Browsersphere

When it comes to web browser extensions, you’d be a bit off-base to suggest that any browser has as many options for users as does Firefox.  Therefore, in this edition of Extension Watch, we’ll take a look at some Firefox extensions that have been getting some attention around the browsersphere lately.

• According to Mozilla Links,  Chris Finke has developed an extension that converts Facebook email images to hyperlinks.  You can download that extension directly from here.
• Mozilla Links also points to Daily Dilbert, an extension for accessing several popular comics directly from your Firefox status bar.  You can download that directly from Firefox Add-ons.
• Mini Map Sidebar (via straydog scraps) lets you drag-and-drop an address from the web page you are viewing into the Firefox sidebar to get a map of the address quickly.
• HyperWords allows you to select any plain text on a web page and select from a list of search engines, online references and translation services to use with the text you’ve selected.  You can download that directly from this site.
• Spotter apparently lets you do something with RDF, but I’m either not bright enough or have simply been watching too much football this weekend to comprehend exactly what it is that it allows you to do.
• The developers of the Forecastfox extension have switched their provider from Weather.com to AccuWeather.com, and the latest version of their extension is available to download from Softpedia.com.
• Even with an explanation, I’m not really sure what it does, but you can get the latest version of the SuperDragAndGo extension here.
• Social Media apparently lets “you see what stories have been submitted to which social bookmarking and media sites, as well as how many votes the story has received across these networks,” according to Mashable.
• Firefox Clock puts a clock and a Firefox download counter “on your desktop.”  Not sure if that makes it a widget or if they really mean you have access to it in your browser.  However, TickerFox, which actually comes from a friend and former colleague of mine, is probably the better choice if you can live with your system clock and only want to see how many times Firefox has been downloaded (which we now know is over 400 million).
• deliGoo, according to Read/WriteWeb, mashes up del.icio.us (which will soon just be Delicious) with Google Custom Search.  However, the review doesn’t really give it much of an endorsement.
• The Giacomo Vacca Blog points to Firefox VoIP, which “turns Firefox into a VoIP client.”
• If you’re into bookmarking, CyberNet has a list of the best Firefox extensions for bookmarking.
• Neil’s World mentions Rock Your Firefox, another Facebook-related extension that “lets you show what extensions you have installed on your copy of Firefox, and see what your friends have installed.”
• If you live in Chicago and use the “L,” you may, like Tom Sherman, find this Firefox add-on from Clay Smith extremely useful.
• CashAddOn requires an account to use, but claims to “help you earn cash [back] on the purchases you make while shopping online.”
• According to the AdGlobe Tech Blog, Snap Links “allows you to easily open multiple links in new tabs by drawing a box around them.”
• Fast Video Download lets you quickly save embedded video files from sites like College Humor, Daily Motion, Google Video, MySpace and YouTube.
• Thumbnails in Your Tabs looks kind of useless to me, simply because the thumbnails it shows are very obviously squished to fit into each tab, but I’m sure there are people out there who will find it useful (probably the same people that find Snap Previews useful).
• Boost for Facebook apparently “blows the official Facebook toolbar out of the water,” but I’m not sure what that really means because I use neither Facebook nor its official toolbar.
• All-in-One Sidebar is “Opera 9-like” according to Tech[dot]Blog and “lets you quickly switch between sidebar panels and view Firefox features such as downloads, extensions, bookmarks, addons, etc in the sidebar.”
• Mozilla Links says that Auto Shutdown “adds a check box to the download manager to tell Firefox to shut down your computer after all downloads are finished.”
• Miguel Guhlin is a fan of TinyUrl’s Firefox extension.
• And last but not least (this one has to be my favorite of the list), Tobi’s Timemachine “warps you back to the amateur web of 1996.”

On a semi-related note, Firefox extension developers can head over to the Mozilla Developer Center to find out how they can update their extensions to be Firefox 3 compliant.

I’m always keeping an eye out for the latest buzz-worthy extensions, and not just for Firefox, so stay tuned for more extension-related news here at Browsersphere.  Also, if you have a favorite extension or see something out on the web that you think would be of interest to Browsersphere’s readers, please drop me a line at browsersphere@gmail.com.

Tags: Add-ons, Extensions, Firefox