Installing new extension

Before we start. let’s first touch on the method to install an extension in your Gnome Shell.

1. First, go to the Gnome Shell extension page. Search for the extension that you want to install.

2. Click the “Off” button at the left of the extension title. The slider will now move to “On”.

3. A popup will appear to ask if you want to download and install the extension. Click “Install”.

That’s it.

10 of the best Gnome Shell extensions

1. Frippery Applications Menu

Personally, I feel that the Activities button at the screen top left corner is useless. It serves the same purpose as the Super button (on your keyboard) and moving your mouse cursor to the top left corner, and it has never been utilized. What the Frippery Applications Menu does is to replace the Activities button with the old Gnome 2.x Application Menu. Click on it and it will show all your applications arranged in their respective categories.

It is definitely more useful than the Activities button.

2. Desktop Scroller

If you like to use different workspace to manage your applications and windows, you will find that switching to another workspace is a very troublesome task. You need to go to the Activities overview (either move your mouse to the screen top left corner, or press the Super button) before you can select the workspace.

The Desktop Scroller is a handy extension where you can move your cursor to the right edge of the screen and scroll up/down to switch workspace. This is one useful way to improve your productivity.

3. gTile

Do you like to work with several applications concurrently? If yes, I am sure you will face the issue of arranging your application windows properly to make them viewable. The gTile extension allows you to quickly arrange your windows in tile. The default setting comes with grids of 2×2, 3×2, 4×4, and 6×6, but you can configure the ‘extension.js’ and add your own grid layout.

4. Jump Lists

The Ubuntu Unity comes with a feature where you can edit the jump list items and behavior for each application launcher. In Gnome Shell, you can achieve the same effect with the Jump Lists extension.

The Jump Lists items are based on the recent files that you have opened. It will requires Zeitgeist to be installed.

5. Music Integration

Ubuntu comes with Banshee media player pre-installed and there is an appindicator where you can control the playback of your music. But what if you are not using Banshee? What about Clementine, Rhythmbox or even the Nuvola Player? This Music Integration extension will unite them all. Making use of the MPRIS2, it will integrate all those supported Music Player into your Gnome Shell automatically.

One thing to note, if you install this extension via the Gnome extension, it will not activate the Music Preferences by default. Here is how you can activate it.

Open a terminal and type the following lines:

cd ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/music-integration@brianrobles204
sudo cp org.gnome.shell.extensions.musicintegration.gschema.xml /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/
sudo glib-compile-schemas /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/

6. Overlay Icons

This extension adds a big application icon to each application on the Activities overview page. This makes it easier for you to locate the application window that you are looking for.

Seriously, I think this should be part of the Gnome Shell feature, rather than having to install an extension to enable it.

7. Places Status Indicator

This is a simple extension that add a systems status menu for quickly navigating places in the system. Simple, yet useful.

8. Calculator

Instead of opening the calculator app every time you need to do a quick maths, this extension allows you to do calculation on the search overview. Simply go to the Activities overview page and type your maths in the search field. The result will instantly appear at the center of the screen.

9. Coverflow Alt-Tab

Are you bored of the default Alt + Tab windows switching behavior? This extension adds a coverflow animation so you can switch your windows in style.

10. Mint Gnome Shell Extension (MGSE)

The Linux Mint MGSE contains few of the best extensions that are not found in the Gnome Shell Extension library. The Bottom Panel and Windows List extension make Gnome Shell a much better, and usable desktop manager.

Conclusion

Here you are – 10 of the best Gnome Shell extensions. I am sure to have missed out a few, do tell us about your favorite extension in the comments.

These extensions allow users to remove the junk (e.g ads, links etc.) around the reading material allowing them to focus more on the material rather than on the distracting ads, links, etc.

1. Readability

Readability is a great app for people who intend to remove the clutter from a website and just read the information provided on the web page now or later. The app “zaps” the clutter and saves the web articles in a comfortable reading view which ensures maximum focus on the content and not on ads. To get started, you must create an account on Readability.

Just click on the “Read Now” button to disable surrounding webpage clutter and noise and take the reading material into a very clean area. If you don’t have time, you can save the article to your Readability account and read it later. You may also share the articles with your friends via e-mail or Facebook or any other social networking website.

You can easily send material directly to your Amazon Kindle if you have one (with subscription).

Readability

2. iReader

iReader allows the user to take the reading content available on a web-page to a simple one-panel scrollable window, thus avoiding the clutter and junk displayed on the website and keeping your focus on the news you came for.

Using the app is simple. Once you arrive on a web page where reading material is available (the iReader icon will appear), just click the iReader icon to open the iReader window with the material displayed in a simple one-panel display.

You can also print the article quickly, or share it with your friends over Facebook or send the article via E-mail to anyone you wish quickly.

iReader

3. Clearly

Clearly is a great and innovative app for people who often visit blogs and news websites.

The app allows such users to bring down the blog posts, articles and webpages into a clean and easy to read format. The best thing about the service is that the user can save the article to their Evernote account allowing them to read it from anywhere they wish.

If there are multi-pages on the news site, Clearly will bring them down to one seamless window.

Clearly

4. Instachrome

If you have an instapaper account, you should definitely check out Instachrome, which allows users to save URLS and collect articles on the web to read later on through their instapaper account.

The whole process is a matter of one-click by which you can save the article for later viewing or even view at that very same time if you have the time to do so.

If you like the article so much, or if you feel the article might come handy later on, you can archive it for later viewing purposes.

Instachrome

There you have it folks – some four really helpful apps available for Google Chrome that allow users to cut down web-pages into simple one panel view box ensuring that the user pays maximum focus on the article itself and not on distractions at the side of the web-page.

Image credit: markhillary

However, depending on your browsing habits and needs, you may wish to do a little tweaking in order to get the most out of Safari. Read on below to see how to do just that.

Safari Extensions

Let’s begin by taking a look at the most obvious tweaks you can make to Safari, the Extensions Gallery. While unveiled with much fanfare by Apple, the Extension Gallery has failed to gain the sheer volume of extensions which can be found on Chrome or Firefox, for example. Still, what it lacks in numbers, it more than makes up for in quality, as is highlighted by these three choices of extension:

1. AdBlock

As one might imagine from its name, the AdBlock extension prevents advertisements from cluttering up your web page. While Safari users have always had this option with third-party apps, AdBlock is the most stable, secure and slick implementation of advertisement blocking software on Safari to date. Just remember to add your favourite websites to the whitelist so they still get supported by their advertisers.

2. ClickToFlash

Click To Flash prevents any Adobe Flash from being loaded within Safari as default, instead offering a grey box to click on if desired. This may sound a little tiresome but once one has set a whitelist to allow exceptions for those rare occasions when Flash is actually desirable, it makes web browsing much quicker and more stable. An additional benefit of ClickToFlash is that it’ll make use of HMTL5 when possible, meaning that websites like Youtube can actually be used without the need for Flash at all.

