6 Excellent Firefox Extensions Made To Save You Time
| If you are a die-hard Firefox user then I am sure you are always on the look-out for tips and tweaks to get more out of Firefox in less time and hence be more productive.
Keeping that in mind, I decided to list six Firefox extensions, which I use in my daily life and which have been extremely helpful in saving me a great deal of time. I hope you will find them useful too. |
1: Hyperwords – All in the Right Click!
This is undoubtedly one of the best Firefox extensions available and my favourite too. It adds a huge number of options to the mouse right click, thereby saving you a lot of time.
For example you want to look up the meaning of a word, translate it to a different language, check it in Wikipedia, find the Whois or Google links info about a page, you get all that in the right click. You don’t need to open a separate tab and go to another web page. These were just a few examples and once you install this and explore it, you will be amazed to find the number of options there. See screenshots below.
2: Paste Email – No more repetitive typing!
The Paste Email extension helps you to paste repetitive texts in forms or emails with one or two clicks through the context menu / right-click. It is very helpful if you deal with a lot of emails everyday and have to type words like ” See ya ” or ” Thanks buddy ” again and again. This extension will help you to insert these repetitive words easily and save your time there.
3: Read it Later – Just a click to Save!
There may have been times when you are in a hurry and you want to save a webpage for reading later. Now adding it to the Bookmarks could be a little tedious and you just hope if you could have done it with a single click. Thats when Read it Later comes into play. Mark has already described it in great detail here.
4: Shareaholic – The easiest way to share!
If you are active in multiple social networks like Facebook, Stumbleupon etc and you want to share a link with your friends then going to each of the sites separately and submitting the links there could be quite time taking. Here the Shareaholic Firefox add-on comes into the picture. It creates a small button just beside the browser address bar from where you can easily share the link in multiple networks. You can customize it and it also supports Twitter and Friendfeed. It also helps you to email a page if you have a Bzzster email account.
5: Next Tab – Open links in the next tab
If you are a heavy tab user like me, then you will find this extension to be very useful.
Lets say if you have 10 tabs open and you click on a link in the first tab. You will find that the link opens at the end and you need to go to the end of the list to check the page. Next Tab firefox add-on solves this everyday problem and helps you to open the link just beside that tab. Simple and effective solution.
6: TinyUrl Creator – Easy Tiny Url Creation
If we want to shorten a long link to a short one we know we can go to tinyurl.com and do it from there. This add-on creates an option in the tools menu to easily create a tiny url from a web page. Now I know that you can use the tiny url bookmarklet too, but this is better. Thats because it also saves you from the hassle of copying the tiny url. It saves it directly to the clipboard. See screenshots below.
I hope you like these extensions and they help you become more productive with Firefox.
By – Abhijeet Mukherjee is addicted to the internet and loves blogging and freelance writing. He blogs about tech tweaks, blogging tips and productivity hacks at Jeet Blog
Some of these are quite useful. At one point wasn’t there an extension that opened all links into a separate tab? I’ve looked around the FF add-on’s website to no avail have yet to find it.
Next tab would work great with the Favicon Tab extension in FF
I think you’re talking about Snap Links https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4336
You can use these commands (no addon):
ctrl + t – opens a new tab
click + ctrl – open in new tab
click + shift – open in new window
I’m sure there’s one for open in previous or next tab.
(Comments wont nest below this level)No, but the “Tabs Open Relative” changes the default new tab location to right of the current tab. I have no idea why this is not the Firefox default (it is in Opera).
You can also create a folder in the bookmarks toolbar and save all your links there. Then click on the folder and all the links in the folder will open in separate tabs. I use this to check the sites I visit daily.
If you click with your mousewheel on the links they will open in new tabs, I only use that mouse button now.
But pretty boring article, not really timesavers, maybe if you are a paid blogger, but for the common people, pretty useless.
Thanks SD, didn’t know about that – I’m sure I’ll use it a lot!
LJ
(Comments wont nest below this level)Abhijeet, Thanks for using Shareaholic, and for including it on your list!
Welsome Jay!
Re: Next Tab
If you use TabMixPlus, you have this option.
