I know that this falls well outside of the things I normally cover in my columns, but to be honest, I’m tired of talking about politics, which social network is better, which micro-blogging tool is the flavor of the month, etc… Sooooo, I decided to talk about something that I absolutely cannot function without on a daily basis, the add-ons to our favorite browser that make existing in this spread out social media/network world just a little bit easier. These are the tools that make my social media existence (and sanity) possible, in no particular order of course.


Souping Up Firefox

Shareaholic. This little tool makes bookmarking so much easier (so long as you’re sticking to the more popular bookmarking services). With support for delicious, Twitter, digg, facebook, friendfeed, pownce and a bunch more you’re probably covered. Granted I have to use bookmarklets for Twine, social|median and diigo (on the rare occasion that I use diigo), but I’m sure that once some of those services get big enough support will follow.

Scribefire.This may very well be the best blogging tool I’ve ever come across. This unassuming tool that sits in your Firefox status bar makes blogging so easy that you’d think I’d do it more often. It handles multiple blogs, tagging, categorization and if you want you can even use their new ad program to monetize your blog (ads are a new service, that I do not use, so I can’t comment about it’s effectiveness).

FireFTP. This is a lightweight ftp client that runs right in your browser. I have been using it for over two years and can’t imagine even considering another ftp client. It’s simple, easy to use and just flat out great. If you use ftp to access anything, you should be using fireftp.

Young Fox
Photo Credit

Web Developer Toolbar. I am far from being a web developer, hell, I couldn’t even call myself a web designer without laughing hysterically, however, this toolbar has so many uses, it’s hard for me to imagine not having it’s abilities at my fingertips. From upfront control over your cache, cookie settings, window resizing, and probably a hundred other functions I’ll never use, it’s a great little tool for even the novice designer/developer.

IE Tab. Trust me, I hate using IE as much as most of you probably do, but this little plugin makes it much easier to exist outside of Microsoft’s tight little grip. This add-on is kind of self-explanatory, it allows you to run an embedded IE tab in Firefox. There is an added bonus as well, this little add-on will enable you to run multiple sessions of things like gmail, twitter, etc. in one session of Firefox.

Fox
Photo Credit

Bit.ly Creator. Now this one I could see some debate over, simply because I’ve chosen to use bit.ly to shorten my urls, and I am wholly unaware if there are other url shortening add-ons for Firefox. This is an experimental plugin (which means you’ll have to sign up at mozilla.org to get it) that automatically shortens a url and copies it to your clipboard. If you do a lot of link sharing in twitter, plurk or any of the other micro-blogging sites, this is essential.

FoxMarks. This is another relatively recent discovery that I have come to love. It’s a fairly simple service that lets you synchronize your bookmarks across multiple installations of Firefox. As an added bonus, they’re also accessible via the web, meaning that you can access them from any computer anywhere, with or without Firefox.

Sxipper. Sxipper is a password manager of sorts, but it has a lot of other features that make it far superior to the password manager built-in to Firefox. First off, it will fill in forms for you, which is a plus when you fill out as many forms as most normal social media junkies. Second, it allows you to create multiple persona’s, which is great for keeping your work and personal activities separate. It’s a semantic application that is really useful.

Firefox
Photo Credit

Surf Canyon. This is a really nice add-on that significantly enhances my search engine results. It works with Google, Yahoo, MSN and probably some other search engines that no one uses. It makes it a lot easier to dig into your search results, thus shortening the window between searching for and finding what you’re really looking for.

Download Statusbar. This may seem trivial, but I hate the download pop-up window that Firefox uses, don’t ask me why, I don’t have a good reason. This simple little add-on simply displays the file you’re downloading in a small status bar in the Firefox status bar. It will also provide details on the file and let you run it right from Firefox.

So, there it is, the first “Top 10” list I’ve ever delivered to you, although it may not be the last (no guarantees). Hopefully some of these tools will come in handy for some of you. I’d love to know what add-ons make your lives just a little bit easier and your love for Firefox just a little bit stronger.

Greg Hollingsworth is a marketer and blogger who also writes about politics on Devil’s In The Details.

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