3. Facebook Cleaner

If like me, you find Facebook annoying but necessary, Facebook Cleaner may well be useful. The extension prevents those prompts to “like this” which turn up on many websites and also cleans up your actual Facebook page when logged in, by blocking most of the more annoying features of the site.

Customise Toolbar

I love Safari’s minimalist stylings, but the toolbar which Apple see fit to ship the browser with is a little too minimalist for my own tastes and I like to see a Home button, in addition to a New Tab button. If you’d like to add these buttons or just tweak the current layout, simply right-click on the toolbar and select “Customize Toolbar”.

This done, you should be presented with the above screen, from which new icons can be dragged and dropped onto the toolbar.

Top Sites

The Top Sites feature in Safari can be very useful as it already is, but perhaps even more so if you take the time to set it up to your favorite websites. To do this, click on the small “Edit” button in the bottom left hand corner. It’s a somewhat laborious process to get everything just right, but once you have done so I believe it’s worthwhile and saves significant time.

Set Up Preferences

Opening up the Preferences window within Safari will show options for fixing many people’s pet peeves with Safari. One can prevent the app from opening downloaded files which Safari deems as “Safe” automatically and also stop that most contentious of features implemented in the latest version of Safari; auto-correction.

Conclusion

Besides the tips and tweaks mentioned above, making use of Safari’s additional features can be what sets it apart from other web browsers. It may not do as much as some competing browsers, but what Safari does do, it does very well indeed. Reading List can completely replace the need for a “temp” folder to come back to read articles later, while fullscreen browsing is finally brought to Apple’s browser for those users who are currently running OS X Lion.

Have you got any other tips for making the most of Safari? If so, please let us know about them in the comments.

While Facebook is addictive, it can be annoying as well. Some of its feature like the news ticker, chat box etc. can be a great distraction and many important news are buried deep in the feed while junk message and spam keep finding their ways to your stream. Luckily, we don’t have to suffer in silence. Here are several browser extensions that you can use to tweak the behavior and theme of Facebook.

1. Social Fixer

Social Fixer is a is a free browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera (sorry, IE is not supported) that improves the Facebook site by eliminating annoyances and adding lots of great enhancements and functionality.

Once installed, Social Fixer will run you through a series of configuration options. You can get it to show a Post Action toolbar at the top of each news feed, a “Control Panel” at the top of the Facebook page, force the news feed to appear in chronological order and hide the “Top stories” entry.

You can sort the news feed into their own tabs, depending on the application that your friends use to update their Facebook status.

It even allows you to fix the chat behavior, by turning off the chat sidebar on the far right and restore the popup chat list, or if you prefer, hide the chat dock completely.

The best thing about Social Fixer is that you can change the theme of your Facebook page so it looks different from others.

Social Fixer

2. FB Purity

FB Purity is available for both Chrome and Firefox browser and it helps you remove application spam and clutter from your Facebook homepage.

Unlike Social Fixer that runs you through a tutorial to configure the options, FB Purity options window is hidden inside Facebook and you will likely miss it unless you make conscious effort to find it.

Once you have installed FB Purity, go to Facebook and click on the “FB Purity” link at the top of the page. This will open up the option window.

From here, you can select which application, messages, notification, stories, event etc. to appear in your news feed. You can also set the font size and create a list of filter to block spam messages from showing up.

In addition, you can hide any of the boxes on the right sidebar. Under the “More Application” section, you can select which boxes can show up in your screen.

If you are capable of whipping up CSS code, FB Purity also allows you to define your own CSS rules to determine the look and feel of your Facebook page. I would appreciate if the developer can provide a set of pre-defined CSS rules so we just need to modify the value rather than having to code from scratch.

FB Purity (Firefox extensions)
FB Purity (Chrome extensions)

3. FaceTweak

Facetweak is a Firefox only extension that have a rather different set of configuration options from Social Fixer and FBPurity. Once installed, you will be able to configure whether to auto-login to Facebook when you visit the site, to make the header fixed so that it doesn’t move when you scroll down the page, to enable bigger photos, better album, Google Calendar integration etc.

Under the Social tab, you can configure whether to auto confirm friends requests (which I strongly discourage you to do), add a reply button to comments, highlight friends birthday on your home page and many more.

Lastly, FaceTweak comes with a number of themes that you can apply to your Facebook page.

FaceTweak

Conclusion

While the above mentioned three extensions allow you to modify the layout and behavior of Facebook, their functionalities are quite different from each other. Personally, I prefer the FaceTweak extension because it comes with auto-login and the fixed header feature which I need it most. Since I am using Firefox most of the time, it doesn’t really bother me of a lack of Chrome extension. However, if you are a die-hard Chrome fan, you probably want to go with Social Fixer or FBPurity. Let us know which one is your favorite, or if you are using any other way to tweak Facebook.

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

2. Paste (using Ctrl + Shift + V) the following command to the end of the file.

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ lisa main upstream import

Save the file (using Ctrl + O) and exit (Ctrl + X).

3. Update the repository. Ignore the gpg error, if you see any.

sudo apt-get update

4. Install the following packages. When prompted to install without verification, enter ‘y’.

sudo apt-get install linuxmint-keyring mint-meta-mgse

5. Restart Gnome shell (Alt + F2 follow by ‘r’). Open Gnome Tweak Tool. You should see the MGSE in the Gnome Shell Extension section.

Activate the Bottom Panel extension, Window List extension, Menu extension to get the full Linux Mint bottom panel feature. Alternatively, if you want the Menu extension without the bottom panel, you can just activate the Menu extension and it will appear beside the Activities button (top left corner).

After activating the bottom panel, you will find that the notification panel is gone. You can click the “!” button at the bottom right corner to bring up the notification panel. Alternatively, you can activate the Notifications extension to get all the notification icons to display at the top system tray (top right corner).

Install Linux Mint Mate in Ubuntu

Mate is the fork of Gnome 2 and is the fallback mode for users who don’t have 3D support. To run Mate in Ubuntu, install the following package:

sudo apt-get install mint-meta-mate

Once installed, you will be able to login to Mate from the login page.

Linux Mint Theme and Wallpaper

If you like the Mint-Z theme, or the desktop wallpapers used in Linux Mint 12, you can also download them to your Ubuntu.

sudo apt-get install mint-z-theme mint-backgrounds-lisa mint-backgrounds-lisa-extra

That’s it.

Install Gnome Tweak Tool

Before we begin, it is best that you have Gnome Tweak Tool installed in your system. This is the only software you ever need to tweak and customize your setting.

You can install it by clicking here, via the Ubuntu Software Center, Synaptic or through the terminal:

sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

1. Display the file in your desktop

Gnome shell doesn’t display your desktop files when you have an application window open. To access your files, you have to minimize all your windows, or press “Crl + Alt + d” to access the desktop or via the file manager. This is really very user unfriendly.

To fix this, open Gnome Tweak Tool. On the left pane, click “Desktop”. On the right, turn on “Have file manager handle the desktop”.

2. Middle-click mouse to minimize window

One of the things that is missing in Gnome Shell is the minimize and maxmize button on the window title bar. What is left is the Close button. While you can drag the window to the top of the screen to maximize it, there is no quick way to minimize the window. Here’s how you can minimize the window with the mouse middle-click.

