Firefox 3 has been getting a lot of coverage here. We saw the release of Firefox 3 Beta 3 , which I am really fond of as well as the new Firefox Add-ons site that’s about to debut with the release of Firefox 3.

Let’s look at some of the Firefox Extensions that I came across this week.

• Quick Preference Button: If you tweak of lot of your options time everyday and if you are tired of clicking through to find various options, this extension gives you a menu option to quickly access your various preferences. Not sure if it justifies another extension to get this functionality but some may find it useful.
• Platypus: How would you like to create your own Greasemonkey scripts? That’s right. This extension lets you make changes to a web page as you see it, like remove parts you don’t like, rearrange the layout a little, insert your own HTML code, etc and save it as a Greasemonkey script so you get the changes everytime you visit a page.
  This sounds like an awesome tool and I will have to set aside some time to maybe come up with some examples to show you.
• iGoogleBar: A treat for the Google apps addicted user - this changes the top apps bar in Google Apps to use favicons as well as act as triggers to the iGoogle Gadgets. They also show unread counts from Gmail and Google Reader. For eg. you can see the iGoogle gadget for Google Calendar right from within Google Docs.
• Twitterfox: I am a late adopter of Twitter and find it very interesting in the last couple of days I have been using. I use the Samplace extension for GChat & to keep track of Twitter updates but this Firefox extension is also a really cool one of you just want to follow tweets. Yes, that’s what they call the twitter updates. Add me (KIntheHouse) if you are on Twitter too.
• 8aweek: It seems employee spends an average of 8 hours a week in the Internet. This extension tracks your Internet activities and shows you a neat graph of where you spend most of your time and helps you restrict time wasters and get more productive.I know, you are probably thinking ‘they underestimate the power of Internet’. It should have been named more like 19aweek.
• Multi-Sidebar: As the name implies, this extension lets you create multiple sidebars at the same time. Useful for times when you really can use more than one. [via CyberNet]

I would love to hear from you if you have used Platypus or already have examples of its uses. Also, I have been thinking about maybe showing my Twitter updates in the sidebar and kind of use that as a sideblog for things I don’t get to link here normally. I am sure there are WordPress plugins out there that make this easy, but I would like to hear from you if you have any thoughts on that.

Also, it looks like Feedburner is having some problems this morning as it seems to have dropped the RSS subscriber numbers for me from around 350 to 180! I hope I didn’t piss off my readers to see such a drop in a single day..

Hello newcomer, did I say welcome to ShanKri-la yet? Before you move on, just wanted to thank you for visiting and we hope you come back and see us again!

We have seen plenty of coverage recently about the upcoming release of Firefox 3. A lesser known fact is that this release is accompanied by a new Firefox add-ons site and is right now available for preview here.

I for one love it’s clean look and pleasing colors. They have done some nice changes to the layout as well as usability.

Some of the changes that caught my eye:

• A prominent search box in the home page with options to look up by categories. Great for quickly finding the extension if you already knew it’s name.
• ‘Themes’ has been replaced with ‘Interface Customizations‘ in Categories. One you click on it, you can still browse themes by different categories in it.
• Featured add-ons shows number of downloads as well as number of reviews
• Extension single-page is now neatly laid out showing tags, pictures & reviews. Also, I like the way they have moved the review box to above-the-fold placing.
• Nice integration of sandboxed add-ons - show up right beside the others with a ‘Experimental‘ tag. A great way to find newer extensions that haven’t made the cut yet.

The changes are nice so far but the site is far from perfect. Of course, they warn us that it is in testing but not sure if this version will have much needed things like ability to sort by rating or number of downloads or Firefox version supported or last updated date etc after a search.

In fact, ability to be able to quickly find Firefox add-ons by the version of Firefox has to be one of the most common gripes about the Add-ons site. Overall, it is a great improvement to the current site but still a work in progress.

[via Ryan of CyberNetNews]

Extend Firefox 2 was a contest run to see who develops the best Firefox Extensions from around the world. Obviously with my addiction for new Firefox extensions, I checked out the winners and decided to dedicate this week’s Picks of the Week post to these great extensions.

