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Web 2.0 News
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| 5 Firefox extensions you can't live without |
| Thursday, August 10, 2006 |
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| In Category: Articles |
| Comment(s): 63 |
| Views: 158191 |
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Tab Mix Plus
My Tabs are prettier than your Tabs
Tab Mix Plus is also one of the most used Firefox extensions. Options galore, Tab Mix Plus is so useful that the Firefox team has ported some of it's features to the upcoming (now in beta) Firefox 2.0.
Why?
One of the primary reasons that most people use Firefox is because it has Tabbed browsing. Even if you're getting into starting to use Firefox right now, as soon as you do open a bunch of Tabs, you will wish that there was one particular behaviour of the Tabs that you could customize. Maybe you want new tabs to open next to the current Tab, instead of at the end. Maybe you want to size them so that they are smaller/bigger. Perhaps you don't want the close Tab button, because you only use the Ctrl + W or the Ctrl + F4 shortcut keys and would love the extra space on the Tabs bar.
Maybe you even want the progress of the page load to be displayed on the tab, somehow, instead of the standard rotating Firefox dotted circle.
Tab Mix Plus lets you do all these things, and much, much, more.
How?
If you thought configuring the Session Manager extension was complicated, then the veritable cornucopia of options that Tab Mix Plus will offer you is sure to leave you dazed and confused. But rest assured, most changes will only impact the way your Tabs look (and open, close, etc.) and you can always go back and configure it differently.
Thankfully Tab Mix Plus will let you restore it to the default settings and even let you import / export them. If you're feeling particularly needy, drop in a comment and the NEO Binaries community (me included) will surely help you out.
I recommend trying setting the Tab opening order to Open new tabs next to the current one, and Change opening order as well. This will cause any new Tab you open, to open Next to the current one; changing the opening order will enhance this further so that the order of Tabs opened is retained - the First Tab you open will open next to the current, second will open next to the first instead of the current, again.
When you close a Tab, which Tab becomes current next is governed by the Closing Tab Events in the Tab Mix options. Set this to Left or Right according to your tastes and browsing habits.
Where?
Get Tab Mix Plus from the Firefox Addons repository.
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| Thursday, August 10, 2006 at 10:03 PM
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Great article. Another one I use a lot is the new tab homepage. It just opens every new tab to the homepage I specify. Maybe that is a feature of Tab Mix Plus too, I am not sure. |
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| Thursday, August 10, 2006 at 10:05 PM
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There are another five that I always install on each new PC:
Flashblock - replaces flash objects with a button you can click to view them (helps with ads)
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/433/
Adblock - filters ads from web-pages
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/10/
Download Manager Tweak - able to have the download manager use a new tab instead of opening a pop-up window
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/256/
IE tab - enables you to use the embedded IE engine within Mozilla/Firefox
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1419/
Search Engine Ordering - enables you to change the order (and delete) of the search engines in the search bar.
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2164/
enjoy!
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| Thursday, August 10, 2006 at 10:08 PM
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https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/26/ is a great util for downloads, it stops that download popup window from appearing and simply shows them in a status bar at the bottom of your current browser window. Its always the first extension I remember to download. |
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| Thursday, August 10, 2006 at 10:13 PM
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The link at the bottom of the page is wrong, the location of tab mix plus is:
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1122/ |
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| Thursday, August 10, 2006 at 10:41 PM
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Scott: Thanks for pointing out the link-typo; I'd mistakenly pointed to the Fasterfox extension again, instead of Tab Mix plus - this is now fixed.
CBAR, and Alex, thanks for contributing the links, I'm sure we'll check them out as well. |
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| Thursday, August 10, 2006 at 10:51 PM
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Brilliant Stuff! But, i wanted to know... What about flickrfox??? Isn't that a wunnerful extension as well ? ? ? |
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Blog of Trash: Firefox extention article
5 Firefox extensions you can't live without > NEO Binaries: The online resource to Web based applications. Listings, reviews, news, articles and the first web2.0 community > NEO Binaries: Hottest and Latest news on web2.0, web based applications, la
on Thursday, August 10, 2006 at 10:56 PM
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| Thursday, August 10, 2006 at 11:01 PM
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What's the name of that Windows theme used in the screenshots? |
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| Thursday, August 10, 2006 at 11:11 PM
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Ah yes..... the Windows theme.
That's courtesy Danilloc (http://danilloc.wincustomize.com) maker of the fine theme Aerial (which I use here) for WindowBlinds.
For the rest of you who'd like to make your Firefox look *really* different, check out Apurva's super-great guide on desktop customization and skinning at ( http://www.apurva.com/Articles/AGuidetoDesktopCustomization/tabid/64/Default.aspx )
Thank either from me, if you like it too. :) |
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uZable - UI Enhancements: Power FireFox
on Thursday, August 10, 2006 at 11:20 PM
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Dhiraj Gupta: A shameless self-plug
on Thursday, August 10, 2006 at 11:27 PM
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 12:22 AM
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"Turbo mode" of fasterfox is quite rude to use on high volume servers and can even get your IP address autobanned by some Apache servers. Be very careful using it. |
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 1:15 AM
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Mike:
Rude? Yes. Oh, definitely.
