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I came across this list of 50 recommended Firefox loyal users, or Mac Chrome to-be ones. And while I haven’t gone through all of them, the ones that caught my attention, or I am enjoying already are:

1- ColorZilla: One of the reasons I still open Firefox is to get the color of a certain element on a web page.

2- DownThemAll: The best download manager I have for downloading multiple files from a site at once, and with full bursting speed. Don’t expect to enjoy convenient browsing however meanwhile :).

3- Firebug: if you’re a web developer, this is simply a must. period.

4- FireFTP: Convenient and quick way to FTP to your server from within the browser. Though for large files, I would pick a stand alone FTP client.

5- Fireshot: This doesn’t only make taking screen snapshots easy. It allows further editing and annotations. For bloggers, and debuggers who want to share screen erros extremely useful. No need to launch a separate app to do little photo editing. There is a Pro commercial version of it as well.

6- IETab: This is a common statement. I only open IE when Firefox can’t open the website. Well, this plugin allows you to keep IE shut down for good.  It would simply open the IE window inside a Firefox tab, allowing you to even do Microsoft update through it.

7- Web Developer: Set of tools for web developers to help altering, editing, and viewing various types of page info, like image sizes, element names, etc. You can even do resize for pages, and go through the CSS files and edit them. 

8- Pencil: Sketch and prototype tool to create mockups of screenshots. While tempting, it didn’t work for me as I hoped it would. Try it out and see.

I wouldn’t prepare a top 50 Firefox extension list my self and leaveout Cooliris. The extension that would transfer your browser into a 3D Wall easy way to navigate the web. Extremely useful for photos and videos, though have been crashing frequently with me recently. By my whole PC isn’t really in one piece anymore.

Don’t ignore the remaining items, and don’t get tempted to try them all. Never feed your browser more than it can eat :)

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PC Magazine have compiled a great list of selected 157 free softwares/online services you can use over commercial ones. While 157 is a large number, I strongly suggest you go through the whole categorized list, or your favorite category at least. I tried to go through it to come up with most preferred ones, I ended up with a list of almost, umm… 157! No just kidding, but the list was really huge I will try to make some picks of what I use, and am interested in. Also, I will list the one hot item I think they missed from the list.

What I Currently Use:

• GIMP: The FREE open source graphics editor is not really as good as Photoshop, but does the job on many occasions. At least for a novice like me, it’s more than enough.
• Notepad+++: I added an extra plus here as this light-weight notepad clone editor is really good for quick file editing. Tab based, open source, add-ons, highlighting on various programming languages. Only place where it lacks is for framework based development, like Ruby on Rails. This is where Komodo Edit comes into picture. Komodo Free version was made public last year and I’m not sure how PC Mag guys missed it. It’s doing great for me.
• Launchy: Quickly from command line kinda interface reach all your apps, files, folders, and custom actions as well. It’s smart to know the preferred apps as well.
• Google Reader: Read all your favorite blogs and news sites from one place, accessible where ever you go. Tag and categorize the feeds, search through them as well, and share them.
• Google Desktop: The best and most efficient way to search all your computer, emails, chat, web history and more, on the fly. Alas, for some reason it doesn’t work on my home PC :(.
• Geni: Build your family tree. Share it with family members and let them add to your tree. Ofcourse, this could be a more serious privacy infringement than Facebook someday!

Trust me there is a lot more, but I will jump to a selected list of softwares I am yet to look into.

