Monday, December 26, 2011

Firefox: simplify moving between computers, tabbed browsing, and bookmarking

I use Mozilla Firefox for most of my web browsing needs on Windows or Linux. I prefer Firefox because it works on most platforms, it is fast and it rarely crashes. It also has an important advantage over other browsers: an amazing number of free extensions that allow one to automate, speed up and simplify many common tasks. Here are some of my favorite Firefox extensions and features.

Firefox Sync is a service that lets you synchronize your bookmarks, history, passwords and open tabs with another copy of Firefox – like one on another computer or on a mobile phone. In previous versions of Firefox, you needed an extension for this. Now Sync is part of Firefox (since Firefox version 4), and is very easy to set up. I use Sync to synchronize bookmarks between my work laptop and my regular and admin accounts at my home laptop.

Tab Mix Plus enhances Firefox's tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. 
It also includes a full-featured session manager with crash recovery that can save and restore combination of opened tabs and windows.
My favorite settings for this extension:
Mouse double-click on the tab: duplicates the tab.
Show in tab context menu: new tab; merge windows; reload all tabs; undo closed tabs; closed tabs list; close other tabs; bookmark all tabs.
Show in main context menu: open links in new tabs.

Add Bookmark Here ² extension enables you to first open the bookmarks, find the folder you need, and then bookmark the current page in the desired folder. Without this extension, you would need to use ctrl-d and then navigate to the desired folder using a much less convenient menu.
There are many other extensions that make browsing experience better, and I will write about them in subsequent posts. Enjoy!

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