Around the same time 4 years ago, Firefox had only 1.6% usage of the total market share for web browsers. As of 31st May 2007, Firefox’s estimated global usage is at 24.55%. What I like most about Firefox is the ability to tweak and add on plugins to it. Check out the 13 ways that you can further accelerate your Firefox 2 performance, if you haven’t. Firefox 2.0 is a huge improvement from version 1.0. I used to have a long list of Firefox extensions but now it’s been sliced down. Anyways, below are 9 of my favourite Firefox 2 add ons.

Adsense Notifier



I am the author of 3 blogs that are part of adsense’s advertising program. I like this plugin because it helps me keep track of 6 important things.



• Ad Impressions

one of the most important terms in the internet marketing arena. Impressions is the number of times a page or an ad is loaded. It tells me how well my site is doing in terms of visitor volume.

• Clicks

refers to the total number of ad clicks shown. The higher the better.

• CTR

Clicks / Ad Impressions = CTR. An average adsensed website gets about 1 to 10 clicks per hundred visitors.

• CPM

CPM is the cost per thousand ad impressions for a particular site. A Web site that charges $15,000 per banner and guarantees 600,000 impressions has a CPM of $25. Simply means $15,000 / 600 = $25.

• Earnings

How much I have earned so far. I have set the adsense notifier to refresh statistics every 20 minutes so that I can track my blogs’ progress throughout the day.

• RPC (V)

Revenue per click. How much I make for each click.

I strongly recommend this highly configurable plugin for everyone that uses Adsense.

AI Roboform Toolbar for Firefox



Roboform is an easy to apply and simple utility, but is extremely useful and can save you a great deal of time online. Easily place multiple adverts on a website, simply by saving the ad under a profile, and re-filling it as needed. The special thing about AI Roboform is accuracy. I have been using it for over a few months and logging into my email, blogs or anything that requires login is a breeze.

Try out the software for 30 days and see the difference. Though it costs $29.95 to buy, it’s the best password manager and form filler I have ever seen. It has won numerous awards such as PC Magazine Editor’s Choice and CNET Download.com’s Software of the Year.

All In One Sidebar



Opera was the browser that inspired the creation of AiOS. Imagine all the commonly used panels hidden at the left side of the browser which can easily be called out by just hovering the mouse over the left. The slide-out button and toolbar is extensively customizable.

Main dialog windows supported by AiOs include

• downloads
• extensions
• boookmarks
• firefox configuration
• page info

I use it a lot to monitor downloads and bookmark websites. It’s much easier and organized than Firefox’s.

ColorZilla



It has helped me to get color readings of any point in Firefox, adjust it and paste it into another program. Basically, if I see a color I would want to use in my website, I’ll just use ColorZilla to get the Hex reading of the color and use it in Photoshop or Dreamweaver.

Firebug



Firebug is the mother of all web developing tools for Firefox. Edit, debug, monitor CSS, HTML and JavaScript live in any webpage. It can be opened as a bar at the bottom of the window and gives me a huge scope of control over websites that I want to enable it for.

I first found out about Firebug when I wanted to test out the load time of my website. As a result, I wrote about the 13 tweaks that you can do to further accelerate Firefox 2. Firebug will notifies you immediately when it detects that there’s an error in the Javascript, CSS or HTML.

A must have for web developers and bloggers.

Flashgot



Flashgot is the Firefox extension that scored 5/5 with Softpedia and was one of the ’101 Fabulous Freebies’ in PC World magazine back in May 2006. What’s so good about Flashgot? It’s the best Firefox download manager integrator. With Flashgot, I no longer need to worry about download manager integration with Firefox.

I used to have Flashget but it couldn’t ‘catch’ the link when I download. Not GetRight, not Download Accelerator Plus. I had to copy the link and paste it into the download accelerator, which is a method that is tedious. “save as..” one by one is tedious. Files that are unable to be downloaded through accelerators will have a much longer wait, and that is tedious.

Thanks to the guys at Flashgot who turned every supported download manager into a download manager for Firefox!

IE Tab



Believe it or not, you can actually run Windows Update from Firefox. What IE Tab does is actually embed IE in a Firefox tab. It comes in handy when a page doesn’t load well into Firefox, like Microsoft’s. All you need to do is just left click at the browser icon located at the lower left of Firefox and it’s different.

Imageshack



One of the best image hosting sites I have ever come across. I host ALL my images, ALL of them in ImageShack. Why? Cause I can upload as much as I want. Flickr is cool too, but it imposes a 100MB upload limit per month. The toolbar allows me to batch upload all my images, which will then appear as links for me to hotlink them through blogs, websites and forums.

MeasureIT



A simple tool that draws a ruler across any webpage to check the width, height, or alignment of page elements in pixels. I use it to measure the length of an image, on whether if it fits into my blogs directly, or whether if I need to do changes to it.

Stumbleupon



StumbleUpon is a web browser plugin that allows its users to discover and rate webpages, photos, videos, and news articles. These webpages are typically presented when the user clicks the “Stumble!” button on the browser’s toolbar. StumbleUpon chooses which new webpage to display based on the user’s ratings of previous pages, ratings by his/her friends, and by the ratings of users with similar interests. It is a recommendation system which uses peer and social networking principles. There is also one-click blogging built in as well. Users can rate, or choose not to rate, any webpage with a thumbs up or thumbs down, and clicking the ‘Stumble’ button resembles “channel-surfing” the web.

