much I missed them when they weren’t available. In this post I’m going to share the add-ons that I find it hard to be without.

Some of us at WWD have ditched Firefox in favor of the faster Chrome, but until these add-ons are also available in Chrome for Mac, I won’t switch. In the meantime, I’m sticking with Firefox, and hoping that 3.6, the newest version, lives up to its claims of increased speed.

Mozilla Prism. This add-on allows me to create a site-specific browser for locations I visit frequently. I’ve used it to create a “Google Reader” application that appears in my dock, can be placed in a separate Space, and operates separately from Firefox. I’m not sure why Mozilla hasn’t updated this yet; I’m using Chrome to view Google Reader for now.

LastPass. This password manager not only keeps track of my passwords, it syncs them between browsers and computers. I imagine most web workers have as many passwords as I do — they’d be impossible to keep track of without a program like LastPass. I also use 1Password for the Mac, and sync its data using Dropbox, figuring that it doesn’t hurt to keep such important data in multiple places.

Xmarks. This handy extension syncs my bookmarks between browsers and computers.

Adblock Plus. I appreciate all of the content that is available on the web, including WebWorkerDaily, thanks to the support of advertisers. But some sites have such obtrusive advertising that they are unusable. Google (which makes most of its money from advertising) is allowing ad blockers in its Chrome browser in the hope that advertisers will make “useful” ads that no one will want to block. Until then, Adblock Plus is a necessity for me.

Gmail Manager. This is the Firefox add-on that I use the most. It’s the best way I know to manage multiple Gmail and Google Apps mail accounts.

I’ll also add two tools that are incredibly helpful to web developers: Firebug and Web Developer. Both help me and my colleagues to test and debug web sites.

…and finally, Cards. Well, OK, I guess I can live without this one, but I’ll have find something else to do while I’m on the phone.

What browser add-ons do you rely on?

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Using Spaces to Manage Information Overload

Charles Hamilton — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:00:22 +0000

Everyone has their favorite tricks to keep focused while working at the computer. Mine can be summarized as “out of sight, out of mind…but easily accessible.”

The Spaces function is one of the nicer features that I discovered in OS X when I started using a Mac as my main machine a couple of years ago. Spaces allows me to open programs in multiple virtual desktops, then move between them using mouse movements or hotkeys.

Space 1 (the default workspace) is where I do most of my work. My browsers (Firefox and Safari) live here, along with Dreamweaver, Photoshop, iCal, Address Book, and Mail (which I still use, despite my earlier comments, as it’s the best way to manage multiple email accounts and move messages between them). Adium lives here, too, taking up a few pixels of space on the left of my wide-screen monitor, as my colleagues and I use instant messaging to communicate frequently between our home offices.

Space 2 is dedicated to a Remote Desktop Connection to my Windows XP computer. There is still some software that’s Windows-only, so I keep an old XP machine around. If preferred, you can set up a virtual Windows machine in this space through Parallels or other virtual-machine software.

Space 3 is where I put the communications that I look at when I have some extra time: RSS news feeds, Twitter and Facebook. For RSS feeds, I use Prism, which turns Google Reader into its own desktop application. For Twitter, I’m currently using Nambu, but am testing a bunch of other software, as Twitter apps seem to be progressing very rapidly. I’m not sure why RSS feeds aren’t more widely used. Dawn has written several great posts on how they can help improve efficiency. Updates from Facebook and LinkedIn can be collected via RSS. Even Twitter updates can be turned into RSS feeds with Gtweet.

Space 4 is used for fun stuff, notably Songbird, so that I can control what I’m listening to while working.

You can control the layout, mouse shortcuts and hotkeys for Spaces from “System Preferences > Expose and Spaces”. You can also make certain programs always start in a particular space. Finally, you can move between these spaces using Control+(arrow keys), a combination that I actually had to look up as I was writing this, as my fingers have it so memorized!

By keeping different kinds of programs in different Spaces, I can focus my time more effectively, but easily switch to other tasks on the fly.

There are similar programs for other systems. Windows and Linux users, which do you prefer? How do you organize your desktop(s)?

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Prism: A Flexible, Free Tool for Working With Video

Samuel Dean — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:00:39 +0000

If you’re like many web workers, you’re increasingly working with video files. For some, the simple steps required to work with YouTube videos suffices, but if you need tools for more flexibility with the video you work with, there are many good free applications.

In this post, I’ll cover Prism, a free application for working with video that can handle most format conversion and compression tasks you may run into.

Prism is a simple to use application that will let you convert video from one format to virtually any other popular format. You can even preview the output to gauge whether you have your encoding and output right, and compare converted video to video in the original format. You can convert files in batches by making a list of the file names selecting a target format, and clicking a Convert button.

Prism has been updated to support newer popular video formats such as 3GP, which is popular for delivering video to mobile devices. You also get conversion for all the long-standing formats including .AVI, .ASF, .WMV, .MP4 and others. Prism is available for both Windows and Mac users.

You can get a good idea of how Prism works by looking at the screenshot tour found here. As seen there, it has complete compression features, with a video compressor supporting many types of codecs and a sound compressor also supporting a long list of codecs.

NCH Software makes Prism available for free in hopes that users will upgrade to its Pris Plus professional version, and there is a downloadable demo for it. For most users, though, the free version will suffice. It’s fully capable of converting and compressing video for putting on a web site, a cell phone, watching on TV, working with media players and more.

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Use iPhone Optimized Web Sites On Your Desktop For Greater Productivity

Scott Blitstein — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:00:56 +0000

We’ve talked about Site Specific Browsers like Bubbles in the past and while I have found them to be useful in some instances, it’s only with the proliferation of web applications with iPhone optimized interfaces that I have really started using them.

I have found that setting up multiple SSB windows ,each containing the iPhone view of a web application, allows me to create a dashboard of sorts on my spare monitor. At a glance, I can view my stable of important apps in nice compact, consistent windows.

For example, I am a big fan of the Toodledo task list application. For heavy duty task management or review, the full app view is better but the iPhone optimized interface is great for quick viewing and modifications. So while I do keep the full application open in a Firefox tab, I also keep the iPhone interface open in a Bubbles window on that secondary display. This allows me to view, add or complete tasks very quickly.

The iPhone interfaces are typically very well done and these SSB windows work very much like desktop widgets, providing an excellent view of my data.

BatchBook designer Adam Darowski just published a great instructional post on how to use Fluid.app to bring Google Reader for iPhone to your desktop, but these steps can be used for just about any application that has an iPhone optimized interface. The process for using Bubbles on Windows or the multi-platform Prism is comparable.

Do you use Site Specific Browsers? Which iPhone interface would you find most useful?

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