But I think the site owners of these Apache server should reconsider their customer retention policy.
Yes. Your visitors are your customers. *Not* someone you should ban.
Banning an IP address is a good way to lose a customer permanently. But do-you-really- WANT that?
Well? Do you? |
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 1:53 AM
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What window decoration are you using in those screen shots? I like it, I'd like to snag that if you let me know where I can find it. |
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 2:01 AM
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How did you combine your firefox buttons and drop down menus on the same line? I really like that, but I can't figure out how to do it .
Nice article, btw... |
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 2:15 AM
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What about GooglePreview? |
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 2:25 AM
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Wow. This article is shocking because most, if not all, of that functionality is built directly into Opera already.
I'm not dissing Firefox, I just like Opera. |
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 2:29 AM
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tabmix plus is definitely my all-time favorite.
a recent love is the Diigo extension -- really the swiss army knife for online research -- killer feature set. |
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 3:38 AM
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good choice , I was tired of saving long articles in order to read them later
:) |
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 4:17 AM
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Victor: You have do it in Firefox's customize toolbar window.
Right click on an empty area in the standard toolbar. Then click Customize. From here drag whatever you want on to the Menu bar. It should work.
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 4:33 AM
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Why do you have session manager, when TabMixPlus already does all of its tasks?
If I get to sub in an extension, I'd include ConQuery- it makes websearching one step easier. |
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 7:08 AM
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For my money, the best are:
1. forecastfox - small current weather icon
2. showIP - shows ip of site you are on
3. colorzilla - find hex value of any color on screen
4. web developer - so many cool thing; my favs are resizing screen, showing page without image, showing css, all great stuff
5. gmail manager - keeps track of all my gmail accounts and let me know when new mail comes in
and I also like 6. colorful tabs (although I could live without it if I needed to)
I love love love all of these. And you can get them all off the firefox site. |
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 7:13 AM
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I'm curious it seems like the scrapbook extension does the same thing as the Google Notebook, only the Google Notebook is stored on my Google account and consequently accessible via multiple computers. |
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 8:34 AM
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Wow, those were completely different from the extensions I can't live without.
For me, they are:
- Smartsearch (configurable context-menu searching from your Quicksearch bookmarks)
- Adblock Plus
- Reveal (just incredibly cool... the zooming is useful, the "display all tabs", and the screenshot-tooltips for the Back/Forward buttons are all things you learn to love.)
- IETab .. the best of both worlds. This is sometimes a little buggy, but it is incredibly useful on some IE only sites. It works wonders in Outlook Web Access, which many corporate e-mail users depend on.
- BugMeNot extension ... this is a great little extension for bypassing annoying free registration on sites that have no need to have registration. |
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 11:49 AM
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I use most of those mentioned, but wanted to bring up three more:
SuperDragAndGo - like flinging links
EasyGestures - Circular context menus make it Easy on the mouse and wrist
BBCode - if you spend any time at all posting on forums |
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 11:50 AM
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Try out Web-Marker , it works similar to ScrapBook and Diigo , instead of using a central server to maintain your "annotations", it gives you a link which you can share or bookmark.
http://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2679/ |
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 12:09 PM
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They you very much! I'm definitely going to try session manager and maybe tab mix too.
But might I suggest NoScript be on the list? I think it is a necessity. Users need control over which websites can run scripts on their machine. Also I like Adblock to get rid of annoying ads on sites I frequent. And All-in-One Gestures is REALLY good. After using it, other browsers seems sooooo slow and clumbsy! |
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 1:34 PM
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I would like KeyConfig plugin in the list. |
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 1:56 PM
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I recommend NoScript and Gmail Notifier. |
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 5:29 PM
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Why recommend Session Manager AND Tab Mix Plus? Since Tab Mix Plus can do all that Session Manager can do and much more.. No reason to have two extensions doing the same thing, is there??
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 6:12 PM
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Thanks for sharing this. Always wondered what some of these extensions are doing exactly but always was too lazy too find out myself :). |
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 6:34 PM
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A great list of extensions, some of which I hadn't heard of but will certainly be using from now on. A couple of other for consideration; Web Developer, which has already been mentioned is an absolute essential and how about Gmail Space https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1593/ which allows you to use your Gmail account as storage. |
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 10:25 PM
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I haven't read the comments so I'm not sure if this has been pointed out, but personally I find that this is an awful 'most have' list. I agree on 2 of the extensions, scrapbook and tab mix plus. Actually scrapbook isn't a must have, but it's really neat regardless.