3 Grand Prize Winners

1. MiniMap Sidebar Extension by Tony Farndon (UK)
2. SamePlace by Massimiliano Mirra (Italy) - my favorite!
3. Shareaholic by Jay Meattle (US)

12 Runner Ups

1. All in One Sidebar - Ingo Wennemaring
2. Boox - Nicolas Martin
3. del.icio.us IncSearch - Hirokazu Onozato
4. Fast Dial - Sergey Suhoruchkin
5. FireGestures - Taiga Gomibuchi
6. FootieFox - Boris Ruf
7. qtl - Gilad Kutiel
8. Shrinkify - Mark Muday
9. Table2Clipboard - Davide Ficano
10. TwitterFox - Kazuho Okui
11. Update Scanner - Pete Burgers
12. URL Fixer - Christopher Finke

The grand prize winners each get a 15″ MacBook Pro & some other awesome goodies and the runner ups get some nice gifts as well. Check out this contest winners announcement post for more details.

Of the extensions mentioned, I stumbled across SamePlace and started using it and was just blown away by the elegance and the ease it gives using an IM client. It is far from perfect yet but nevertheless is a great extension to check out. Especially, if you have a wide screen monitor and don’t mind having a sidebar. I will soon be reviewing it here if you’d rather hold off before trying it.

Extend Firefox 3 is getting ready to launch in early March and I am eager to see what kind of prizes they offer this time and what kind of cool extensions people come up with.

Happy Valentine’s Day to my beloved readers!

Here is some good news for all the Firefox fans who aren’t afraid of trying something at the bleeding edge.

Firefox 3 Beta 3 is available for download now. If you have already been using Beta 2, you’d probably notice the improvements in this new beta release but if you are really interested in figuring out what’s new in this particular release, Lifehacker has compiled a list of improvements.

If you are just curious about what’s in new in Firefox 3 altogether, check this extensive review by Mozilla Links. I couldn’t do justice to this fine article if I tried to do it here again. So, please check it out if you are interested to see if it’s worth checking out a beta release.

Now, if you are like me and want to run Firefox 2 as well as Firefox 3 so you can get the best of both worlds, check out my earlier post on How to run Firefox 2 & Firefox 3 Simultaneously.

How to make Extensions work in Firefox 3?

Also, you’d find that some of the extensions haven’t been made compatible with Firefox 3 Beta 3. You could still install them if you are brave enough to turn of the compatibility checking and don’t care about intermittent crashes and possible security breach that comes with it in a few easy steps. Again, be warned that you are on your own from this point onwards.

1. Type about:config in your location bar and accept the warning message
2. Right click somewhere and choose New->Boolean and enter a new entry extensions.checkCompatibility with value false.
3. Enter another entry extensions.checkUpdateSecurity with value false.
4. Restart Firefox

As I said before, by doing this you are probably opening up a can of worms with this but you might get lucky with running a few extensions that you absolutely need but haven’t been made compatible by the author. I have about a dozen extensions in Firefox 3 beta 3 now working good so far where as I have about 25 installed in Firefox 2.

Download Firefox 3 Beta 3

Happy surfing!

It’s time for another dose of Firefox Extensions for Firefox lovers. I have found some new and exciting Firefox add-ons to share with you.

• HyperBk: It is a very powerful bookmarking extension with automatic classification and history enhancement. I prefer del.icio.us but for the bookmarks you would like to have in your computer for quick access, this could be a great way to manage it.
• SamePlace IM: I am really excited to share this Instant Messenger extension. It is an extensible and multi-network instant messenger that has been designed with function in mind as well as it has killer looks. (requires the XMPP Integration for Mozilla extension)
• Dictionary Tooltip: Not a new one but someone asked me about it last week here. It gives you a dictionary/thesaurus in a little overlay window on double-clicking the word you are interested in.
• gDocsBar: Access Google Docs & upload docs to Google Docs right from your Firefox browser sidebar with this cool extension. I don’t think Google could have implemented this better. Very nicely written code.
• Mouseless Browsing: Are you a keyboard ninja who rarely goes for your mouse? Check out this extension to cruise through the internet with your numberpad. [via Mitch of Firefox facts]
• Save Images: A simple extension that let’s you save all the images you are viewing in a page to a specified directory and with specific names. You can also specify the size of images saved as well as file types. (not available for Linux yet)

Hope you enjoyed this week’s collection of Firefox extensions. Check out the Firefox tag from the tag cloud or the other posts in the Picks of the Week series listed below for all things Firefox.

