Mozilla Firefox add-ons revisited
Various modules enhance power substantially
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The reasonably fast and feature-packed browser, Firefox, is getting
better with time.
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NEW BROWSING aids meant for the Firefox browser are discussed in this
edition of NetSpeak
Setting-up an efficient/secure browser, equipped with relevant
add-ons, forms an important step in having a productive online life.
The feature-packed and reasonably fast browser, Mozilla Firefox,
(featured in this column many times), is getting better with time. One
of the reasons for Firefox's success is the availability of various
easily installable extension modules that enhance its power
substantially.
In the past, several such extensions have been featured in this
column. Here we take a look at some of the new/innovative ones tried
out by this author recently.
Archiving pages
While moving from one page to the other, you may wish to archive the
page completely or partially. For this, many alternatives exist. You
can post it on a blog with comments or save it on to an online service
such as Furl. One obvious handicap here is the inability to access the
archived content offline. Further, though the solution is fine as long
as one needs to save only a couple of pages, it crumbles when one
attempts to save several pages or a complete web site. Of course, one
can save the page on to the local storage using the browser's `Save
as' option. But managing pages saved thus is really a cumbersome
process. If you want to save only a part of the page, the solution
becomes rather inefficient. And to save a complete web site you will
have to hunt for a utility (like Httrack). If web page archiving is a
problem for you, the feature-rich Firefox extension Scrapbook has all
the answers.
Scrapbook (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/427/) lets you save a
web site or a web page or a snippet from it, with a couple of clicks.
You can save them in separate folders and access them using the
extension's search feature. Once the extension is installed on
Firefox, you will find the menu option `ScrapBook' in its top menu
bar. And for storing a page snippet, just block the required portion,
right-click and access the option `Capture Selection' from the menu
that pops up. Another notable feature of this free tool is the
facility to download a complete web site.
So, from now on you can even forget about web site copiers.
To accomplish certain online tasks, we need to go through a set of
specified steps. For instance, to check email we need to access the
provider's log in page, key in the account details and move over to
the inbox page. Each of these steps has to be repeated whenever we
check mail. If such tasks could be accomplished by just clicking a
browser button, life becomes simpler. The Firefox extension, DejaClick
(http://www.dejaclick.com/), created for helping you record multi-step
online tasks and replay it later with a mouse click, could serve such
needs.
Once installed, DejaClick adds a tool bar on to Firefox. To record a
session, first click on the `Power On' button available on the
left-end of this toolbar. Now, click on the `Begin Recording' button,
go through the various steps as usual and when you are done, click on
the `Stop recording' button. You can click on the `Replay' button and
make sure that all the steps are recorded properly. Now create a
bookmarklet and place it on to the browser's toolbar (using the Deja's
button with the `Star' icon). Once the bookmarklet is successfully
created, the same task can be repeated by just clicking on this
bookmarklet.
J. MURALI
He can be contacted at: jmurali@gmail.com
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