Sun 11 Oct 2009
I finally had some time to configure my web browser according to my needs which is something I have been wanting to do for a long time now. My browser of choice is Firefox, mainly because of its customizability. But because of this flexibility I also had to spend a considerable amount of time setting it up the way I wanted it. Here is what I use:
- Installed Greasemonkey to run a customized script that refreshes my browser every 59 minutes on our Filemaker based Intranet to avoid the session from expiring (if the page is not refreshed every 60 minutes the session expires).
- Installed Xmarks, Bookmark and password synchronization tool between multiple browsers and machines.
- Replaced my Firefox address field with the Google search field, which works like Chrome. See here for details on how to do this.
- Moved my bookmarks toolbar onto the Navigation Toolbar. This is a bit tricky. First, you select View->Toolbars->Bookmarks Toolbar. Then you right click on the Bookmarks toolbar and select Customize… which will allow you to drag the “Bookmarks Toolbar Items” icon up to the Navigation Toolbar. Now you can close the Bookmarks Toolbar by de-selecting View->Toolbars->Bookmarks Toolbar (thanks, Chris Mercurio, for this tip!).
- Installed IETab to manage sites that require IE (essentially banking, OWA and Microsoft sites).
- Uninstalled my Google Toolbar as it is no longer needed.
- I also added the Firefox Search field to the right of the Google search field I created in Step 3. above. I use this to run searches against specific Search Engines (for example SpanishDict.com for my Spanish homework).
Here is my perfect Toolbar
I still use three different browsers, though, Firefox, IE and Chrome, mainly because I need to log into mutliple sites with multiple identities (such as Facebook with our Syndeo Technologies account and with my personal account). The easiest way to do this is to use a different browser for each identity. Perhaps I will find a solution for this in the future.
