Last time I wrote about my trip to the dark side by starting to use (and really enjoying) Firefox. I mentioned how Firefox (FF) uses add-ons to make other features available to you in their browser. Today I will tell you about some of the ones that I like to use.

At this time I use nine add-ons so I am not too addicted to them but the ones that I have I enjoy using. They can get extra info, do certain things that FF can’t perform by itself, etc. Here are my top four – I would add more if I had the space.

Getting to Add-ons is simple. While in FF, click on Tools/Add-ons and a window will open revealing the ones that are currently installed on your computer. Now click the “Get Add-ons” tab and you will have a few suggestions or you may search for additional ones.

Go ahead and search for “Fast Dial” the first of my favorites. You may need to click “See All” after the search to get this one. “Fast Dial” permits you to save any website to the Fast Dial window and when you go back to it later you will have a thumbnail graphic of that site. You may then click the “picture” to arrive at that page. It is basically a graphical Favorites list for the browser.

Next, I would highly recommend “Forecastfox”. This one will add the local weather report to the status bar (or several other locations that you may choose from) which can include the current weather as well as several days in advance…without having to click anything or open another window in your browser.

“IE Tab” would be my next and possibly most important addition to the list. The importance is that many sites will not work properly unless they run from Internet Explorer. For instance if any of you use Outlook Web Access you must have this add-on for it to work suitably. If you run into a site that requires MSIE to be viewed correctly just right click on the site’s tab and choose, “Switch Rendering Engine”. You can even enter the site into “IE Tab” to always be opened according to MSIE.

The last add-on I will mention today is “MapThis”. If you see an address while browsing the web just select it, right click and choose either, “Map This” or “Map to This”. The first choice will immediately open Google Maps (or Yahoo Maps depending on your choice at set up of “MapThis”) with the address you selected mapped in the center of the window. The last choice will open a map from your home address to the address you selected. Your home address is set up when you start “MapThis” the first time.

Have fun adding on! If there is enough email interest in this column from you, next time I may finish my nine.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 6:01 am and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.