Tools > Addons > TabMixPlus > Options > Events > Tab Opening
Place a check in “Open new tabs next to current one”
kk
Ken Kennedy
London, ON
Me too, and it has lots of other cool stuff too, like ctl-tab moves through tabs the same way that alt-tab does for the windows.
You are welcome Jay. And Ken…thanks for the info.
Or you could just use Opera and have these features built in instead of 3rd party addons.
But then, you’d be using opera.
which version you used ???
(Comments wont nest below this level)Really excellent….
Stumbled…..
Thanks Pavan !
#5 is exactly what I’ve been looking for. Thanks Abhi!
TinyURL Creator has saved me so much time, but sadly it isn’t available for FF3B5. Hope they make it compatible soon.
Thanks Shankar ! And I hope all these are compatible by the time final version is released
Thanks for Hyperwords and Read It Later for which I was really seeking.
Paste email is extremely useful, I can’t live without it! But I prefer “Taboo” instead of “read it later”, it has less bugs and it shows all the sites you set to read later in a grid
The tinyurl addon can be done by using a keyword shortcut for the tinyurl dialog box. Call it “tiny” and type that followed by a space in front of any address in the address bar and hit the enter key and tiny runs and fires up the tinyurl
db
I use text replacement software to use frequently used text strings – this is great because it works in all programs – Word, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Pidgin – and it’s free!
I just made a folder in my Bookmarks Toolbar called “Follow Up” which seems to work for me – but I will definitely try the Read It Later extension! Sounds nifty!
i like HYPERWORDS & SHAREAHOLIC…
DIGG THIS too…
Nice extensions and another excellent post by Abhijeet. Never know that “Paste Email” exists.
Hey Syahid…Thanks buddy !
I like the paste email one – that is going to help out a lot!
All of these extensions combined with your typical web 2.0 crappy programming and you can bring a super computer to its knees just by checking your email
There is one extension that I think is missing – Mouse Gestures. Mouse Gestures are the greatest thing since sliced bread. They speed up webpage navigation by 2-3x. I find myself trying to use the gestures in all my other applications, and get mad at my system when it doesn’t read my mind like mouse gestures.
Mouse Gestures is an amazing plugin!
Those are some nice tips and I an getting more than a couple of them added on immediately. Firefox 3 does what that Read it Later does with star in the address bar, though.
I stick with bookmarks for “read it later” too, mainly because most of what I read later is articles found at work that I want to try out at home. I use foxmarks to sync my bookmarks from work to home. Any chance that read it later supports foxmarks?
I was going to install Hyperwords, but I read the EULA, and it states no modifying or copying of code. Firefox is open-source. Plus I read one of the reviews that said you couldn’t delete the Google search and then re-add your own custom Google search. Sounded kinda fishy like a referral was going on. I’ll pass on that for now. Installed NextTab though.
An alternative to Hyperwords:
SlimSearch
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2440
this is the coolest thing I never usr
Great selection, very useful!
I’m totally in love with “Read it Later”, thanks mate!
Joffrey,
Geek and Hype
That Next Tab is just the thing…..good find, thanks.
By this way, now I have 25 extensions, and unfortunately Firefox is getting slower. Thank you for recommendations.
Instead of Next Tab, people can just use Ctrl + Tab, Ctrl + Shift + Tab, and Ctrl + # … so you can go backwards and forwards through the tabs, or go directly to a tab number without having to use an extension
I was excited about Next Tab, but when I installed it I discovered that it doesn’t create a keyboard extension? Am I the only person who uses Ctrl+T and Ctrl+Click to open tabs?
I uninstalled it, I’d rather drag them over from the end than right-click and open that way.
Did anybody bother to read the license agreement for Hyperwords? It’s spyware!
Anyone else tried netsling? I’m totally in love with this addon and use it all the time.
Here’s the description on google code:
NetSling is a no-frills extension for Firefox 1.5-3.0 that works with del.icio.us to give you quick keyboard access to google searches and any of your online bookmarks, from anywhere.