Interested In:

• ThreatFire AntiVirus: Seems to detect suspicious behavior and blocks it, rather than depending on virus signatures which is more of reactive approach to new viruses.
• EULAlyzer: This is quite smart thinking. It goes through those long Terms & Conditions detecting weird words. Like if a program involves installing ad programs on your computer, while we usually tend to accept all unaware.
• Hotspot Shield: Create an instant virtual private network (VPN) tunnel between your laptop and the router at any Wi-Fi hot spot to protect your data from snoops on the public airwaves
• Mint: Syncs with your bank and credit cards online, checks spending habits, and come with suggestions on how to improve your savings.Alas, no Kuwait bank supports those type of stuff, and my cash spending is considerable as well.
• Zoho: Very strong online word, spreadsheet, presentation, database, and more tool. Getting more popular every day.
• Remember The Milk: Organize and track your grocery items online. It sends SMS,email, and IM remainders. Forcing geek into family life basically
• Eraser: People think when they remove item from their recycle bin it goes ino a black hole forever. But they’re wrong. the system just removes the pointer to that file marking it as empty for future use. If someone goes and read those specific bits of data later on, he will get to your private information. Eraser lets you overwrite those private sensitive data by blank 1s and 0s. Basically a virtual shredder. It is slower than normal Delete though, so use it when you must to.
• ZamZar: Convert your files online from/to any type for FREE.
• GizmoProject: Skype competitor offering free peer-to-peer, over internet phone, and video calls, based on open standards.
• Prism: This is a new thing from Mozilla still in the labs. The idea is that you basically load a certain favorite web app of yours (Gmail in my case), and let it run like any other application on your desktop.

Well, don’t let me ruin your appetite. There is a load lot more to look for, based on your interests. Enjoy, and please, do share your insight on the tools you tried before.

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Like old people tend to stick to their old habits, there are many computer geeks who love the classical editors. In my last job interview, the interviewer was excited with my performance so far and wanted to know which tools I use for my development. When I said the word Notepad, his face started changing colors and he didn’t know how to comment. So I took the lead and answered the question on his face. From my experience, other editors are designed for specific tasks only and if used other wise might give unpredictable disastrous results. Forte was the first editor I used for Java, and many had the problem of compilation error times and times until we figured out the problem is with the tool it self, and normal command line compilation does work perfectly. Another worse experience is when I opened my ASP page (Old ASP days!) inside some WYSIWYG web editor, I don’t recall it’s name. Suddenly afterwards my lovely code stopped working and started going crazy. I found out the editor have encoded the ASP opening and ending tags, making ASP pcode non-executable! I had tough time fixing it. From then on, I always prefer to stick to simplest stuff that does not interfere with my work, just makes it clearer. There are some real good editors out there which might be very helpful for certain projects though. Eclipse ofcourse is on top of those editors, being an open source with huge plugins library.

Right now, and for over a year I’ve been using Notepad++. An open source editor that is as light as Notepad, but a lot more powerful. What makes this editor the best choice for me is the following:

• Open Source: Just being so means there is continuous improvement and addition to it. Also, availability of plugins gives it a great added value, though I did not utilize it yet.
• Auto-Completion: Through the available plugins, you can activate this feature for auto-completion of current language in use based on the set of available APIs.
• Tabs: That’s right. Open multiple files under tabs. Open new tab with simply Ctrl+N. Browse the tabs with Ctrl+Tab. Boosts development time a lot.
• File Update Alert: Automatically detects if an opened file has been updated or deleted somewhere outside the editor, and gives the option to restore/maintain/close accordingly.
• Search: You can search one file, or all open files. Some nice feature when you don’t know where the lines of code you are looking for.
• Languages: Based on extension type, highlighting is done automatically for variety of languages, including but not limited to: Java, ASP, Perl, PHP, SQL, Ruby, LISP and many others.
• Encoding: Support of different encoding format, with the ability to convert to UNIX or Mac formats as well.
• Settings: Rich setting functionality, like changing the tab size. For example, regular tabs are around 4 whitespaces, while Ruby recommends 2 only. You can make your choice.
• Zoom: Ability to Zoom in and out of the file.
• Recording: I never used that!
• Performance: Never it had failed me during my work. So fast and robust. as I said, just like Notepad. That’s why it is meant to be a Notepad replacement.

Notepad2 is another alternative that is so much simpler with no tab feature. Good thing about it though is it does not need installation. So even with no admin rights you can use it. As far as I’m concerned, Notepad++ is the choice for me that has replaced Notepad literally.

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