Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Browser Wars

I have this love/hate relationship with Firefox. I love the browser, but hate the beast that it is.

I have a bad habit of working with the same session for days without restarting Firefox and it just becomes a resource hog. This happens across the board with Windows, Mac and Linux. This is the reason a keep trying new browsers and lately have tried to make the switch and end up coming back to Firefox after a few weeks every time.

My last two attempts were first with Safari 5 and then with Chrome.

I've always liked Safari and with the addition of extension to version 5, I thought that I could make the switch. In the end I only lasted a week with Safari 5 mainly because of the lack of Linux support and I really missed having a Firefox Sync counterpart.

Next I moved over to Chrome which is also very speedy like Safari and includes sync and linux support. This time around I lasted two weeks (I always end up using Chrome for about two weeks each time I try to switch). It's going to sound a little stupid, but I really miss the Save/Save & Quit from Firefox and I also think that Firefox Sync is just awesome. Another reason I've come back to Firefox is the extensions, Firefox extensions are more like application and no just a pretty wrapper around html/js like Chrome and Safari handle extensions.

Anyway, I'm back on Firefox and these are the extension which add enough value to put up with the current lack of HTML5 and the resource usage:
1. Adblock Plus 1.2 -- Ads were yesterday!
2. Add-on Collector 1.1.1   -- (none)
3. Aviary 0.8.7.2 -- Access the Aviary web site and tools.
4. BetterGmail 2 1.2 -- Enhances Gmail with a compilation of user scripts and styles. All scripts copyright their original authors. Click on the script homepage in the Help tab for more information.
5. CLEO 4.3 -- Create multi-addon install package (Cleopack)
6. ColorZilla 2.0.2 -- Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies
7. Diigo Bookmarks and Web Annotations 4.1.0.46 -- Bookmark, highlight, and add sticky notes on any web page. Save your bookmarks on the web so you can access them anywhere.
8. Extension Manager Extended 2.8.1 -- Use the extension manager to view the id and the folder of an extension.
9. FEBE 6.3.3.2 -- Backup your Firefox data
10. Fasterfox Lite 3.8.2Lite -- Performance and network tweaks for Firefox, without the Enhanced Prefetching.
11. Firebug 1.5.4 -- Web Development Evolved.
12. Firefox Sync 1.3.1 -- Synchronize your bookmarks, history, tabs and passwords wherever you go. Whether you use Firefox on your phone, laptop, or desktop, securely access all your data.
13. Flagfox 4.0.6 -- Displays a flag depicting the location of the current server
14. FlashGot 1.2.1.23 -- Enables Firefox, Mozilla Suite, Netscape and Thunderbird to handle single and massive ("all" and "selection") downloads using the most popular external download managers for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD (dozens currently supported, see Extension's Home Page for details). FlashGot offers also a Build Gallery functionality which helps to synthetize full media galleries in one page, from serial contents originally scattered on several pages, for easy and fast "download all".
15. FootieFox 2.1.10 -- Soccer scores, live and almost instantly.
16. Greasefire 1.0.4 -- Automatically find Greasemonkey scripts on Userscripts.org
17. Greasemonkey 0.8.20100408.6 -- A User Script Manager for Firefox
18. OPIE 1.2.3 -- Import/Export extension preferences
19. Prism for Firefox 1.0b3 -- Create Prism applications directly in Firefox
20. Restart Firefox 0.3 -- Restart Firefox with ease
21. Session Manager 0.6.7.4i -- Saves and restores the state of all windows.
22. Stylish 1.0.9 -- (none)
23. TinEye Reverse Image Search 0.7.1 -- Adds TinEye search context menu item for images.
24. WebDeveloper 1.1.8 -- Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.
25. feedly 2.x -- A magazine-like startpage
26. greasedlightbox 1.1 -- Enhances browsing on websites that link to images such as Google Image Search, Flickr, Wikipedia, MySpace, deviantART, FFFFOUND!, and Blogger blogs. Use left and right arrow keys to cycle through images on page.

No comments:

Post a Comment