What’s in My Browser: David Pierce

Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

This is the second in a series of posts, about what we all use in our browsers. They’re now where we spend most of our time, and everyone’s got it tweaked a little differently. Here’s mine.

After recently converting to Mac, I had a chance to completely refresh my computing habits. I didn’t install anything up-front, and only installed what I needed as I went along. That’s made my browser faster, leaner, and without some of the extra nonsense I didn’t really need anyway. Here’s how it looks now:

Browser

I use Firefox, 99.9% of the time. Every once in a while, I’ll open up Safari (which I haven’t customized in the least) to check how a site looks, or if a change I made works, but I don’t use it for real browsing. Firefox, on the other hand, is open all day, every day.

I won’t go in to the 8 trillion awesome reasons to use Firefox (Google it – it’ll blow your mind hole), but instead tell you a bit about how I use it.

Extensions

Extensions are the lifeblood of Firefox, the feature that makes it so much better than other browsers. Just about anything you want your browser to do, Firefox has an extension for. Here are the ones I use:

Firebug – Firebug’s a Web developer’s best friend. I’m not one, but Firebug is teaching me. It shows you, with just one click, exactly what’s behind a webpage – the source, the style, and lots more. For me, designing a web site mostly by cobbling together bits from other sites that are better at it than me, Firebug’s a dream tool.

SkipScreen – I download a lot from the Web: videos, music, and the like. For anyone who’s done this before, it’s a huge hassle. There’s a bunch of screens you have to go through, pop-ups that open, and then a set period of time you have to wait. SkipScreen magically skips all that, and brings you straight to the download, making my life a lot easier, and my computer a lot less susceptible to the bad stuff from those sites.

FireFTP – Again, this one’s a little blogger-specific, but for anyone who needs a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) app – and if you don’t know what that is, FireFTP’s not for you – FireFTP’s perfect. No frills, no fuss, and it works right within Firefox.

Google Gears – Gears makes the Web available offline. Gmail, Google Calendar,  Remember the Milk, and many other sites can all be synced offline, so you can keep using them even without an Internet connection. It’s sheer awesomeness.

Better Gmail 2 – Speaking of Gmail, Better Gmail 2 makes a bunch of small improvements to the hugely popular email service.  It does things like show your message count in the tab favicon (the little icon next to the page title in your browser), show attachment icons, and more. Lots of little improvements makes for one way better Gmail.

Better GCal – Essentially the same as above, but with Google Calendar improvements. Better GCal lets you collapse the header and sidebar for a better view of the calendar, show the current time, and even make the calendar look a little different. The extension makes GCal look and feel like a desktop app, and it works much better for it.

XMarks – XMarks syncs all your bookmarks between browsers – Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. It’s great, not only as a backup tool if I accidentally uninstall my browser (sadly not out of character), but as a way to make my browsers all feel alike on the three computers I use on any given day.

Scripts

One of the coolest things about Firefox is the Greasemonkey extension, which lets you install little scripts into Firefox. The idea is odd, but you can actually change everything about a given website – from adding keyboard shortcuts, to changing how the page loads in your browser. To give you an idea of what Greasemonkey can do, here’s a few of my favorite scripts:

Helvetireader – This is for Google Reader, my favorite place to read RSS feeds. It doesn’t change how it works, only adds a gorgeous new skin on top of Reader to make it much more pleasant to use.

Helvetimail – Same as with Helvetireader, Helvetimail adds a gorgeous, minimalist theme to Gmail that gets rid of some unnecessary visual clutter, and makes Gmail just purdy.

Facebook Keyboard Shortcuts – Does just what it says: adds a few keyboard shortcuts to Facebook. With the script installed, typing B will take you right to a list of upcoming birthdays, C takes you to photos, and much more. It makes navigating and checking Facebook a whole lot faster, and means less mouse usage. Which I guess is good…

Facebook Fixer – This is about the most powerful Greasemonkey script you’ll ever see. Facebook Fixer does things like make profile pictures bigger, give you the ability to download videos, integrate with Google Calendar, and much more. It’s got a whole bunch of features Facebook should already have, seamlessly integrated into the interface.

There are literally thousands of other scripts, and I’m resolving now to go find some new and awesome ones, but those are the few that’ve worked their way into my everyday use.

Bookmarklets

Bookmarklets are little buttons that work across browsers, and that do a particular action with the webpage you’re on. They’re available for any browser, and have huge benefits. Like these (you can install any of these, by the way, by dragging the link to your bookmarks):

Stumble! – Opens the SU toolbar, and a random web page

Bit.ly – Automatically creates a short, bit.ly link for whatever page I’m on.

Stumble This! – Adds the current page to StumbleUpon

Diigolet – lets me bookmark, highlight, annotate, and save a webpage

Readability – Strips away a lot of the background stuff, and clutter, and leaves a more reading-friendly page.

Posterous – Shares the current page on my Posterous site.

Read Later – adds the current page to Instapaper, where I can read it later (or read it offline on my iPod Touch).

Clip to Evernote – Adds the current page to Evernote (where I store long-term bookmarks, and some other things), and works way better than the Firefox extension.

(Here’s 100 more awesome bookmarklets, if you’re interested)

That’s it and that’s all, folks! My browser does everything I need it to, finally, and not a whole lot more. It’s synced across multiple machines, and I barely even notice which computer I’m on anymore – and that’s huge for me.

Your turn: what’s in your browser?

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