OStatic

As I'm getting familiar with the new Release Candidate 1 of Firefox 3.5, I'm also busy trying out my favorite Firefox extensions to make sure they all work with it. I'm happy to report that may most favorite Firefox extension, iMacros, works like a charm with it. If you haven't used iMacros, it can make you much more efficient, in many ways. The extension makes it about as easy to create macros for repetitive tasks you perform online as it is to operate a DVD player. You can even save macros that execute complicated tasks as Bookmarks. If you missed our step-by-step visual tour of how to create your first macro in iMacros, you'll find it here below the fold, and it's also worth looking at the iMacros demos available online.?

Everyone who uses Mozilla's Firefox browser knows that it gets much of its power from the thousands of useful extensions available for it. Some Firefox extensions are so powerful that they almost qualify as applications unto themselves, as I find to be true with the awesome iMacros extension. As announced on the Mozilla Add-Ons blog today, Mozilla has introduced Collections, which, among other things, will let you click one link to put a whole set of your favorite Firefox extensions on a new installation of the browser. You can find a video showing how Collections works here, and there are already several useful looking Collections available at the Add-ons for Firefox site (see the right side of the page).?

Do you use a mobile device with touchscreen capabilities and the Firefox browser? If so, look into JKOnTheRun's post about Linja Zax. It's an extension for Firefox that optimizes browsing on touchscreen devices. According to James Kendrick: I am only beginning to scratch the surface of what Linja Zax does, but it?s already making a big difference to my handheld browsing experience. It adds zoom in/out abilities that are invoked by simply drawing a circle on the screen. Swoop one way to make things bigger and the other way to make them smaller. It is configurable, so you can make it as smooth as you want. You know how on the iPhone the Safari browser automatically zooms a new web page to be displayed optimally when it?s opened? Linja Zax does that, too, by making the page fit the small screen automatically. It does this for both landscape and portrait orientation. Check out more at JKOnTheRun.

If you're a Firefox user and you use several of the many useful extensions available for the browser, you've probably run into the thorny problem of one extension disabling or altering the functionality of another one. This can be quite annoying. For example, AdBlockPlus is extremely popular as an extension for blocking pop-up ads and banners, but (sometimes unintentionally) there are quite a few Firefox extensions that disrupt it, drawing regular complaints from people trying new extensions, or upgrading existing ones. Mozilla is now proposing a set of policies to police this problem, prompted by a recent catfight between extension developers. The proposed policy changes raise questions about just how much freedom extension developers should enjoy.

Here at OStatic, we've often covered the most useful extensions for Mozilla's Firefox browser. The extensions, of course, are what make it such a compelling browser to use. There has been a general trend among Firefox extensions toward extending the way the browser helps you get more out of the applications that you use all the time. In this post, you'll find six of the best examples of these app-helper extensions, which you can grab and install in minutes. Whether you use Google, Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, applications on mobile devices, or popular development tools, you'll find top-notch, efficiency-boosting extensions here.