Firefox Add-ons

As mentioned previously, Firefox has many useful add-ons that increase its usefulness.

Let’s talk about three of them.

If, like me, you are always bookmarking useful sites as you surf the web, it can get frustrating if you aren’t always doing it from the same computer. I had bookmarks on all the computers in the Teachers’ Room, as well as my laptop and family computer.

No more. Foxmarks is a utility (created by Mitch Kapor, if you’re old enough to remember Lotus Notes) that allows you to synchronize all of your bookmarks. If you’re using Firefox at work, bookmark a site and when you go home, your Firefox there will sync with the Foxmarks server and update your Bookmarks file. Very cool. Always find what you’ve found before.

This one is in response to Ayelet: If you have the need to e-mail an URL (a web address) or a portion of an interesting article, E-Mail This! is a simple add-on. It works with either a Yahoo! or GMail account. Once installed, set it up with your email address. Right-click the desired web page and you will see an “E-mail This!” option. Click on your e-mail program and it will open another tab with your e-mail and automatically insert the URL into the body of the message. If you highlight a section you want to save first, and it will paste the URL and the selected section into an e-mail.

Video Download Helper lets you download Flash video from sites such as Youtube. Find an interesting video, click the rotating icon next to the address bar, and Firefox will download it to your computer. (I will post later on viewing, converting and burning this file to disc.)