Thanks for the emails regarding the previous Firefox Add-ons I have written about over the last couple of columns. Also, I’m glad to hear that several of you saved a lot of money using the "Invisible Hand" add-on I mentioned. Tim wrote to say he saved almost $100 on a purchase he made using that add-on! This will be the last week we’ll deal with Add-ons and then we will move on to something different.
Today I have three for you; one for help, one for fun and one for a neat application.
First, for Google-lovers is the "Google Toolbar" add-on. If you use Google and/or Gmail and want a quick way to access their features you have to try this one out. This add-on is also available for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. It is added into FF differently than the previous ones I’ve mentioned. Go to "toolbar.google.com" in either browser and the correct toolbar will be installed. After the installation is finished you will be able to search in Google and check your Gmail, as well as access many other Google related features conveniently from your browser. Play with the options and see what other useful resources you can come up with!
Next is an add-on which is mostly for convenience, (OK, and a little bit of fun for the geeks out there) "Prism for Firefox". Prism is the reason I no longer use Google Chrome which allows you to create a "web-application" from a web site. Yes, I know it is a Google product and I am a Google fan-boy but I don’t care for their browser.
Prism allows you to create an individual web-application out of any webpage. For instance, for those of us who enjoy listening to the free music from Pandora.com, it can be combined with Prism to act like a separate program on your computer.
After installing it in Firefox, log into your Pandora.com account (Prism will work on any site but Pandora shows how well it works.) Now choose Tools from the menu bar and "Convert Website to Application". You will be asked to choose a couple of settings such as where to save the link, etc. Placing the link on the desktop is a good starting point.
Next, go look on your desktop and you will see an icon for Pandora, or whatever site you used. If you double click the icon only Pandora will open in a window. It will run in its own window. You can run Prism with any website, including online games.
Be creative and let me know how you have used these add-ons.