Adblock Plus and Adblock Filterset.G have to be the #1 and #2 must-have extensions, followed by tab-mix plus. Any top 5 extension list that doesn't include those is incomplete. |
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 10:47 PM
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Have you ever heared about Google Notebook? It's like scrapbook but stores everything on server side. For free. |
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| Friday, August 11, 2006 at 11:38 PM
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on the contrary... SyncNotes.com (covered in the featured products on the homepage of this site), is a way better tool than Google Notebook. |
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| Saturday, August 12, 2006 at 12:38 AM
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Congrats for the article, Firefox extensions are an endlessly disscussed subject and I think it's nice to hear, like for Social Bookmarks what poeple like.
me, it's
Greasemonkey,
'add bookmark here',
'update bookmark'
and flat bookmark editing'
which are features I think could be default, but everybody want's their extension default. |
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| Saturday, August 12, 2006 at 4:20 AM
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Jeteye.com is a server based implementation of the Scrapbook functionality, plus it enables collaboration. it also has a much better user interface. |
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| Sunday, August 13, 2006 at 11:52 AM
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I am sorry my friend Dhiraj because you are wrong in this one, because there is not any necessity to install the extension "Session Manager", because when one installs the extension "Tab Mix Plus" this already has a session manager integrated, and already this proven that this it is much better than the own one "Session Manager" for if alone.
I believe that the best thing you can do is to make the tests that I tell you and you will realize that until the own integration of the Session Manager inside the "Tab Mix Plus" it is much better than having to install 2 extensions when one already has a better one and with everything included.
Thank you.
I request you that you reread these comments again so that you realize that I am not mistaken, there are also other people that agree with me, like they are:
-Flameproof
-Jonah
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| Sunday, August 13, 2006 at 6:05 PM
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Hmm.... Flameproof, Jonah and Hector interestingly you guys seem to be right.
Ok, confession, I've been using Tab Mix Plus as well as Session Manager for so long that the boundaries between the two had pretty much blurred for me.
More recently (after all your comments) I've had the opportunity to realize that Tab Mix Plus has incorporated (pretty much) all the features that were present in Session Manager. You can save named Sessions and Tab Mix Plus does crash protection as well.
I've not really tested the stability of the Session Manager (it has the same name!) that is present inside Tab Mix Plus but I can only assume that it works, just like everything else that is in it.
Thanks for the informed updates, guys.
Keep on rockin'
-Dhiraj |
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| Monday, August 14, 2006 at 5:54 PM
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Probably the best "extensions that you must have" article that I've ever read. It even made me reconsider my own list (thanks for that!).
Here's mine:
AdBlock
IETab
IEZoom
ReminderFox
FasterFox |
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| Monday, August 14, 2006 at 7:32 PM
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adblock - no adverts
url link - for unlinked texts (like in these comments)
copy plain text - speaks for itself
sztaki dictionary (free hun-eng, eng hun dictionary)
these are on even in my workplace.
at home:
trashmail - for signing in to untrusted places
noscript - safer browsing |
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| Tuesday, August 15, 2006 at 10:16 AM
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nonone mentioned foxy tunes? Its not the most useful, but it certainly beats alt tabbing out to WMP, Creative or I tunes |
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| Tuesday, August 15, 2006 at 1:15 PM
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Keep 'em coming guys, I'm compiling a list of recommended plugins - I'll try them all out and (hopefully) come out with another article detailing them.
This is turning out to be quite a long list now. :) |
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| Friday, August 18, 2006 at 1:50 AM
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I wish i didnt have to part form firefox beta 2 to use this.
: (
=> http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/2.0b1/ |
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| Saturday, August 19, 2006 at 2:33 AM
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fails for no adblock |
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| Monday, August 21, 2006 at 9:05 AM
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blueorganizer from adaptiveblue:
http://www.adaptiveblue.com |
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| Thursday, August 24, 2006 at 1:31 AM
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I installed Tab Mix Plus, but I already had Tabbrowser Preferences. Do they interfere with each other? |
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| Monday, August 28, 2006 at 5:33 PM
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hfsdjfkjskdjf |
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| Monday, September 04, 2006 at 9:35 PM
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Some of my favorite extensions:
Too Many Tabs:
- puts a scrollbar under the tabs so you can scroll through them
Stylish:
- install userchrome styles, all styles are listed in a sidebar with the option of disabling them.
Custom Buttons:
- create your own custom buttons, or use the ready made ones at
http://custombuttons.phpbbnow.com/
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| Monday, September 04, 2006 at 9:48 PM
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Forgot to mention - styles can be installed for Stylish at userstyles.org |
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| Monday, September 11, 2006 at 10:11 PM
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stumble upon : lets you use a simple button on the toolbar to browse webpages tagged by others. you can use filters to narrow down your topics(tags) of interest or simply keep clicking the button to get random webpages tagged by other members of the Stumble upon community.
I cant tell you how many hours I have wasted just clicking that button. :)
addictive stuff. |
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| Wednesday, September 13, 2006 at 4:18 PM
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Fasterfox is good, but Fastererfox is better, I've used it for awhile, and it allows you to tweak some new items to speed prefetching.
It's download's here
http://rdc.untamed.co.uk/fastererfox/index.htm |
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| Monday, September 25, 2006 at 12:05 AM
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I'm tabbed out... How do you keep track of all of them? Is it best to remove or uninstall inactive? Seems like I end up with a page of tabs and toolbars with no room to search. Is there a good, concise, non techy guide for their use? I'm new to computers let alone firefox.... but it makes it a hell of a lot more interesting than internet explorer and AOL. Although they are getting into the act now too. Any help, info wise, would be appreciated. Thankyou. |
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