Firefox is a great browser and we all love it but you might have at some point however tried different browsers. I bet you had a feature or two that you really loved in them and wished one browser could have all you need.

Well as it stands today, with so many Firefox addons, almost anything is possible in Firefox. Here are some add-ons that add common features of various browsers that are not present in firefox in default.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is the one browser that really comes close to being the default browser on my computer. Extensions are possible but the API is limited. Once the extensions API opens up you can expect to see a slew of extensions for the Chrome browser as well.

Here are some Firefox addons that replicate the features found in Chrome:

1. Locationbar2 – Adds Chrome-like domain highlighting and other interesting features to the Firefox address bar. It allows you to click on segments of the URL for navigation. The colors and text are customizable according to your liking.

2 New Tab Jumpstart – Replaces Firefox default start page with a Chrome-like start page displaying thumbnails and recent history. Although the start page design has changed in the latest version of Chrome, jumpstart still offers you the start page from previous versions.
3 Chromifox Extreme – If you like the looks of Google Chrome you should check out the Chromifox extreme theme. It as close as you would get to the Chrome look and feel. If the title bar irks you, you can try Chromin Frame. It didnt work on my side when I was writing the article so you might want to keep that in mind

4 Download Statusbar – Chrome displays downloads at the bottom of the window whenever you start one. Download statusbar lets you do just that in Firefox. You can customize it with a host of options and appearance settings. It also features a mini mode, which you can use if you would want to save on screen real estate sometimes.

5 App Tabs – Lets you pin selected tabs permanently to the tab bar. The tabs are locked and remain open across different browser sessions until you explicitly close them.
6 Mozilla Prism – Lets you prism applications from Firefox. The applications can be opened using a shortcut just like any normal desktop applications and feature a minimum browser UI.
7 Omnibar – Omnibar is a nice attempt (although it falls short) at replicating Chrome incredible address bar and what all you can do with it.

Firefox Newer Versions

Quite a lot is known about how upcoming Firefox releases will look like and what they will all feature. Here are some Firefox addons that let you enjoy those features in Firefox 3.5:

1. Ctrl+Tab – Lets you switch and list tabs by using the Ctrl + Tab shortcut. So what new about that? Ctrl+Tab presents an Alt+Tab like UI, which lets you see thumbnails of all open tabs when you hit ctrl + tab.

2 Tab Progress Bar – Displays a progress bar on top of each tab

3 Strata40 and Stratabuddy – These are more for the visual overhaul than functionality. Here is a glimpse of what Firefox looks like after installing Strata40 and Stratabuddy

Opera

1. All in One Sidebar – Opera features a very functional sidebar. You can get a sidebar for Firefox using the excellent All in One Sidebar extension

2 FireGestures – There are many Firefox addons that add the ability to execute commands using gestures. FireGestures lets you do almost all of them. You can use mouse movement gestures, wheel gestures, rocker gestures and keypress gestures. An absolute must try if you love mouse gestures in Opera.
3 ImgLikeOpera or ImgLikeOpera Reloaded – These add-ons give you greater control on how Firefox loads images. You can block images altogether, display cached images only or load all images. You can also selectively load images if you have turned them off for some reason.

4 Smart Stop/Reload – I absolutely loved the idea of a single button that acts as stop and reload depending upon current browser activity. If a page is currently being loaded the button changes performance to the top loading action, else it acts as a reload/refresh button.
5 FireTorrent – Opera can act as a bittorrent client. If you want to add such capabilities to your Firefox install have a look at FireTorrent.
6 Speed Dial – The name says it all. It replicates Opera speed dial which is shown on new tab pages. I personally prefer it over something like Newtab Jumpstart, mainly because of too much information that the latter presents. The add-on gives you access to the 9 most visited websites from the new tab page.
7 Tab Preview – Gives you a thumbnail representation of the contents of any tab when you hover over it within the tab bar

Internet Explorer

1. Fireclip – Loosely replicates the Web Slices feature that is available in Internet Explorer 8. The addon lets you clip various parts of a web page and monitor them for change

2. myFireFox – A theme that simulates the IE8 look and feel.

Safari

I must confess that I am not a big time Safari user so I am looking for your help on this. I had it on my computer for maybe an hour or so before I got sick of it. So based on that little meeting, here are a few suggestions:

1. Fission – Takes the progress bar inside the address bar. You can customize the color or use your own images as the progress bar. Neat!

2 Tabs Open Relative – This add-on makes new tabs open next to the currently selected tab, instead of opening it all the way to the right at the end of the tab list.
3 FoxTab – Brings cool 3D effects to Firefox. It replaces the default tab switching action with something a lot more spectacular. Not only that, it offers you different layouts in which tabs are arranged when you summon FoxTab powers

You can of course mix and match all these. In fact many of them could have easily featured under more than one browser category. App Tabs and Fission could have been mentioned under upcoming Firefox features while tabs open relative could have been featured under Opera as well. The Firefox addons mostly play well with each other, themes can cause the occasional problems, in which case you can always switch back to the default theme, or start Firefox in safe mode.