Which one of these did you find yourself downloading as soon as you read about it?

Last week, I wrote about how you can run Google Calendar in your browser sidebar. Now, you can get your Google Docs in the browser sidebar as well.

Sometimes it is more productive to have some of the stuff we access often (like Google Calendar) to be in the sidebar. This will work out the best especially if you have the newer widescreen monitor or a bigger monitor with a high resolution, where real estate won’t be an issue.

Google Docs in a Sidebar

You can get Google Docs run in a sidebar with a Firefox extension called gDocsBar. I love the way this Firefox Extension has been implemented. It looks so good and Google couldn’t have done it better.

gDocsBar Quick Facts

• Easy to install extension and no configuration needed
• Opens in sidebar with login and password screen
• Easy tabbed interface to view all documents types or just specific type like document, spreadsheet or presentation.
• You could also sort the items by title, date or author as well as ascending or descending.
• The filter box works flawlessly filtering documents as you type and I love it.
• Or you could search for a document by name, author or even content.
• You can upload documents to Google Docs directly by dragging and dropping it in the bottom area. It shows completed and failed uploads visually for easy troubleshooting.

I usually don’t feature a single extension alone and talk about them in the weekly Firefox Extension Picks of the Week series. But, this extension definitely warrants this extra attention as I am sure I am not the only one who finds this extremely useful.

gDocsBar

gDocsBar Download

If you are new here, welcome to our (almost) weekly Firefox Extension Picks. I scour the Internet for some of the best firefox extensions that might be of interest to my readers and share them here in a bite-sized digest every couple of weeks. I think this schedule gives me and my readers to try some of these extensions for a couple of weeks, uninstall and get ready to try some more new ones.

As a Firefox fan would tell you, the key to this fun exercise is to uninstall extensions that you don’t absolutely need and those that you don’t use. A good rule of thumb I use is, if I don’t use an extension for atleast 2 weeks then I don’t really need it.

There are some exceptions as with any rule of thumb like the FireFTP extension. I might go without using it for 2 weeks, but I know I’ll need it.

(credit: cobalt13)

Here are some more Firefox Extensions that you might find useful:

• Tabs Menu: If you’d like to see your open tabs in a menu format in your toolbar, this is the extension for you. I don’t see myself using it as I just cycle through my open tabs with Ctl+Tab keys but I can see it useful for those with more than 10-15 tabs open at a time to quickly see the full titles of tabs in a menu.
• SnapBack: Safari browser has an excellent feature that lets you mark a bookmark when you are surfing through different websites and then come back to the marked one easily. With this extension, now you can tell your Safari using friends that you can do it too in Firefox.
• Firefox Configuration Mania: If you like tweaking your configuration, this extension let’s you have at it!
• Shareaholic: Are you a social network addict? Do you share everything you come across with your friends in various networks? This extension lets you share articles, websites with yoru friends in major networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Reddit, Mixx etc in one single click from your Firefox browser.
• StatusBars: Is your status bar full of icons and overflowing that you can’t see an url when you mouseover it? This extension lets you have multiple statusbars with your custom set of icons.. one for daily stuff like weather, gmail notifier, stock ticker, another one for web development & SEO stuff, etc.
• HighlightAll: In ShanKri-la, when you search for specific words you get results with words highlighted in colors so you can easily spot the phrases you are looking for. HighlightAll extension lets you do this for any webpage with a simple keyboard shortcut that you can customize. You can turn off the highlighting with a simple click on the browser. If you are a developer, this extension works even in source code view!

Hope you enjoyed this week’s picks and if you didn’t find that enough check out the other posts in this series as an old post doesn’t mean anything when it comes to Firefox extensions. There are a lot of hidden gems in it.

I will be turning 30 in a week and I am planing on a post to let you in a little bit on my personal side.