Open Gnome Tweak Tool and go to the Windows section. Under the “Action on title bar middle click” section, select “Minimize” under the dropdown.

3. Use Gnome Shell Extensions to enhance your system

One of the greatest benefit of Gnome shell is the ability to use extension to modify/enhance the behaviour of the desktop manager.

While there are several sources of PPA available for Gnome Shell extensions, the one that I found to be updated most regularly is the WebUpd8 Gnome 3 PPA.

To install, type the following in the terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/gnome3
sudo apt-get update

Note: Installing the extensions doesn’t mean they are active. You will need to go to Gnome Tweak Tool to activate them.

Some of the extensions that you should install:

a. Alternative Status Menu extension

If you are frustrated over the lack of Restart/Shut Down button in the power menu, this extension adds the Hibernate and Power Off options to the power menu. This is my personal favorite.

To install:

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions-alternative-status-menu

b. Workspace Indicator

Add a workspace indicator button at the system tray so you know which workspace you are at (or switch to another workspace quickly).

To install:

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions-workspace-indicator

middle

c. Remove the Universal Access Setting button

The Universal Access Setting button is the icon that lie at the top right system tray. While it allows you to change some of the settings quickly, most probably you won’t find it of much use. You can install this extension to remove the UAS button.

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions-noa11y

d. Bring back the Applications menu

Do you love the Applications menu that allows you to quickly find (and launch) the applications you want? This extension brings back the application menu and place it in the top panel.

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions-apps-menu

e. User themes

This is important if you want to install custom Gnome shell theme.

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions-user-theme

4. Adding Show Desktop button to the Dash

While you can use the shortcut key “Ctrl + Alt + D” to show/hide desktop, many of us still prefer to click the Show Desktop icon to access our desktop. Gnome Shell doesn’t come with a way to add the Show Desktop icon to the Dash. Here’s how you can do it:

1. Download the showdesktop.tar.gz file. (Disclaimer: I didn’t create this script. It was provided by WepUpd8)

2. Extract the file to your Home folder. You should see a “showdesktop” folder with two files (showdesktop and showdesktop.desktop) within.

3. Open a terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install wmctrl
sudo mv ~/showdesktop/showdesktop /usr/local/bin
mv ~/showdesktop/showdesktop.desktop ~/.local/share/applications
rmdir showdesktop

4. Press “Alt + F2″ and type ‘r’ to restart Gnome Shell.

5. Click the “Activities” button to go to the Window Overview screen. At the top right hand corner search bar, type “showdesktop”. You should see the Show Desktop icon. Right click on it and select “Add to Favourite”.

5. Move the window button to the left

Ubuntu has shifted the window control button to the left since several releases ago. If you are finding yourself unable to get used to the window control button on the top right corner, here’s how to move them to the left.

sudo apt-get install gconf-editor
gconf-editor

Go to the entry “Desktop -> Gnome -> Shell -> Windows”. Double click on the “button layout”. Paste the following line to the input field and click OK.

close,minimize,maximize:

Restart Gnome Shell (press Alt + F2, followed by ‘r’).

Note: The Native Window Placement extension have a conflict with this hack. You will have to remove the extension to make the buttons appear on the left.

6. Screencast Recording

Unknown to many, Gnome Shell has a built-in screen recorder. At any point of time, you just have to press the shortcut key “Shift + Ctrl + Alt + R” to activate the screen recorder. Once activated, you will see a recording button at the bottom right corner. Press “Shift + Ctrl + Alt + R” again to stop the recording. It will then save itself with the filename “shell-date-string-counter.webm” in your Home folder.

More Gnome Shell tips and triks

• Change theme in Gnome Shell
• Auto login to Gnome Shell in Ubuntu Oneiric
• How to Reactivate ALT + F2 Shortcut in Gnome Shell in Ubuntu Oneiric [Quick Tips]
• Integrate Google Calendar into Gnome Shell

What other Gnome Shell tips and tricks have I missed? Which one is your favorite? Let us know in the comments.

1. Audiotool - Music Creation

Ever wish you could play around with all that amazing gear some electronic musicians have? Audiotool gives you digital representations of synthesizers, drum machines, and effects pedals that you can combine and tweak in any way you wish. Each component is isolated, and it’s up to you as the user to connect them however you see fit.

Is it a full replacement for expensive hardware? Probably not, but it sure is a lot of fun.

2. Cloud9 - Software Development

One of the biggest hurdles to widespread adoption of the browser-based “cloud desktop” model (such as with Google’s Chromebooks) is the inability to do even simple software development. Much (though not all) of that can be solved with cleverly designed web apps such as Cloud9. It’s a multi-language IDE with many of the features you’d expect in a desktop code editor (tabs, syntax highlighting, etc) and a few neat features of its own, like GitHub integration.

It’s this author’s opinion that the GitHub integration is probably the most valuable feature of Cloud9. Not only can you sync up with the code in your GitHub repository, you can even use your normal GitHub credentials to log in to Cloud9.

3. Chrome Theme Creator – Browser Customization

We previously touched on ways to create Chrome themes, but this one based out of ChromeTheme.net has proven itself to be quite simple and capable. You can choose the colors and images you desire for your theme and once everything’s ready, just download the pack.

4. Flixster - Movie Reviews and Showtimes

If you’re a movie nut, this app from the infamous RottenTomatoes.com will likely keep you happy. It includes film details, trailers, reviews, an extensive rating system, and even helps you look up local showtimes.

5. 3DTin

A few years ago, the idea of a functional 3D modeling program inside a browser might have seemed pretty ridiculous. Through advances in technology (and the valiant efforts of standards boards) we’re now closer than ever to having our browsers as fully capable gaming platforms. 3DTin is a fine example of one way these new technologies can be used.

6. Angry Birds – Game

This list would not have been complete without at least one game, and when it comes to free Chrome games it’s hard to beat Angry Birds (though some would argue in favor of Plants vs Zombies). Chances are you’ve at least heard of this game – it’s shown up in commercials and movies and it’s even shown up during Rifftrax commentaries.

Conclusion

While many Chrome apps are indeed just links to existing independent web apps, the Chrome Web Store always provides an easy way to browse and rate them, and often provides something new. Perhaps it’s a free version of a paid app, perhaps it’s new features, perhaps it’s nothing. Whatever the details, Chrome Apps can be a great place to find the application you never knew you were looking for.

1. Google+ Ultimate

Is the Google+ design too bland for your taste? You can now customize the color and style of Google+ with Googlt+ Ultimate. Things that you can customize include the background, scrollbars, left and top panel, navigation bar, image size in stream, side-by-side view (for large monitor).

2. GTools+

GTools+ is developed by the same developer as Google+ Ultimate. It acts as a complement to Google+ Ultimate and allows you to customize the Google bar as well as integrating the chat feature to the Google bar.

