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Mozilla Firefox add-ons revisited

Various modules enhance power substantially

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.

While reading a web page, you may come across an unfamiliar word, which is difficult to pronounce. No need to jump over to a dictionary service, just install the Firefox extension `Backword' (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2955/).

Once integrated with the browser, Backword lets you get the word's pronunciation by clicking on the relevant button from the menu that pops up, when your mouse hovers over it.

J. MURALI

He can be contacted at: jmurali@gmail.com

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