Here’s how it works: Anytime you’re browsing the web, you can hit CTRL-SPACE to bring up a prompt where you can enter a google search or a NetSling command. You can type simple words for your online bookmarks (like ‘mail’ to jump to GMail), or you can set up active bookmarks to run searches on websites you use often (like ‘imdb John Cusack’).
Once you start using NetSling, you’ll wonder how you managed without it!
http://code.google.com/p/netsling/
I actually use it instead of bookmarks. It’s cuts down on mouse usage. If you’re still in love with vi you’ll love this – it’s all about keyboard shortcuts.
I’m using FF3b5 but not much addons compatible with that version yet.
Really Nice !!!
I have been using those recently, some more I liked are:
McAfee Site advisor,
Taboo, Answers, Tab effect and Noscript.
There are more to specify.
dai
The hyperwords extension seems amazing but unfortunately doesn’t work with firefox 3
The read-later extension is not necessary in firefox 3 because FF3 has a little star in the address bar. if you want to read the page later you just click the star and it’s added to your “unsorted bookmarks”
thanks for the suggestions though, i added the nextab and sharaholic extensions. I think i’ll also try the paste-email extension, i’m hoping i can use it to paste my name and e-mail address in simple text fields.
Tried HyperWords.
More than 400k for an extension? Gosh.
5 nagging screens on first run? Gosh.
Crashed on very first word highlighted? Gosh.
Uninstalled HyperWords. It’s a piece of crap.
Its unfortunate that you experienced that.
However I have been using it for months now and it has worked wonderfully for me. Even all my friends who have used it have nothing but praise for it. So probably your bad luck there
Wow the guy in the picture is using windows 98.. crazy shit
LOL..Its not Windows 98 my friend. Its Windows XP optimized for best performance
The easiest way to get a new tab is surely clicking with the middle button (or on my mouse the mouse wheel). Is that not standard? It should be!
not a big fan of Hyperwords. While I liked the idea, I was frustrated by the inability to customize it. Instead, I use Websearchpro, which does the context-thing, but it also replaces the standard firefox toolbar. The one thing it doesn’t have (yet) is a pop-up reference window, but it’s open source.
What about Fireshot?
Looks like these guys liked your tips so much they stole the hole article:
http://www.teknonytt.com/?p=413
Nice list. Gonna have to try some of these extensions out. Thanks.
Didn’t see but maybe already posted… for tabs
command click will open a link in a new tab
next tab -> control + tab
previous tab -> control + shift + tab
hope that helps someone!
#1 (Hyperwords) will create a small url, with Copy->with link, so that would eliminate the need for #6 (Tiny Url Creation).
Also try this one out: Mouse Gesticulations
http://optimoz.mozdev.org/gestures/defaultmappings.html
The extension I use most – several times a minutes sometimes – is MileWideBack. The whole left edge of the screen is the “Back” button – swing the cursor all the way over and Left-Click for Back, Right-Click for Forward, Middle-Click to close this tab, Scrollwheel to run through the tabs.
Indespensible.
None of your firefox extensions i’m use. One that I really have to is tinyurl creator.
is there a firefox extension that will let me save images (pictures, photos…) from the internet on my computer with just one click. because i like saving lots of images and i dont want to right-click and save as. is there an extension that maybe if i just click on the image it will be save to my hard drive or any specified directory.
thanks
Cleeki Firefox is my personal favourite. Compared with hypertext and SlimSearch, the most significant difference is that Cleeki open the search result immediately near the selected text. You don’t need to go to another tab, much less annoying.
A screenshot about how this add-on look like is at:
http://www.cleeki.com/firefox.html
Thank You! This information is proving very useful for my work. Nice One!
I’ve only recently discovered tinyurl. The Firefox extension makes it even more awesome. I use tinyurl to convert those really, really long Google Streetview urls. Works a treat. Thanks for your list.
Fun article! I’m glad I came across this — another very useful extension is Tree Style Tab, which adds VERTICAL TABS to Firefox. This allows you to see more tabs at once and quickly organizing you. It’s definitely one of my fave timesavers! Get it @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5890
These are wonderful addons for Firefox. Some of them have saved me loads of time because I don’t have to take the time of opening a new tab and then going to the website.