3. Google+ Tweaks

The Google+ Tweaks extension is a wrapper for a series of userscripts to customize the usability of Google+. Features include

• Preview images when you mouse-over them
• Favicon badge shows the number of new notices
• Make Google+ use your browser’s full width
• Force all images in posts to thumbnails
• Pin the Google bar and other navigational elements
• Yellow “Post muted” notices automatically fade out
• View post actions as buttons instead of as a drop-down menu
• Hide various elements of Google+ you don’t use

4. Google+Facebook

If you are not ready to give up your Facebook yet, this extension can show your Facebook news feed in Google+ stream so you can manage both in one place.

Note: While you can post to and view your Facebook feed, you won’t be able to comment on other’s update.

5. Surplus

Surplus integrates Google+ deep into your Chrome browser, allowing you to read notification and post to Streams right from the Google taskbar. It also supports desktop notification and notification sounds.

6. Extended Share for Google Plus

If you are using other social network platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Tumblr, this Extended Share add-on will add a “Share on” button below each post in Google+, allowing you to share to other social networks.

Similar extension: Share+ Social Buttons for Google Plus

7. Favorite G+ Stream

By default, when you log in to your Google+ account, it will show you the posts from all your circles. However, there will be times where you just want to follow the streams from a particular circle of friends. Favorite G+ Stream allows you to set a particular stream as the default. When you load your Google+ page, your favorite stream will appear.

8. Move Your Photos

Do you have a lot of photos in Facebook and wanted to migrate them to Picasa (so you can share in Google+)? Move Your Photos can do just that. All you have to do is to connect it with Facebook and it will immediately export your photos from Facebook to Picasa.

9. Goo Plus Manager

Goo Plus Manager adds a shortcut menu so you can quickly access the various part of Google+. In addition, Goo Plus Manager also comes with a series of keyboard shortcuts that you can use, for example:

• g + h : go home
• g + p : go to profile
• i + i : go to photos
• i + p : go to photos > phone
• i + m : go to photos of me
• i + a : go to my photo albums
• g + i : go to incoming
• g + n : go to notifications

For more keyboard shortcuts, check out the list here.

10. G+ Extended

G+ Extended adds a different set of keyboard shortcuts to your Google+. The shortcuts are:

• Press “+” for +1′ing a post.
• Press “-” for removing your +1 on a post.
• Press “p” to toggle your +1 on a post.
• Press “s” to share a post.
• Press “e” to expand older comments on a post.

11. Helper for Google+

As its name implies, Helper for Google+ is indeed a very good helper for Google+. Once installed, you will be able to share posts via Twitter, translate posts with Google Translate, bookmarks individual post (locally or to delicious.com), linked #hashtags, search Google+ posts and profiles directly from your omnibox.

12. +Comment Toggle

A simple extension to allow you to hide/show comments on Google+

13. G+ Count in Title

Another simple extension to show notification count at the document title in the page tab.

14. Usability Boost for Google Plus

The Usability Boost for Google Plus extension adds several CSS rule to make Google Plus more pleasant to use. Once installed, it sets the background to gray color, the post area white and the comments section light blue.

15. Native GMail for Google Plus – Beta

This extension allows you to check your Gmail inbox right inside your Google+ page.

What other extensions do you use to enhance your Google+ experience?

1. AdBlock Plus

AdBlock Plus was for the longest time one of the most installed extensions for Mozilla Firefox. When Google finally started allowing extensions for Chrome, many users cried out for AdBlock Plus to port an extension over to Chrome.

The extension is fairly simple to use: install it, pick a “filter list“, add any whitelisted domains and you are good to go.

Ads are blocked on every website that is not listed in your whitelist and it even blocks ads within YouTube videos.

I will leave it to your judgment to decide whether it is appropriate to use ad blockers on the web.

2. Shareaholic

Most websites and blogs have a Twitter “Tweet” button or a Facebook “Like” button, however what happens if you want to post the contents of that site to a Tumblr blog or Reddit it? If you find yourself in a situation like this, I would recommend installing the Shareaholic extension.

This extension places an icon on your Chrome toolbar that lists your chosen social media and other links allowing you to share, email, print and save the blog post or article that you are reading.

You can login to your own Shareaholic account and tweak the services that are visible on your Chrome browser.

3. Mega Buttons

A large majority of Chrome’s features are buried within the about:plugins, about:flags, about:extensions and other pages. The Mega Button extension places a large green button on your Chrome toolbar that allows easy access to all these and more features.

While the extension is useful, unless you know what each icon refers to, it can be a little difficult to find the right link.

The links (in order) refer to the following features:

• Download
• Extensions
• History
• Bookmarks
• Plugins
• DNS
• Memory
• Cache
• Flags

4. Clickable Links

This extension simply converts “unclickable” URLs and Email addresses into clickable ones.

Websites and blogs will often post links such as:

www.google.com

In some cases, they decide not to turn the link into a hyperlink. This extension automatically generates a hyperlink out of the unclickable links. Simply install it and restart your browser for it to work.

5. Send Using Gmail

This is another extension that is very simple but immensely useful.

Some sites have Email addresses to contact the sites owner, usually these are in the format:

abhiroopb@maketecheasier.com

If you click on the Email address it automatically opens a compose window within your default Email client. Unfortunately, most computers have their default Email client set to their desktop client, such as Outlook. After installing this extension, when you click on an Email link, it will automatically open your default email account.

Bonus: Greasemonkey Scripts

On Firefox, Greasemonkey is an extension that allows users to install scripts that make on-the-fly changes to the HTML content of a web page immediately after it has loaded. Unfortunately, Greasemonkey is a Firefox only extension, however most of the scripts that work with Greasemonkey on Firefox also work on Chrome. Furthermore, there is no need to install the Greasemonkey extension. All you have to do, is head over to http://userscripts.org/ and click “Install” on any script you wish to install in Chrome. Some of the scripts will not work correctly, but most do.

Image credit: shauser

1. Boomerang

Boomerang allows you to schedule your emails to be sent at a particular time. It is a great tool for busy people who like to plan ahead of their schedule. For example, if you have an email that need to be sent on Monday morning 6am, you can write the email on Friday night (just before you leave for the weekend) and schedule it with Boomerang to deliver on Monday morning.

2. CloudMagic

CloudMagic is a search extension that can search your mails faster than Gmail itself. On top of that, it allows you to preview and interact with the search results without requiring you to leave your current mail. While composing a mail, you can search for a file (with CloudMagic) in your Google docs and drag the documents from the preview window to the mail to attach it as an attachment. Of all the Gmail apps I have seen, this has to be the coolest.

3. OtherInbox

OtherInbox is an organizer for your Gmail account. Once installed, it will scan your Gmail inbox and sort your emails to various categories (via label). It also has an “unsubscribe” category where all mails placed in it will be automatically unsubscribed. Even if the unsubscribe link does not work, you can be sure that emails from this sender will not appear in your inbox again.

