The much anticipated release of the excellent web browser Firefox 3.0 is available for download. Curious what all the fuss is about? Wondering if you should switch from Internet Explorer (you should, by the way)? Check out the discussion here and here for the best Firefox analysis. Wondering what’s new? Check out this list or a more in depth visual tour.
Convinced? Help Mozilla (the organization behind Firefox) set a record for most downloads in a day by downloading now! Once you have your very own copy, you can start adding extensions and customizing to your heart’s content.
In honor of this milestone in Web development, I thought I would provide some of my favorite extensions. Check them out!
Zotero of course. I have already posted a brief introduction. If you do any amount of research, Zotero is a must for organizing bibliographical material. It also generates citations in a variety of formats, including Chicago and SBL. If you are having trouble getting start, make sure you check out their online screencast, and I plan on developing my own tutorial for SBL/OpenOffice support in the near future.
Ever wish you could access your most-used internet bookmarks anywhere? Or maybe you want to share them with friends and family? Or post automatically generated links to your favorite posts on a blog (as I have in the sidebar to the right)? Well then del.icio.us is for you. The interface takes a little getting used to, and the website has the kind of interface only a techie could love, but its worth the effort. More to the point, it has a brilliant Firefox Extension.
If you’re a longtime use of Firefox, you probably already have a collection of favorite extensions. Some of them might not yet be updated for Firefox 3. Don’t worry, you can still use them: just download Nightly Tester Tools to override Firefox’s default functionality.
Gmail is wonderful, but it is even more wonderful when you install Better Gmail 2, which adds some customizable functionality to gmail’s site.
If you’re a blogger, you definitely want to check out Scribefire. Like Zotero, it runs inside Firefox, allowing you to browse and blog at the same time; no more switching tabs and juggling windows!
Well that’s enough to get you started. I would love to hear what everyone else finds helpful. Post your ideas in the comments!
