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.