Great post by Steve Dembo of Teach42 and Discovery Educator Network fame on firefox extensions/addons. First of all, if you don’t have Firefox I have to ask…why not? I’ve been using it now for at least a good 3 years, and the tabbed browsing goodness of it is just second to none. I know the new IE7 has tabbed browsing, but again, firefox is FAR superior to it! (I won’t begin to harp on using Thunderbird just yet for email)

On reading his post, I’m only using two of the extensions that he uses and that looks to be FasterFox and the del.icio.us bookmarkings. I didn’t know about the Woot! extension, so you best believe that I will be adding that to my reportoire here shortly. I will also have to check out CoCommenter as that looks like something I will definitely use to keep track of my comments from around the blogosphere. As far as StumbleUpon, I removed that a while back, just didn’t use it, nor did I care for it.

Now for my list:

1. No Script: I’m a safety junkie…so if I can block anything from coming into my computer, I will take advantage of it. Can be lethal if you disallow something from loading, trying to get the permission back can be difficult, but again, safety first.
2. AdBlock Plus: Remember the story about the substitute teacher and the popups that just kept coming and coming full of porn. Ever go to a website that has advertisements that just annoy the poo out of you? This nifty little thing takes care of that, all you see is a blank window and the ad doesn’t load at all. One of my favorites.
3. Diigo: I’ve talked about Diigo alot in postings and had some one on one discussions with someone from the company about their great product. So again, here I am pushing their add on because I LOVE using it. Allows you to blog, forward, and annotate any webpage out there. AWESOME for little collaborative projects your students might be working on.
4. Cooliris: This is another nifty little addon that lets you preview a page before clicking on it. I use it when I’m searching for images and just don’t want to be bother with opening something in a new tab or clicking on it. So definitely a time saver.
5. Gmail Manager: Like Steve, I like to know when new mail comes in. I’ve used several of the mail manager programs, but this by far is my favorite.
6. Phishtank: Another safety feature I just added as a precaution. Just sits in the background and shows me if a site is safe.

And there you have it. My extensions.

Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages…

Tom.