4. Find Big Mail

Find Big Mail helps you to identify the big mails that are taking up tons of storage space. It scans your inbox and sort the emails with file attachments into various folders. Attachment with file size less than 500KB are labelled as “My Big Mail” while bigger than 2MB are labelled as “My Ultra Big Mail”. You can then switch to those folders and delete those big emails to free up storage space.

5. ActiveInbox

ActiveInbox allows you to project manage right within your inbox. You can turn emails into prioritized tasks, set deadline for projects and set reminder for to-do list.

6. Taskforce

Taskforce is a simple app that allows you to convert your emails into tasks and manage them right within your Gmail.

7. AwayFind

AwayFind is an interesting app aimed to bring you away from your inbox without missing the important mails. Instead of checking your inbox all the time, when you receive an urgent message, AwayFind will notify you via your mobile device, a voice call, IM, or even delegate the message to someone you specify.

8. Greplin

Greplin allows you to search your emails without having to login to your Gmail. Other than Gmail, it also supports Google Docs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Evernote and many more applications. All you need to do is to link up all your accounts with Greplin and you will be able to search them all in one place.

9. SaneBox

SaneBox is functionally similar to OtherInbox, except that it is more aggressive in its approach to achieve zero inbox. It scans your inbox and leaves only the important emails in your inbox. The rest are then sent to the @SaneLater folder where you can read it when you are free. If you have a whole bunch of unread emails, it can instantly reduce that number by half.

10. Emailga.me

Do you need more motivation to clear your emails? The developers at Baydin (the same developers behind Boomerang) created a game for Gmail where you can play while clearing your email. The rule is simple. Clear your emails and you will receive points. The faster you clear, the higher point you will receive. The higher points you have, the higher is your ranking in the leaderboard.

11. Rapportive

Rapportive takes the sender’s email address and performs a search on various social networks. It then displays the sender’s info on the sidebar (the place where Google Ads are shown) so you know who you are dealing with.

What other apps do you use to enhance your Gmail experience?

Firefox‘s built-in spell checking feature has been available since Firefox 2. It even has support for multiple languages, which are very useful if your native language is not English.

Simpler Than You Could Imagine

If you have looked around on the Mozilla add-ons site, you might found the page where language packs and dictionaries can be downloaded. At the time of writing this post, 105 dictionaries are available for 86 languages. These packs are actually extensions and you can install them like any other Firefox extension. They will be listed in the “Tools -> Add-ons Manager” menu or by pressing the “Ctrl+Shift+A” hotkey. You can install as many dictionaries as you wish, without limitations.

I use the English (United States) and the Hungarian dictionaries. Both of them suit my expectations. Apart from the dictionaries for certain commercial spell checker components, these open source dictionaries are maintained continuously and new words are added regularly.

Where Can I Find It?

Right click in the text area where you just typed in the text and find the “Check Spelling” item and the Languages dropdown in the context menu.

The Check Spelling command is activated by default. When you click it, the tick will disappear and the spell checking feature will be disabled. The Languages dropdown will also disappear.

In the Languages dropdown, you can only see those languages that you have installed. If you need a new dictionary, you have an easy job: Just click “Add Dictionaries…“, and it will bring you to the Mozilla Dictionaries & Language Packs page.

How It Works

The spell checking feature works on any web form. It may be the editor of your blog tool or your content management system, the new topic/reply page in a forum, a comment field, or even a contact form on a web page.

Similar to the word processors, an unmatched word is underlined with a red wavy line. When you right click on such a word, you will find suggestions in the pop-up menu, or you can add the word to the dictionary.

Firefox cannot detect automatically the language of your entered text, you have to select it manually in the “Languages” dropdown. Firefox will then perform the spell checking of the text using that dictionary.

Extend It

When you check the Mozilla Add-ons site, you will find a couple of relevant extensions.

Dictionary Switcher

While this is just a small add-on, it is definitely a useful one.. Dictionary Switcher fetches the language from the source code of the page where the web form is available. Another method – the more interesting one – is trying to detect the language of the text you are typing in and switching to that dictionary accordingly.

You can access it from the status bar (now add-on bar since Firefox 4). A dictionary can be selected from the context menu.

When I select the Remember dictionary for current site item in the context menu, it really did not forget the manually set dictionary displayed in bold style.

Quick Locale Switcher

This add-on is more than a simple spell checking dictionary switcher. Quick Locale Switcher cannot detect the language of the entered text, but can automatically set the dictionary for a manually chosen language on a web site you visited.

It also skulks in the add-on bar, perhaps you may access it easier and faster from the Tools menu. The appropriate flags are assigned to the listed languages, still you have to separately download the dictionaries.

Conclusion

Some web based WYSIWYG editors, having their own spell check feature, present a problem, because they may disable Firefox’s right click menu, in addition to this, they may not have a dictionary for your language.

I hope the extensions development will move towards remembering the languages of certain pages. It would be a giant step for the international communities providing international subforums for their members.

In the era of web publishing, the grammatical correctness is not only a human expectation. Due to the sophisticated algorithms of the search engines, it may affect the position of your site in the results list as well.

After installing the extension, the first thing to do is to press “g” to bring up the gleebox. This will be the main control center. There are several options you can do with the gleebox. You can type any phrase(s) and it will search the current page for links that match your query. You can then scroll through the links to find what you want. If no matching query is found, when you press Enter, it will perform a search with your phrase(s) or bring you to the page if the phrase is an URL.

You can also use the “?” prefix to perform a series of actions. For example, typing “?h” will highlight the H1, H2 and H3 headings and “?img” will highlight linked images. Available options include

• ?h: Select main (h1, h2 & h3) headings
• ?img: Select linked images
• ??: Select text input fields. Hit ENTER to give focus to the selected field.
• ?a: Select all links

More useful features

The best part about gleeBox is the ability to use the “!” prefix to access to plenty of external services. For example, at any page, you can press “g” to bring up the gleeBox and type “!read“. This will transform the existing page to reading mode.

A list of useful commands include:

• !read: Transform the page for a better reading experience using the Readability project
• !shorten: Shorten the URL of the current page using bit.ly
• !tweet: Redirect to twitter.com with the URL of the current page in the text field
• !rss: Open the current page’s RSS feed in Google Reader
• !snap: Take a screenshot of the current page in Chrome
• !share: Share the current page.
• and many more…

Running YubNub or a Quix command

Both YubNub and Quix are web tools that allow you to enter a command line and perform an action. These tools are built into gleeBox so you can work with command lines too. The command comes with a “:” prefix and a dollar sign ($) represents the current URL. Available commands include “:fbshare $” – Share the current page on Facebook, “:wp cricket” – Search Wikipedia for cricket etc. With Quix, you can even create your own command and use it in gleeBox.

Wrapping up

The above mentioned features are not conclusive of what gleeBox is capable of doing. There are more things such as jQuery commands, ESP mode that I did not mention. Will gleeBox replace the mouse completely? No, it won’t. But its usefulness and versatility can indeed speed things up and make you more productive. Try it out and you will know. Don’t forget to check out the user manual too.

gleeBox | gleeBox for Google Chrome | gleeBox for Firefox | gleeBox for Safari

Read on to find out more about Chrome Web Store and how to get the best out of it.

