The Connected Lawyer

I downloaded Google Chrome today just to play with it and see what it was like. My initial thought is that, had it been introduce three years ago, it would be really cool. Right now, however, it ranks a shoulder shrug from me. Maybe it has some hidden jewels that I haven’t found yet. Unless someone points them out to me, I will not be switching my default browser from Firefox.

Despite my ambivilence at this point and given Google’s other successes, I would not be surprised to see myself using a Google browser 18-24 months in the future.

I love the various extensions that you can add to Firefox to make it work the way that works best for me. Tom Mighell at Inter Alia has identified another great Firefox extension Picknik.

Picknik allows you to easily capture graphics and webpages right from within Firefox. Picknic is easy to use. Simply right click on a photo or web page and the graphic is opened in a new tab with editing functions such as rotate, crop, resize, etc.

Also you can easily save the graphic or post it to a variety of websites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Flickr. I recommend you add this extension to your Firefox browser.

This is something that I have found that many people do not know. When you are in either Internet Explorer or Firefox, if you want to page down the website, simply hit your spacebar. It has the same effect as hitting the Page Down key, but it is a whole lot easier to hit the spacebar.

A few posts ago I knocked TinyURL Creator (a Firefox extension) for the fact that it made me go through an unnecessary mouse click everytime that I used it. Because of this, I named Shrinkify my favorite URL shrinker.

Today I admit my error. Yes, in its default mode, TinyURL still makes you click a box everytime that it generates a tiny URL. However, stopping the extension from doing this is a simple as selecting: Tools > Add Ons > Extensions > TinyURL Creator > Options.  In the Options dialog box, select the box next to “Do not show confirmation dialog apon [sic] TinyURL creation.” Once you have done this, you no longer have to deal with the annoying dialog box again.

Now TinyURL Creator is back to being my favorite Firefox extension that shrinks URLs. The main reason that it moves back into first place is that the extension has been updated to work with Firefox 3. Shrinkify has not yet updated its extension.

If you are still using Firefox 2, either extension should work fine for you. If you are using Firefox 3, I would go with TinyURL Creator simply beacuse you can install and use it without any difficulty.

I have written before that TinyURL Creator is one of my favorite Firefox extensions. That is no more. I have a new favorite: Shrinkify. Both of these extensions do the same thing. Namely, they take a really long web address and convert it into something that is short and easily used.

For example, if you search for Shrinkify on Google, the search results web address is: http://www.google.com/search?q=shrinkify&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

That same address shrinkified is http://shrinkify.com/837. Similarly, the same address in a TinyURL is http://tinyurl.com/6ao2m4.

Given that both of these do the same thing and both are accessed in the same manner (right click on the web page), one may wonder why I prefer Shrinkify over TinyURL Creator. That answer is simple. When I shrinkify a web address, I temporarily get a black band across the top of my screen telling me what the URL is. When I use TinyURL Creator, I get a box that tells me the URL. With TinyURL Creator, however, I have to click the box closed to make it go away. With Shrinkify, the information goes away automatically. Thus, Shrinkify saves me an entirely unnecessary mouse click.

If you aren’t using anything to shrink your URLs, I encourage you to try one or both of these services. Both work fine and will make your URL life much more simple.

Do you use Google Docs? If so, you might want to check out the Google Docs Bar for Firefox.

According to the extension website,

gDocsBar is a sidebar extension for firefox, a perfect companion for Google Docs.

With gDocsBar, you can drag and drop multiple files into the sidebar to upload documents.

You can search and filter documents right from the sidebar.

Your Gmail credentials are sent to Google directly over SSL. Your passwords are stored in Firefox Password Manager.

If you use Google Docs, this extension seems like a great idea.

PC World gives us an article with 15 undocumented Firefox tips. If you use Firefox (and you should), this article is definitely worth a read. The article contains tips things such as keyboard shortcuts, easy searching of pages, purging your private information, and optimizing Firefox for broadband.

The tips are well written, easy to understand, and even easier to implement. Check out the article and start improving your browsing experience immediately.

Do you like Firefox and the flexibility that the extensions offer? Despite this, do you find yourself overwhelmed with trying to keep up with all of the newest extensions that are coming out?

If so, add the RSS feed from the newest extensions to your RSS reader. You can add the feed for the newest extensions here.  The most recently updated can be found here. The most popular can be found here.

Add these feeds to your RSS reader and never be in the dark about new Firefox extensions. You can also do the same thing with Firefox themes.

If you are one of those people who is frustrated when a PDF document opens in your browser when you want it to open in a separate window? Alternatively, maybe you want a choice as to whether a particular PDF opens in your browser or in a separate window.

In either case, Rick Borstein provides great step-by-step instructions for configuring Adobe Acrobat to act the way that you want it to act. Rick also points us in the direction of another cool extension (PDF Download) for Firefox that gives you greater control over how you handle PDFs from the internet.

This is a great tutorial from Rick. You can check it out here.

I have found another great Firefox Extension: Auto Copy. Auto Copy automatically copies to your clipboard the text you select in your browser. Thus, no more need to Ctrl-C or right click to copy the text. Instead, you simply select it.

A tip of the hat to Futurelawer for pointing this extension out.

My previous post on Firefox Extensions can be found here. All of my Firefox posts can by found by clicking on the Firefox category to the right.