By now you must have heard about the Firefox browser from Open Source champions Mozilla. One of the joys of Firefox is that it is not a “take it or leave” package of features. Rather, Firefox is expandable and enjoys the benefits of being associated with an active developers community of programmers and enthusiasts who turn out a wide variety of enhancements (called “extensions”) which give you the ability to customize Firefox to your needs. In the best Research Launchpad tradition of letting you benefit from my extensive (and unfortunately sometimes wasted) hours online, I’ve prepared a quick survey of Mozilla Firefox extensions that are relevant to searchers, and indeed to most any aspiring power surfer: Amazon Sidebar The Amazon Sidebar lets users of Firefox search Amazon sites from a sidebar search dialogue. Supported Amazon sites are .com, .co.uk, and .de. Very useful for hardcore bibliophiles and anyone conducting research for citations, authors, related works, or bibliographies. Context Highlight Select a word on a web page, right click, and choose “Highlight Word” from the menu. This extension will quickly and easily highlight all instances of your current text selection within the current page. One heck of a lot easily than CTRL-F (over and over again!) Context Search Combines wonderfully with Mycroft, described below. Select a word on a web page, right click, and choose “Web Search For” from the menu and a submenu appears listing all the search engine plug ins you have installed giving you instant access to a […]
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