My 10 Favourite Firefox Add-ons

One reason I like Firefox more than Internet Explorer is its availability of add-ons. My favourite add-ons are:

1 Zotero

I have written about Zotero in another post. Zotero is so good that it alone provides sufficient reason for adopting Firefox. Additional details about Zotero are available from my earlier blog post and from http://www.zotero.org/.

2 No Script

No Script stops websites from running Java script, flash, shockwave, or pdf unless you authorise it. It lets you know what scripts etc are on the page in a balloon and allows you to permanently or temporarily allow that script. You can also permanently disallow the script or cancel previous authorisations. No Script gives me confidence to surf to unknown websites and especially to use Tiny URLs (or other URLs where the final destination is not apparent from the URL) as I know the risks are lower than would be the case if I was not using No Script. Additional details are available from No Script.

3 AdBlock Plus

AdBlock Plus prevents nearly all banner ads from loading. It works by maintaining a blacklist of banner ad URLs and blocking the loading of those URLs. Most banner ads are inserted into webpages by a link to a dynamic list of ads rather than have the ad included in the code for the page - AdBlock Plus blocks that link. Blocking these ads stops me paying for their download and gives me back the top part of my screen. AdBlock Plus settings are customisable by the user. Additional details are available from AdBlock Plus.

4 Australian Dictionary

Readers from outside Australia may have noticed the spelling of the words "favourite" and "authorise" above. This is not a mispelling but is standard Australian spelling. I am sick of American spelling checkers telling me they are wrong. Firefox allows me to use an Australian Dictionary and get rid of those pesky red lines.

5 Tab Mix Plus

Tab Mix Plus gives a variety of tools to manage tabs. The tools I use are: freezing tabs which stops me closing them by accident; showing tabs in multiple rows if I have too many open to fit on one row; a "closed tab list" which allows me to right-click and see the tabs I have recently closed and to re-open them; and changing the colour of the tab if the page has been updated since I last accessed it. There are many more tools available in Tab Mix Plus which I do not use or have not discovered yet. Additional details are available from Tab Mix Plus.

6 Delicious Bookmarks

This add-on gives me icons on my toolbar to enable me to add an item to delicious, view my bookmarks in a sidebar and to open my delicious website. It also gives me icons in my statusbar to indicate any activity in my network and if anyone has tagged anything for me. Additional details are available from Delicious.

7 Twitterfox

Twitterfox shows me in the statusbar if I have any unread tweets and allows me to read and write tweets in a balloon by clicking on the statusbar icon. Additional details are available from Twitterfox.

8 AutoPager

AutoPager automatically loads the next page of many multi-page websites and adds it to the bottom of the current page. This allows me to see the second and subsequent pages by simply scrolling down. This is especially useful with search engine results. Additional details are available from AutoPager.

9 TinyURL Creator and Long URL Mobile Expander

This is cheating as they are seperate add-ons but I have put them both in because they work together. TinyURL creator gives me an icon on my toolbar which allows me to create a TinyURL from the current URL and it puts the TinyURL in my clipboard for me to paste where I want it. Long URL Mobile Expander shows me the full URL in a balloon when I mouse-over a tiny URL. Additional details are available from TinyURL Creator and Long URL Mobile Expander.

10 Facebook Toolbar

The Facebook Toolbar enables me to go directly to facebook pages from the toolbar, to update my status and to open a facebook sidebar. This add-on also shows balloons to notify my of facebook events from my friends such as status updates. Additional details are available from Facebook.

Others

Other add-ons I like which did not make my top ten include:

• Yammerfox
• Ghostery
• LinkedIn Companion

Bibliographic Software for Collaborative Research

In the dark ages of academia, researchers maintained an index card file of all their references. These 15cm by 10cm pieces of lined cardboard were the basic working tool for a researcher and the final stage of writing any paper was going through the paper and confirming the reference details against the index cards. Fortunately life has changed. A little over a decade ago, bibliographic software appeared on the market which replaced these boxes of index cards. Overtime, the functionality of bibliographic software has improved to allow simplified data capture from databases and catalogues, integration with word processors and customisation to meet the referencing idiosyncrasies of a variety of journals. But this generation of bibliographic software contains a significant remaining weakness - it does not facilitate collaboration among authors at different institutions.

Web 2.0 systems have opened imaginations to a brave new world of social collaboration. Bibliographic software has been slow to adopt the philosophy of Web 2.0. My image of a Web 2.0 bibliographic solution would have the following features:

1. Single-click data capture from databases, catalogues and websites
2. Able to record all research sources - paper and electronic
   
3. Integration with word processors
4. Customisable referencing styles
5. Secure storage
   
6. Standards compliant
   
7. Accessible through any computer connected to the web
8. Platform independent
9. Free or very low cost for users
10. Shareable at the user's discretion
11. Use of folksonomies
12. Facilitate creation of communities of scholars
    

Some of these features are available in some Web 2.0 systems. Delicious, CiteULike, LibraryThing, and similar systems all meet the bottom six requirements. Traditional bibliographic systems like Endnote meet the top six requirements. I have not been able to find a single system which meets all 12 requirements.

There are some systems which are moving in this direction. Endnote and RefWorks are traditional bibliographic systems which have expanded to be web based. However, both systems require an expensive licence and are cumbersome to use across institutions. Some of the journal publishers are providing systems free of charge but these systems lack the wordprocessor integration of the bibliographic software and do not work as easily with material published by other companies.

The system which comes closest to meeting the requirements is Zotero 1.5. Zotero is open source software but only works with the Firefox web browser. It provides downloadable addins for Microsoft Word and OpenOffice Writer. The libraries in Zotero are shareable at the user's discretion and this facilitates creation of scholarly communities. To see how these communities can work, click on the Zotero icon in the right-hand side panel of this post. Most references can be captured by a single-click on an icon in the website's address bar. The downside of Zotero is that the only version with all these features is still in beta release so may not be secure and reliable and that it is dependent on Firefox. I have not investigated the use of Zotero on Macs or Linux machines. Zotero is also currently involved in litigation with the owners of Endnote over claims of infringement of intellectual property rights.

Zotero promises to be the next leap forward in bibliographic systems and it can lead to great efficiencies in cross-institutional research collaboration.