AFTER chatting with the Wordsmith about how we have our internet browsers set up to help with our work here is my write-up on the different tools I use.
Most of my work involves writing articles and answering comments and questions in forums, as well as keeping up to date with news and other blogs and websites.
So I start with the Firefox browser as it lets me use add-ons that let me use individual tools and websites quickly and easily.
I am a fan of having a super lightweight browser that ensures plenty of screen space is available for webpages, which cuts down on scrolling around the page (click thumbnails for full size image).
So one of the most important add-ons I use is the Compact Menu 2.
This puts all your menubar controls, such as File, Edit, View, under one little button that you can click on with your mouse and slide through to get at any of the controls you require, this frees up so much space in your browser.
I then have a few regular buttons you find on any browser, such as Go back one page or Go forward one page, as well as Refresh, Stop and Home.
My email, feed reader and documents are all run through my Google Account so I need a quick way of getting to these so the next button on my browser navigation toolbar is GUtil!
This works in a similar way to Compact Menu 2 in that it draws together the Google tools I use under one button so with a couple of clicks I can head off to Docs or Google Analytics.
Thanks to the wonders of tabbed browsing in Firefox I can leave GMail and Google Reader running in the background, but GUtil! lets me quickly get to those services I might not use all the time.
This space saving set up lets me have the address bar and Google Search box take up a large proportion of the toolbar, which is fine for me as I can easily copy and paste between the different boxes if required.
Next comes my mini control panel (click thumbnail for full size image), which starts off with the toolbar shortcut provided by bit.ly that lets you create a tiny URL for those pages whose website address would take up acres of space.
I can then with one click have bit.ly spit out a shortened URL, copy it and then include it in an email, a forum post or my weekly newsletter.
Next up is a shortcut to Google Docs that again sits within my toolbar and loads up the ten most recent documents I have been working on in my side panel, Steve Rubel has a great collection of shortcuts to explore.
I also place my sidebar on the right of the screen, which is something I personally prefer, although it does require a bit of tweaking within Firefox to do this, more at Customizing Mozilla.
To finish off my toolbar I then have a regular Bookmarks button, a History button and the Delicious bookmarks button that all load up into the sidebar.
Finally a button that launches TwitKit which is the way I access my Twitter account, I'm a fan because it's clean and tidy and sits in my sidebar letting me open it up when I want and won't constantly annoy me with updates.
And that is one last thing I look for in any Firefox tool I use, the option to control any notifications as I will invariably turn them off, because there is enough out there already drawing on my time!
If you have you own set up for Firefox please feel free to add a comment below, or are there any other tools I should be trying out?
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