Got some more suggestions? I am sure you do. There is always a little more when talking about Firefox addons.

Related posts:

1. The Firefox Manual A Beginner’s Guide
2. FireNES: Play NES Games In Firefox
3. HTML5 Support in Popular Web Browsers

How To Add 20 Best Features Of Other Browsers to Firefox originally appeared on Core Digest on December 10, 2009.

And out of those most popular free softwares available, I would like to share my favourite ones.

1. WordPress

The best free software so far which is used by millions right now online. WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. The best them about this blogging software is that you can install various plugins to improve the functionality of your blog.

Key Features of WordPress

* Free and Simple
* Install different themes to improve the look of you blog
* WordPress Links allows you to create, maintain, and update any number of blogrolls through your administration interface.
* Changes made to the interface and template are displayed immediately after you modify them
* Password protected posts
* Easy installation and upgrades

To view the complete list of features, click here.

Download WordPress

2. Mozilla Firefox

The best browser I have used so far. The latest version of Firefox allows you to smart location bar, one-click bookmarking and blindingly fast performance. Avoid online scams, unsafe transactions and forgeries with simple site identity. View Web pages faster, using less of your computer memory.

Download Firefox

3. VideoLAN Player

VideoLAN player is a free open source software for playing multimedia files supporting most audio and video formats (H.264, Ogg, DivX, MKV, TS, MPEG-2, mp3, MPEG-4, aac, ¦) from files, physical media (DVDs, VCD, Audio-CD), TV capture cards and many network streaming protocols.

It can also convert media files, transcode and act as a streaming server over unicast or multicast and IPv4 or IPv6. It doesnt need any external codec, program or codec pack to work.

Download VideoLAN

4. OpenOffice

OpenOffice is a free open source project which enables you to work with major office format such as word files, spreadsheets, powerpoint files, databases and much more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages.

Main Features of OpenOffice:

* Free and Easy to Use
* Compatible with all Office formats
* Available in multiple languages

Download OpenOffice

5. BitTorrent

BitTorrent is a free client that allows you to transfer large files via BitTorrent protocol. It also allows you to search for and download using a built-in search box which opens the BitTorrent torrent search engine page with the search results in the user default web browser.

Main Features of BitTorrent:

* Upload and download multiple files
* Simple interface
* Create and share torrent files
* Automatic recovery system which checks all data that has been handled after an improper shutdown

Download BitTorrent

6. Notepad++

Notepad++ is a free (as in free speech and also as in free beer) source code
editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Based on a powerful editing component Scintilla, Notepad++ is written in C++ and uses pure Win32 API and STL which ensures a higher execution speed and smaller program size.

Main Features Of Notepad++ :

* Free and Easy to use
* Multilingual support
* Fast and small in size
* Full Drag ‘N Drop supported
* Auto-Completion
* Multi view means you can view 2 different documents at the same time

You can check the complete list of features here.

Download Notepad++

The list has the softwares that I think are the best right now and is widely used by people to perform there task without spending anything.

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1. Download Microsoft Office for Free
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3. WordPress 2 for iPhone now Available

Most Popular Freewares Available originally appeared on Core Digest on December 10, 2009.

The next graph illustrates the Firefox development process at Mozilla. A core set of 400 developers are responsible for the code that runs Firefox while the rest is a community driven effort. For instance, there are around five hundred people, outside the core developers, who localize Firefox into over 60 languages.

Taking that community effort to the next level, 25 writers (some of them from Mozilla) collaborated over two days to produce an online 110 pages long Firefox Manual.

It a visual guide (with plenty of screenshots) to help you learn everything about Firefox browser from using tabs to downloading files to using themes & plugins. The manual is under “free documentation” and also available for download as a PDF ebook.

As power users, you probably know most things that are mentioned in the Firefox manual but you may still want to pass a link of this manual to someone who has just switched (or is planning to make a switch) to Firefox.

Related posts:

1. How To Add 20 Best Features Of Other Browsers to Firefox
2. Download Thunderbird 3.0 RC1
3. The Essential Guide to Internet & Software for First-Time Computer Users

The Firefox Manual A Beginner’s Guide originally appeared on Core Digest on December 9, 2009.

Thunderbird 3.0 RC1 has been released after four beta releases. In case you dont know, Thunderbird is a great email client from the same people who brought you the Firefox browser.

Thunderbird 3 Features

New features in Thunderbird 3 include:

* New Search Tools
* Tabbed Email
* Message Archiving
* New Mail Account Setup Wizard
* Improvements for Developers

Lots of improvements and changes have been made including bug fixes, new features and enhancements. If youve been following the development releases of Thunderbird, Id recommend you try out the latest RC. You can see the official changelog on the official site.

Download Thunderbird 3.0 RC1

You can download this email client from here: Download Mozilla Thunderbird 3.0 RC1

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Download Thunderbird 3.0 RC1 originally appeared on Core Digest on December 7, 2009.