Take the red pill ... use FireFox !

Well for those who wonder what the red pill is ...ummm well u r still in the blue pill world !! (unquote the matrix)

First tech blog had to be the browser, because we simply cannot live without one & is the window to the internet world out there. (apart from geeky shell sessions)

Commenting on Firefox today, well there is loads to say about this versatile browser. Its an instantly likable browser without any frills & extremely easy to use. Performs amazingly fast & unlike IE, will not crash & burn often asking u to send a report to 'tfosorciM'

Common expected features like popup-dealers, tabs, integrated search, privacy, updates, etc all exist with calmness.

You can have it in 4 variants - Normal, eBay, campus and a cool portable edition courtsey PortableApps.com

[what.is.the.eBay.variant: well as its name suggests - all cool stuff with ur eBay a/c like alerts, bid updates, etc. etc.]

[what.is.the.campus.variant: combines the Firefox browser with streamlined access to music, research sites and research tools]

[what.is.the.portable.variant: leaves no personal information behind on the machine you run it on, carry your favorite bookmarks, etc. with you wherever you go]

Well, this post is not about browsing, but a glimpse of the integrated browser - the future of things to come. When we hopefully will have some sorta virtual operating system in cyber space to which all we need to connect is JUST a browser (or s/w based on it)

So, talking about the cool gizmo's that I have encountered with Firefox, here are some of my favorites,

For the Google appetite,
GoogleReaderNotifier: This firefox extension shows you how many unread items you have in your Google Reader account in the browser status bar.
GSpace: This extension allows you to use your Gmail Space for file storage. It acts as an online drive, so you can upload files from your hard drive and access them online.
GUtils: Adds 55 Google Utilities in your Firefox Menu and Toolbar.

Sprucing up the browser,
Email This: Email This! will send your recipient the link, title, & highlighted text of the page you are viewing using GMail, Google Apps GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail and Stand-Alone Mail Clients like Outlook Express, Thunderbird, & More!
Blue Organizer: Blue Organizer is the new smart-browsing technology for Firefox. It automatically recognizes things like books, wine, travel destinations and offers contextual shortcuts between your favorite sites.
Research Word: Search any word on a page via context (right click) menu from a variety of resources, including: Wikipedia, dictionaries and media sites.
AJAX Yahoo! Mail: Adds AJAX support to the classic Yahoo! mail.
DownThemAll! :The first and only download manager/accelerator built inside Firefox!
Cookie-Swap: Cookie-Swap enables you to easily swap all your cookies so that you can be logged in to multiple web e-mail accounts (like Gmail and Yahoo! mail) at the same time and quickly switch between them.

Getting a more productive browser,
CoolIris: Just mouse over any link, and the Cooliris preview window immediately appears to show you the content. Using this preview, one can email, open it in a new tab, etc. etc.
ClipMarks: With Clipmarks, you can clip the best parts of web pages. Whether it's a paragraph, sentence, image or video, you can capture just the pieces you want without having to bookmark the entire page.
SaveImageInFolder: Easily save images in personally customized folders.
TabCatalog: This shows contents of all of tabs as a thumbnail-style list.
CtrlTab: Instead of directly changing tab it works some thing like Alt+Tab on windows. It views preview of the tab and you can change directly to the tab you want to or just go through all tabs to see what you got in them.

SearchEngine buttons for your tool-bar

Techie assist,
FireBug: Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page...
GreaseMonkey: Allows you to customize the way a web-page displays using small bits of JavaScript. More info here.
FireFTP: FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers.

For those who like to create their own plugins, this is a good starting tutorial or probably this website can assist further.