What is Chrome Web Store?

Just like the iPhone’s App store where you can install third party apps to increase the functionality of the phone, the Chrome web store allows you to install web apps that you can run within the browser. From instant messaging, music player, twitter client to office suite, plenty of stuff that you can do in the desktop can now be found in the web store. These applications are mainly web apps, built with HTML, javascript and Flash. This is Google’s effort to bring your everyday computing to the cloud and pave the path for the upcoming Chrome OS.

Other than web apps, it is also the unified point where you go to install extensions and themes for your Chrome browser.

How to Enable Web App in Google Chrome?

The only way to access the web store and install web apps is via Google Chrome version 8 and above. If you are using Firefox/Opera/Internet Explorer, you will have to switch your browser to enjoy the benefits.

To enable Web App, you just have to append the parameter --enable-default-apps to the Chrome application launcher.

In Windows, right click at the shortcut icon and select Properties. In the “Target” field, append the parameter --enable-default-apps to the end.

Once this is done, launch Google Chrome and open a new tab. You should see the Web store icon (Note: If you are using extension like Speed Dial, you have to disable/uninstall it to see the Web store icon).

How to Install Web App

On a new tab, click on the Web Store icon to go to the Web Store page. Search for the apps you want and click the “Install” button. If you are not logged in, it will prompt you to login to your Google account. Once installed, the app icon will appear on your new tab page.

How to Uninstall Web App

Open a new tab. You should see all your installed applications. Right click on the app that you want to uninstall and select “Uninstall”. That’s it.

Getting the best out of the Web Store

1. Pin the app

If you use an app regularly, the best way is to pin it to the tab bar so that you can access it quickly. All pinned tab will be moved to the left of the tab bar and only the favicon is visible. To pin it, simply right click at the app tab and select “Pin tab”.

2. Sync your Google Chrome account

If you are working on several computers, you can setup Google sync to sync all your extensions, theme settings and web apps across the various computers. This will ensure that the web apps you installed in one computer will be ready for you to use in another terminal.

To setup Google Chrome sync, go to “Wrench -> Options“. Under the “Personal Stuff” tab, click “Setup Sync”

3. Create Application Shortcut

Google Chrome allows you to create an application shortcut on your desktop so you can click on it to launch the app instantly. On your app tab, click on the Wrench and go to “Tools -> Create Application Shortcuts“.

That’s all for now. We will bring you more tips and tricks when the Chrome OS is launched, or when we got our hand on the Cr-48 notebook.

Setting Google Instant as the homepage

While the default homepage in Firefox is set to the Google search, you will find that you can’t perform any instant search on it. The reason being, the Firefox Google home page is a custom page created by Mozilla that doesn’t come with the instant feature. To set Google Instant as your homepage, go to the “Preferences -> General” and set Google.com as your homepage.

For those who are not residing in the United States, you will also find that Google will auto-redirect the Google.com site to a country-specific site. For example, I am living in Singapore, so whenever I access Google.com, it will redirect me to Google.com.sg which does not come with the instant search feature. To fix this, you have to set the homepage URL to google.com/ncr or http://www.google.com/webhp?sclient=psy. This will ensure that the actual Google instant Search page is shown.

Accessing Google Instant from the Awesome bar

To enable Google instant search from the awesome bar, install the InstantFirefox extension.

Once installed, you will be able to perform a Google instant search from the awesome bar.

There are two things that you need to take note:

1. While performing the search, the dropdown search result will overlap with the instant search. This can be very irritating at times.

2. This extension will only work on new tab. If you are using extensions, like Speed dial, that also take control of the new tab, this InstantFirefox extension won’t work.

Accessing Google Instant search from the search bar

You can easily add custom search engine to the search bar with the Add To Search Bar extension.

Install Add To Search Bar extension

Go to http://www.google.com/webhp?sclient=psy.

Right click on the Search field and select “Add to Search Bar”. When prompted, enter “Google instant” as the new search engine name.

Note: You won’t get instant search result when you type on the search bar. However, you can just type the first few characters of your search term, press Enter and it will bring you to a Google instant search result page. You can then continue your search from there.

That’s it. What other ways do you make use of Google Instant in Firefox?

If you are like me, and are also using Google Chrome, you are in luck, here are several PDF extensions that you can use to make the whole conversion process much easier and faster.

1. Save As PDF

This is my favorite extension for pdf conversion. In my experience with several other extensions, this is the best, in terms of the speed and quality of conversion.

After installing the extension, you will see an icon at the toolbar. When you come across any webpage that you want to convert to pdf, simply click on the button and it will start the conversion immediately. The conversion is fast (typically less than 5 seconds) and it runs in the background without disrupting you from your work.

Save As PDF also comes with plenty of configuration options (in fact, it is the only pdf extension that comes with configuration option). Things you can configure including the page size, page format, page margin and whether it should convert javascript, images and background. The best of all, it allows you to set a password for your converted pdf file.

2. PDFmyURL

Instead of an icon in the toolbar, the PDFmyURL icon appears in the URL bar. Similarly, on a page that you want to be converted to pdf, just click on the icon and it will do all the work in the background.

The speed of conversion is rather fast, but it is not able to convert images properly for sites that are using lazy loading. In addition, it seems to add an extra margin to the four sides of the page, which make the file size bigger.

3. Web2PDFConverter

Web2PDFConverter is yet another pdf converter extension for Google Chrome. One of its unique feature is the ability to view your converted PDF files in Google Docs. You can then choose to save the pdf file in your Google Docs and free up storage space on your computer.

One annoyance with Web2PDF is that during conversion, it takes control of the browser and prevents you from doing any other things. You won’t be able to switch to other tabs, or even other applications. Doing so will terminate the conversion process. In term of user-friendliness, this is definitely the worst in my opinion.

Wrapping up

If you are looking for a pdf conversion tool for your Google Chrome, I would strongly recommend SaveAsPdf. What other tools do you use to convert your stuff to PDF?

When browsing the Web, there will be times (plenty of times) that you come across sentences/words/phrases that you want to check it out in other sites such as Google, Wikipedia, Amazon etc. Instead of launching a new tab, load the URL and copy/paste the term into the new site, you can now get rid of all these steps with Hyperwords. All you have to do is to highlight the term and select from the popup menu the action that you want to carry out, and it will automate the process for you.

Let’s take a look at what Hyperwords is capable of doing.

Search

After you have highlighted the term, a small orb will appear and you just have to hover over the orb to display the menu. The first option is the Search function. From here, you can perform a search in Google, Bing, Yahoo, Images and Videos, and even search on the current page.

Reference

If search is not your cup of tea, you can also quickly find a reference in Wikipedia, Britannica, Wolfram Alpha or Google Definition.

The best thing is, when you hover on the link, a popup window will appear with the results you want. You can then obtain the info you want, close the popup when you are done and continue reading the page that you are at previously.

Conversion

There are times when you just need to get information quick, just like “How many meters is 10 miles?” and you can get instant result from Hyperwords as well.

