If you do a lot of copy-pasting from Firefox, an add-on you simply must have is AutoCopy:

Select text and it’s automatically copied to the clipboard. Like Linux or mIRC.

Simple enough. Additionally, if you only want to get the plain text instead of the formatted text, this extension works with the Copy Plain Text extension to accomplish this.

This is an awesome combination which should be able to handle just about all your copy-paste needs… for text at least.

Have you ever been reading a website which references something you would like more information on, but don’t want to have to navigate to another site? If so, just look it up directly in a pop-up window using Cleeki.

With Cleeki your search experience can be as simple as one click on a keyword you would like to query. You leave the rest to Cleeki, which searches multiple websites automatically, intelligently and simultaneously. Retrieval results are nicely organized and returned to you instantly.

This free extension has both a Firefox and IE version, so it should accomodate most people. You can think this as an on-demand smart tag which isn’t annoying. You can read about all the features and watch a brief demo on their homepage.

Most PCMech readers probably make good use of the tabs in their browser. Firefox users looking for some extensions to make their life easier might want to take a look at this article on Linux.com.

The appropriately titled article “Recent Firefox extensions for tab addicts” covers about a dozen different extensions you might be interested in. There is an extension for everything from tab coloring to alternate tab positioning.

The one add-on I found to be the most interesting was what was covered in the ‘All-In-One’ section:

No recent tab extensions combines all the features mentioned here, but Tab Kit comes close. With Tab Kit, you can have a horizontal or vertical tab bar, group tabs, color-code them as unread, current, or protected, and fine-tune each behavior with a number of different options.

This extension alone makes the article worth reading. So take a look and you might find something you like.

Firefox users who are looking to either disguise or change the title of their tabs will want to take a look at the add-on, Page Title Eraser.

From the description:

The Page Title Eraser adds menu item to the page context menu and “Tools” menu items. “Right-click” menu includes a “Hide title” menu item now. Using this item you can hide/show tab and window titles and tab icon. Each tab has its independent instance of this item.

I find use for this tab because certain sites I use display just the record ID numbers in the title bar, so it makes it very hard to distiguish what I have open on each tab without jumping back and forth. With this extension I can rename the tab to exactly what I am looking at so there is no confusion.

Interestingly enough, the author wrote this extension because they didn’t want people looking over their shoulder:

I always open several tabs in a Firefox window, but I would not like other people see some of tabs labels. So I wrote the PTE extension which helps me to have such feature.

So you can use this to be sneaky as well.

A while ago, I wrote about how to backup your Firefox bookmarks and that occassionally doing so was prudent in the event of a disaster. Of course, the problem with that method is that it is a manual process you have to remember to do. The best method is to have your bookmarks backed up automatically and the appropriately named add-on, Bookmark Backup, does just that.

Bookmark Backup is a simple extension that helps to keep your bookmarks (and optionally other Firefox settings) safe. Each time Firefox is closed, a copy of your bookmarks file will be made to a backup location. If Firefox’s bookmarks become corrupted or lost, find the most recent uncorrupted backup and copy it into your profile folder.

Simple enough. You can configure the location of where you want your backups stored and you can also backup just about anything else in your browser including passwords and cookies.

Since a backup is performed everytime your browser closes, this is a true ’set it and forget’ method for making sure your bookmarks are safe.

Most of us have a few sites we like to visit on a daily basis first thing in the morning (i.e. PCMech, your favorite comics, etc.). Rather than having to go through the ‘hassle’ of manually opening each page, check out the Firefox extension Morning Coffee.

From the extension’s description:

This extension lets you organize websites by day and open them up simultaneously as part of your daily routine. This is really handy if you read sites that update on a regular schedule (like webcomics, weekly columns, etc.).

This is a pretty interesting idea as the scheduling functionality is much better than creating a folder with the sites you visit and opening all the tabs at once or having multiple home pages which can slow down initial load time.

You can read the full description on the author’s page as well as an FAQ which gives some insight into the future direction of this extension.

Firefox ships with a very functional, yet somewhat basic download manager. For the most part, the default tool is adequate for the majority of users, however for those seeking a more powerful tool, check out the DownThemAll extension.

