Bit.ly, the popular URL shortening service has an extension for Chrome and Firefox browsers, which allows you to see number of clicks on your bit.ly links in a tooltip (see below screenshot from my twitter).
Clicking on “More information” link will take you to the details page for that particular link on bit.ly. I have been using it for a week now and find it very useful.
Everything has advantages and disadvantages, and that is true with URL shortening services too. There are times you just wish if you had an eye that can see through these short URLs and see the destination URLs. This is especially true when you are viewing suspicious blogs or websites with short URLs in them. Personally I avoid clicking any suspicious short URLs.
Short URL services were popularized by Twitter due to its limited characters in ‘tweets’.
Long URL Please
Fortunately, there is always a solution for a problem. Continue reading →
This new SEOtoolbar firefox plugin was just recently released by Aaron Wall of SEObook.com It doesn’t even have an official page on http://addons.mozilla.org yet, nevertheless it became crowd favorite instantly.
It has tons of features actually, I won’t be writing them all here. So, just go to the page and find out for yourselves. This is a must have toolbar for SEO conscious bloggers.
Website: http://tools.seobook.com/seo-toolbar/
If you loved the tab previews on Opera, then you will love this too – it’s a firefox version of tab previews.
Mousing over on any tab will show you the real-life screenshot preview of the website that you are viewing. Width and height of the preview window can be adjusted.
Plugin URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4882
Author Site: http://www.xuldev.org/tabscope/
If you are used to using shortcuts on your keyboard you will love this firefox add-on. SiteLauncher allows you to access your favorite (bookmarked) websites all directly from keyboard. As you can see below, pressing ctrl + space on your keyboard would show you the bookmarks menu. After that, pressing on particular “letter” would open that website in a new tab.
For example, pressing ctrl + space and then a would open Amazon.com in a new tab. Cool huh?
After pressing ctrl + space it does wait for you to choose your next move (menu stays visible). I think it’s good that they made it that way, otherwise until you decide what to open, the menu would be gone… pressing Esc or clicking anywhere on the screen with your mouse closes the menu. Check it out!
Plugin Site: http://www.donesmart.com/sitelauncher/node/2
Plugin Page on Firefox Add-ons: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10127
Do you want to be given option whether to “save”, “view” or “open” PDF files when you click on the links? The following plugin (PDF Download) will do exactly that, it will restrict browser’s default action (usually opening pdf files inside your browser) and instead will give you set of other options to choose from. (see screenshot below)
Why do you need this plugin? Sometimes, if the PDF file that you want to view is large in size, opening them directly inside your browser can crash the browser. Thus resulting in information loss. With this plugin you can prevent that from happening.
The latest version of the plugin also has a new feature to convert any webpage-to-PDF.
Plugin URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/636
Plugin Site: http://www.pdfdownload.org
When sending attachments using Gmail in your favorite browser (firefox), have you wished – only if you could drag the files into the attachment field? Instead of the normal clicking “browse” button and locating the file in your directories?
Well, rejoice! DragDropUpload plugin helps you do that. With this plugin you can just drag the files into attachment fields (not just in Gmail, but in any other website).
Not only that, in some sites you can even drag multiple files into the attachment field. It works perfectly with Gmail (see screenshots below).
Dragging and dropping multiple files in Gmail will automatically create and place each file in separate attachment fields.
If you are not a “browse and locate” person like me, this plugin will be very useful for you.
Plugin URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2190
Search Cloudlet is a firefox plugin that will add a tag-cloud related to your search phrase on the results pages of Google and Yahoo search engines. Tag-cloud changes from one result page to another as you go, that means it is generated from the page (i.e from the results on that page) that you are currently viewing.
Therefore, if you want to see a better represented tag-cloud, you can increase the number of results on Google from the normal 10 results to 50 or 100 results per page in Preferences.
Plugin URL: http://www.getcloudlet.com
Firefox Page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9943
Drag & DropZones is a Firefox Plugin that will redefine the way you do search in Firefox browser.
1. Select the keyword
2. Drag it to the Search Engine of your choice
When you start dragging your highlighted keyword, the plugin will automatically show you transparent search engine boxes on your screen. Just drop the keyword on the desired search engine that you want to do the search in.
3. Get the results
Voila! Once you drop the keyword , you will see the results on the selected search engine.
Besides searching it has many other functions that you can add to available boxes. For example you can drag and drop images on the box to copy its source location to your clipboard. Or you can drag URLs and email addresses to copy them to your clipboard… and many more functions. It’s a great plugin indeed.
Site URL: http://www.captaincaveman.nl/
Plugin URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5595
This firefox plugin displays a country flag in the URL field for a given website, depicting the location of the current website’s server. It also provides quick access to detailed location and webserver information (see screenshot).
Besides being a neat firefox plugin, you could use this tool to identify some phishing sites as well. For example, if you access www.paypal.com and see some unknown flag for the server, you better don’t login on that website!
Plugin page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5791
Here is another firefox plugin that adds PageRank, Alexa and Compete bars in your browser’s status bar, bottom right corner.
On top of that, for every site you visit using, SearchStatus lets you view its Google Category, Alexa incoming links, Alexa related links and backward links from Google, Yahoo! and MSN. This combined search-related information means you can view not only the link importance of a site (according to Google), but also its traffic importance (according to Alexa), so providing a balanced view of site efficacy.
Plugin page: http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/
Some things are better understood by screenshots and animated pics, so here I have created a demo for this plugin in action. As you can see below, this plugin for firefox combines progress bar with address bar, it integrates the progress bar inside the URL field in your browser. Normally firefox shows the progress bar at the right bottom corner of your browser.
It’s one of those must have plugins for firefox. Imagine looking at the blog address and the loading time at the same time, while waiting for your favorite blog to load! ;)
Plugin Page: http://mozilla.zeniko.ch/fission.html (or click here for direct install)
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