Quick Sharing

Hyperwords also allows you to quickly share content in Twitter, Facebook and several other social networks. On the first run, you will have to grant permission for it to publish to your Twitter/Facebook account.

Configuration options

In the backend, there are several options that you can configure. The General tab is where you configure the action when a term is highlighted. You can set the menu to appear immediately after you have highlighted the term, or when you hover over the orb.

In the Layout tab, you can decide what options appear on the menu and arrange the order that they appear. You can also add new items to the list.

The Other tab consists of all the miscellaneous options like “open click in new window” etc.

Conclusion

If you are looking for ways to improve your productivity and have quick access to various information in Google Chrome or Firefox, Hyperwords is definitely one great choice you should check out.

Download Hyperwords for Google Chrome | Firefox

While some of the above functions can be achieved using a dedicated HTML editor like Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage, but why use another program when the same purpose can be achieved without spending time on learning to use a heavyweight designing tool ?

Here is a recommended list of Firefox add-ons for anyone interested in web design or development:

Firebug

Firebug is by far the best add-on for debugging the HTML source of websites, changing CSS parameters and previewing the changes in real time. The extension also allows you to delete specific HTML parts from the webpage under inspection and you can preview the changes right away.

To get started, all you have to do is hit the little “Inspect” button at the far left and choose a web element from the page . The CSS property of that element will be shown on the right panel, now just modify the attributes and you can preview the output in real time.

Firebug is also available as a Google Chrome extension which can be found here.

Web Developer Toolbar

This is again a useful add-on which adds a huge number of useful features in a sleek toolbar, as shown below

Using the toolbar, you can tweak the following aspects of any webpage:

• Disabling Specific items: With one click, you can disable all colors, meta redirects or javascript coding on any webpage. Just check off the required options from the “Disable” dropdown and the webpage will refresh with your defined changes in action.
• Cookies: From the “Cookies” dropdown you can disable external cookies or site specific sessions and test the behavior of the website.
• CSS: This is the most useful thing – handling external as well as internal CSS files with the touch of a button. Just hit the “CSS” dropdown and you can manage all external CSS files called, inline CSS elements, view Style information or add a custom stylesheet. Saves a lot of time, when you want to disable an entire stylesheet and recreate a theme from scratch.
• Images: Another very useful button on the toolbar is “Images” which allows you to disable all images on the webpage, copy all the image source paths, check for broken image links or hide specific images.
• Information: The “Information” button allows you to view the page information, display tab index, table depth, anchor information, color information and much more data about the webpage you are analyzing.

There are other useful buttons as well which includes verifying the CSS validation, checking the outline, browser compatibility – it’s all packed up in the toolbar you can’t afford to miss.

Fireshot

Fireshot is the best add-on for handling or manipulating images on any webpage. Apart from capturing screenshots, the add-on can perform a whole bunch of operations related with embedded images:

• Capture active region or the full page and save it in your computer.
• Capture a region or the full page and open it with your default image editing program.
• Upload a screenshot of the active region to an FTP server or send it as an email attachment.

So when you are done tweaking a webpage with Firebug or any other debugging tool, you may want to save the output as an image file or send it to someone else. In such situations, Fireshot is a really handy tool to save a screenshot or download the processed design on your computer.

To use Fireshot, simply right click on any webpage and choose Fireshot -> Action, as shown below:

ColorZilla

If you need help in finding the hex code of specific colors on any design, use ColorZilla. Once the add-on is installed, just click the small “Eyedropper icon” at the left bottom of the Firefox status bar, as shown below:

This will open a simple crosshair which you can use to know the hex code of any color on a webpage. There are other tools as well e.g Eyedropper, Palette browser ; you can copy the hex link directly to your Windows clipboard and use it on your CSS stylesheet.

Apart from selecting colors, you can also use ColorZilla to zoom in to a portion of a webpage. This is very useful when you want to accurately determine the hex code of borders, navigationsl units and so on. Here is an example:

ColorSuckr

ColorSuckr lets you extract all the colors from any image and build a color pallet using those colors. After the add-on is installed, right click on any image to extract the hex codes of the major colors used on the image and generate a unique color pallette using the ColorSuckr website.

This is very useful when you want to design a new element in your website’s theme and looking for a matching color pallette which dwells with the current design of your website.

GridFox

This is not a must have add-on but can be useful when you want to draw gridlines over a design and want to measure the position of certain elements by pixel width. Grids can be saved for future use and you can measure the width of any row or column, as seen in the following illustration:

Note: a similar add-on - Measure it solves the same purpose, but comes with an additional pixel ruler which can be used to measure the width or height of a web element.

FireFtp

Another useful add-on down the list is FireFTP which allows you to manage FTP accounts and transfer files to your website directly from the browser. You can add multiple websites in FireFTP and upload files from your computer to any of your website’s directory.

This is highly recommended because when you are designing something, you need less number of open applications to work with. Works much the same way as other FTP programs like Filezilla and you can also import/export FTP settings on other computers.

There are some other useful add-ons e.g IEtab, CSSMate, Loadtimeanalyzer but unfortunately they are not compatible with Firefox 3.6.10. You can use them on older versions of Firefox, if you want.

Which Firefox extensions do you use or recommend? Please share your views in the comments.

1. Twitter

If you’re in to Twitter at all, you are probably already imagining all the ways this could be useful. Frankly though, it even surprised me a little. While I expected the ability to be able to Tweet right from the toolbar, it goes a couple steps further. You can click the Tweet button to automatically Tweet the page you’re currently on, with the link already shortened for you, and then go ahead and continue writing your tweet. You can also quickly and easily see trending topics in real time, right in your toolbar, which was a nice piece of extra functionality I hadn’t expected.

2. MLB.com Toolbar

Anyone who knows me at all knows how much I love my Philadelphia Phillies. I’m constantly watching their games, reading about the team, checking scores and standings, and going back and forth with my friends about the Playoffs and World Series, and there are a ton of people out there with a love of the game like me. I even used the Phillies own National League East standings in an article on creating your own widgets back in July.  You can imagine how excited I was to find out there was an official MLB.com extension. The extension adds a toolbar to your browser that basically acts as the ticker does along the bottom of ESPN on your TV, but only for the MLB. It shows current scores, along with stats, and links to game coverage.

3. 1-Click Weather by Weather.com

The usefulness of 1-Click Weather might seem obvious, but what may not be as obvious is its perfect subtlety. 1-Click Weather does just what it says, it gives you one click access to Weather.com’s weather information. The way it does so though is great, and most of all unobtrusive. Rather than installing a full toolbar that could show you weather info that you may or may not need, and reduce the viewing area of your browser, 1-Click Weather adds a little button to the left of your address bar that has a little current temperature reading, and with one click takes you to the full site in a new tab for a more in-depth look at conditions in your set area.