DownThemAll makes the task of downloading any file (images, binaries, etc.) on a web site very easy. As opposed to selecting each file individually, you can select every file on a site or easily pick and choose which ones you want to download. On top of this, the DownThemAll extension boasts an increase of up to 400% in download speeds by using a similar method to torrent downloads. For a more detailed explanation, check out the features page which outlines the available functionality.

Again, this extension probably isn’t for everyone, but power users might be very interested. Do use this extension responsibly though as you don’t need to download every file you come across just because it is easy.

A really nifty time saver when using a web browser is to control it by using simple mouse gestures. For example, whenever you need to go back to the previous page, instead of going to the back button at the top of the screen simply hold down the right mouse button and drag it to the left. Much quicker.

• To activate mouse gestures in Internet Explorer 7, use IE7 Pro. Here is a listing of mouse gestures IE7 Pro supports.
• To activate mouse gestures in Firefox, you can use the Mouse Gestures Redox extension.

I have recently started taking advantage of this ingenious shortcut and I find it is quickly becoming a ‘must have’ feature.

Something interesting I came across today is a parental control addin for Firefox called Glubble. While I do not personally have a need for something like this, the idea is neat since it is something different from the whole “take over your computer” style program many parental control software suites employ. Glubble has a pretty (what I would consider at least) standard feature set which you would expect to see on any web controlling software.

However, although the idea is idea is somewhat unique, this review on Linux.com says it still has some work to do. From the article:

Since my 12-year-old son is not interested in NickJr.com or much of anything else that Glubble lets through the gates from go, in order to make Glubble work for him I have to spend an inordinate amount of time customizing it. Say he needs to do research on the American Revolution. He types “revolution” into the Google search bar on his super cool secret homepage — and gets zero results. OK, then he tries “war.” Zero. And he’s calling for Mom. Once again, the need for direct parental involvement in my children’s Internet activities becomes evident. That’s no surprise to me; I just thought maybe I’d try one more time.

If anyone else out there is using Glubble, I would be interested to hear about your experiences as I can see this coming an extremely useful deployment model in the future.

Developers who use database back ends are probably used to having nice graphical environments in which to build and maintain their databases. Many of the popular choices (MySQL, SQL Server, etc.) have readily available environments, but one simple and easy database, SQLite seems to lack in this area. No longer with the SQLite Manager Firefox extension.

This awesome plugin gives you a graphical development environment to build, maintain and query SQLite databases. This tool has everything you would expect. You can read many of the features available on the project’s homepage, but if you are a developer, enough was probably said already.

Again, SQLite is a very attractive database for smaller development projects due to it’s ease of use and lightweight footprint. Now that a development environment is ready available via a simple browser plugin, there are no excuses not to use it.

For those of you who like to keep a constant eye on your investment portfolio and use Firefox as your browser, take a look at the StockTicker extension.

This extension is pretty simple to use. You just add the symbols and/or indexes in you want to monitor and set both a refresh and rotation (how often the stock symbols rotate from one to the next) time in the options and off you go. You can place the constantly updated ticker data in either the status bar or in a custom tool bar.

Go ahead and drive yourself crazy with this one…

Have you ever wanted Firefox to act as a functional file manager (much like the way Internet Explorer acts in Windows)? With the Firefly Firefox extension, you can have this functionality.

This free extension features (among others):

• Support for Windows and Linux (possibly Mac).
• View splitting.
• Auto-preview of files as long as appropriate readers are installed.
• Search features.
• “Send To” and “Open With” functionality.

While I wouldn’t say this is a ‘must have’, it is definitely a neat idea. The only thing I would be concerned about is the the security aspect…

If you like to make use of TinyURL’s and Firefox is your browser of choice, then you need to take a look at the TinyURL Creator extension.

The usage is pretty straight-forward. Your URL is taken as input and then passes this along to TinyURL to give you the same thing you would get from TinyURL’s site. While this plugin isn’t the biggest of time savers, it is a lot more convenient than having to go to TinyURL’s site every time.