When I have writer’s block, I stumble. When I’m bored, I stumble. When I think that the Web’s hopeless, I stumble. I think StumbleUpon is exciting because I don’t know what’s coming up next. Oh yeah, and eBay just bought over StumbleUpon in May 2007 for $75 million.

Are you a Firefox user?

If your answer is yes then you are more (sexy =P) tech-savvy, educated and engaged with user-generated content compared to internet explorer users.

The graph above interprets people’s interests, passions and lifestyles based on their actual online behavior. Marketing agencies are able to design more efficient advertising strategies based on the behavioural patterns of their targeted audience.

Firefox users rule over the 5 major areas of :

Online Services

Almost 70% of Firefox users visit blogs and photo sharing sites, much more compared to less than 4 out of 10 IE users. Firefox users are also more likely to visit sites offering online services such as software downloads (84 percent vs. 54 percent).

Technology

86% of Firefox users visit Technology sites, which is 26% more than IE users. Less than 3 in 10 IE users visit technology news sites while Firefox has more than 5 in 10.

Education

Education seems to be somewhat of a priority to Firefox users as 78% of them seem to prove the fact. I’m not sure on what to say about IE users, but 56% is quite a difference when compared.

Book Sites

Think about it. Firefox with 6 in 10 users compared to IE with a little more than 3 in 10.

Directories / Resources

70% in Firefox compared to less than half in IE is no joke.

Conclusion is, Firefox users are more aware of what’s up and what’s down in the cyber world. Firefox has changed my life too. It has changed the way I see the world wide web. If you’re already an user, you might want to further accelerate your Firefox with these 13 tweaks. If you haven’t, go download it.

ComScore
Measuring the digital world

TorPark is a special portable version of Firefox that incorporates the free Tor anonymizing service that allows you to surf anonymously by relaying your connection through a chain of special Tor servers. It created quite a sensation when it was released last year as it provided users with an easy way to surf anonymously without going through the hassle of configuring complex network settings. It could also be run from a USB flash drive which made it ideal for use on public terminals. A new version has just been released based on Firefox V2.0.0.2 rather than V1.5 used in the original.

Here are pictures for a better understanding.

Torpark Free Edition
Download the latest installer

Torrify : Torpark
Privacy Services

Tested on firefox version 2.0.0.2

Tested at http://rangit.com.

Recorded load time with Firefox Load Time Analyzer Plugin.

Before

8.703 seconds

After

7.609 seconds = 12% increase

The Tweaks

Pipelining



Proxy Pipelining



Disable ipv6



Add Content Interrupt Parsing







Add Content Max Tokenizing Time







Add Content Notify Interval







Add Content Notify On Timer







Add Content Notify Backoffcount







Add Content Switch Threshold







Add Nglayout Initial Paint Delay







Add User Interface Submenu Delay







Add Plugin Expose Full Path





Value should automatically be true.

Add Browser Cache Memory Capacity

How much did it increase for you?

=)

Free Republic
How to speed up firefox

Firefox Hack
Hack firefox to make it faster

Firefox Speed Increase
Firefox speed increase

Helpero
How to speed up firefox

Anyway, I’ve included a few of the highest rated ads on this page. All of the Firefox flicks can be found here. You’ll need a broadband connection as those are all videos. Here are 3 of some 280 video ads that I found in Youtube. Enjoy!

Firefox Flicks
The complete directory of Firefox flicks

Bill Bercik must be Firefox’s No.1 Fan! At the time when I saw his site, there were 1482 Firefox extensions listed in his site! That’s a lot of extenions.

Once you’re at the main page, there’s a list of 70 Most Downloaded extensions, sorted by weekly downloads. One a single row, there are several columns that describe the file.

The first column is the name of the extension and it links to the official Firefox extension site. One cand ownload it straight away from there or check out the full description and a screenshot of the extension in use.

The last 4 columns on the right are the statistics for User Rating, Total Downloads, Weekly Downloads, Last Updated. And of course, there is a search bar right at the top for one who has a rough idea of what one is looking for.

Before scrolling down to the extension list, there are 3 drop down menus at the top of the table. They are the Category, Submitted Picks and Sort By. There are about 21 different categories, from Blogging to XUL Applications, to choose from. Since the list is big, and you’re not sure what to choose, simply select any picks of the list of 13 peoples in Submitted Picks. The first list of picks to go through is of course Bill’s list. Anyways, check out the site for yourself. Great stuff, Bill!

WebPasties
Check out their pasties

Leave a comment on every visited website. Give an opinion. Leave a trail. Download the extension to use it. Once installed, 2 buttons and a menu item will appear. The buttons are used to show / hide the sidebar and to add a trail mark to a page. Once a website is marked for trailing, A popup will appear for the user to key in the trail name, title and remarks. Websites of the same trail name will be grouped together. From the menu item, an user can choose to see one’s own marks, other user’s marks or both. A plus point for trailfire is given when users without the extension are also able to view remarks that are shared.

Here’s an example of trailfire in use.

Trailfire
Leave a comment everywhere.