4. Gmail Counter

Gmail Counter too, seems obvious. But again, its the perfect implementation that makes this extension great. Like 1-Click Weather, it simply adds a small email button to the left of your taskbar that will have a count show up if you have unread email messages.  While the implementation is great, and the app works wonders, what may be the best part is the fact that myself, as well as many Gmail users I know, are basically addicted to the service. This means we have Gmail open literally anytime our browser is. Now though, we don’t need to waste the system resources on it. Just add the extension and check your email if it pops up and tells you you’ve got new messages!

5. Click to Flash

Click to Flash might be my favorite extension out of all of these. Look, there is no debating Flash’s usefulness on the web. It absolutely exists and is used in innumerable web applications. The problem is that there is also no denying that Flash can be buggy, and is at the very least a huge battery drain. This is where Click to Flash comes in, and it solves these problems cleanly, easily, consistently, and perfectly. Once you install the Click to Flash extension, anytime Flash appears in your browser, rather than showing the ad, it will block it before it even loads (speeding up website loading times across the web) and will display the block with the word “Flash” in it. Then, if you click the box, that Flash portion of the page will load. If you don’t, it won’t and it won’t waste your time or resources loading it up. Its an elegant solution to a complex problem that one day may not exist, but for now is a huge one.

So what did I miss? Do you guys have certain extensions you love that we should know about?  Is there an extension you’d like to see that doesn’t exist? Tell us in the comments!

Get all these extensions and more from Apple’s extensions site

Boomerang for Gmail is a Chrome/Firefox extension that allows Gmail users to schedule their emails to be sent at a later time. It is currently in beta and open only to users with invitation code (yes, we have invites, write on for more detail).

At the main page, you will be asked to enter the invitation code before it directs you to the download page. Here is where you can download the Chrome extension or Firefox addon.

If you are using Google Chrome and clicked on the Chrome extension link, you will see a popup box at the bottom of your browser asking your permission to install the extension. Click Continue.

Once installed, logon to your Gmail account. You won’t see any differences. The magic will only appear when you compose a new email.

In the composing area, you will find a new “Send Later” button at the top of the message box, beside where the usual Send button is. If you don’t see it, refresh your browser a few times.

Procedure to schedule an email

Compose your email as usual. Save it as a draft (you need to save it as a draft before you can schedule the email).

Click the “Send Later” button and select the time that you want the email to be sent. Available options include 1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, tomorrow morning, tomorrow afternoon, in 2 days, in a week, in a month and lastly, at a specific time.

My personal favorite is “at a specific time” since it allows me to specify the exact time to send the email.

Send read mails back to Inbox

Other than the Send later function, when reading a mail, you will also notice the Boomerang button at the top of the message. What this button does is to allow you to schedule that particular email to return to Inbox at a particular time. I am not sure how useful is that. In fact, I would much prefer a “Set reminder” button than a Return to Inbox button.

Overview

Pros

• It allows you to schedule emails to be sent at the time you want.
• A good “set it and leave it” solution. It works even when you are offline.

Cons

• It can be buggy at times, like if you schedule an email with attachment, the sent email will include two copies of the same attachment (well, it is still in beta, so we can’t fault the developer for this).

• The schedule will be canceled as soon as you review or edit the draft. You will have to reschedule it again.
• There is no option to undo a schedule. The only way I can think of is to delete the draft.
• Since it is extension based, it won’t work in all computers unless you installed the extension in them. The newer version of Google Chrome supports extension syncing, so you should be able to get it to work on multiple PC, but if you are using Firefox, you will have to install the addon individually.

Keen to test it?

You have read and heard enough about it, so it is time to try it. We manage to get 1000 invites from the developer of BFG. Simply head to their main page and enter the invitation code “b4gbeta” (without the quote). You will be able to download the extension for your browsers. Enjoy!

Thanks to Alex Moore for providing the invitation code.

Conclusion

Don’t be misled by the ratio of cons to the pros. As mentioned earlier, the Boomerang for Gmail extension is still in beta, and I believe it will get better with more feedbacks and testing. I am sure that Google will introduce such “schedule email” feature in the future (probably release in the Gmail Labs first), but until then, Boomerang for Gmail is the best you can get.

Have you tried Boomerang for Gmail? Let us know if it works for you. What other solutions do you use to schedule your emails?

Image credit: Paleontour

1. BarTab

Tabs is the most valuable features in all browsers, yet it is the one that consume the most memory in Firefox. Try to load 10 – 20 tabs and you see your system coming to a stand still. BarTab works by loading only the tabs that you are actively using. When a tab has been idle for a period of time, it will be automatically unloaded to free up memory space. The concept is, you pay (memory space) only what you are using.

When you restore a session with multiple tabs, you can also configure BarTab not to load all the tabs. The tab will only be loaded when it become active.

2. Memory Fox (Windows only)

Memory Fox is a great extension that can provide dynamic ram memory recover and will attempt to reduce and provide retention as an application’s resource demand. It is a Windows only extension, and the best thing is, you can notice the differences immediately. The screenshot below shows the memory usage before and after memory fox is installed. There is an immediate drop of 50% of the memory used.

After the installation, you need to activate it via the menu Tools -> Memory Fox -> Activate Memory Fox. You should see an icon at the status bar after the activation.

3. Load Tabs Progressively

Conceptually similar to BarTab, but functionally different, Load Tabs Progressively limits the number of tabs that can load concurrently. That means, when you restore a session of 20 tabs, only 3 tabs (or other number that you have configured in the Settings) will be loaded concurrently. Once the 3 tabs finished loading, the next 3 tabs will be loaded.

Unlike BarTab, LTP will load all the tabs, so this is useful for those who need all their tabs loaded when they open Firefox, but doesn’t want it to slow down the system.

Note: It seems that the Load Tabs Progressively extension does not play well with the NoScript extension. Be warned.

4. Reload Tabs Progressively

Not to be confused with Load Tabs Progressively, this extension only works when you use the “Reload all Tabs” function. When you reload all tabs, this extension will limit the number of tabs to load concurrently.

In other words, if you set “3″ to the maximum number of reloading tabs and there is 4 tabs, “reload all tabs” command doesn’t reload the 4th tab and reload it after the first tab is completely loaded.

Update: Using a new profile

By creating a new Firefox profile and use that profile for your usual browsing will also reduce the memory usage. Thanks to Wallace for providing the tips.

When you first installed Firefox and used it, it will create a default profile to store all your settings. Wallace has found that by creating a new profile (other than the default profile) and use it as a replacement for the default profile, things start to go easy on the memory.

To get the best out of both worlds, you can even run two instances of Firefox, each with a different profile (not the default profile). Share the loads between the two browsers to reduce the chances of the browser crashing. Two instances of Firefox from two profiles, each with 20 tabs open, causes much less thrashing than one instance with the same 40 tabs open. Idle memory usage will be higher with two instances, so it may only work well on systems with 1GB memory or more.

Note: To use multiple instances of Firefox concurrently, you will need to start the Firefox browser with the command

firefox -P profile-name -no-remote

What other extensions/methods do you use to improve the memory usage in Firefox? For Chrome users, will these extensions pull you back to Firefox again? Hit it in the comments.

Image credit: Rodrigo Hashimoto