Internet

Things to browse, download or communicate over the internet.

Browsers

Firefox

Always the browser to develop with, mostly due to the extensions.

• Download Firefox
• Extensions that I like/use are
  • Web developer toolbar
  • DevBoi, adds a sidebar for each of the HTML/CSS/DOM2 specs so you can middle click to look something up.
  • HTML validator
  • Firebug, a different way of going through the code, most useful for it’s JavaScript debugging.
  • Del.icio.us integration
  • Google toolbar
  • Colorzilla
  • Download videos, to save off things like YouTube.
  • All in one gestures, use the mouse to ‘flick’ back, forward, close tab etc.
  • Nuke anything, right click on something and ‘nuke’ to remove it. Useful for print-outs or annoying ads.
  • Better Gmail, collects the best Greasemonkey scripts for improving Gmail, such as showing nice icons for attachments, and saved searches.
  • Session saver, (not needed with FF 2).
  • I have succumbed to social bookmarking, and Yahoo’s delicious extension seems like the best method
  • British Language dictionary for Firefox 2′s spell checking.
  • Expandable text areas.
  • Scrap book, a create a library of saved pages.
  • Dust me selectors, find unused CSS selectors in your pages.

See also .Net mag’s favorites, and if you use a high-res monitor, I’d use the Spheregnome Big theme.

I will be trying out:

• Link checker
• Operator, looks like a powerful microformats extension.
• iMacros, automate form-filling and other repetitive tasks.
• Stylish, domain specific user style sheet management.

Opera

I’ve been finding Firefox a bit slow on my Mac Mini, possibly due to the umpteen extensions I’ve got installed

I’ve been trying Opera, and it’s good, definately in the same league, but it’s difficult to find documentation on some of the advanced features, so I’m tracking them here:

• Developer tools
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Mouse gestures
• User scripts intro
• Tutorial
• User agent strings
• Web dev toolbar
• Accessibility toolbar

Email

Email – Thunderbird

I use IMAP on my server to allow easy swappng of email applications, but Thunderbird is the one I tend to stick with. It is quicker on Windows than OSX, but still has some nice features that keep me using it.

Bittorrent – Azureus

The program I know from Windows is Java based: Azureus, probably best used with the Peer Guardian pluggin.