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Download Statusbar is another of my really-can’t-live-without-it extensions that immediately goes on to any new install of Firefox. The default settings that Firefox comes with is simply not even in the same league.

Without changing any default settings, any file you download is retrieved in the background, straight to your desktop. You can of course change the options in the settings to prompt you for a different location, or to ask you every time, which is nice. The alert slider is a nice visual clue that your file has arrived, but there’s nothing really useful about it as far as functionality goes. It would be intuitive for me to click the alert, which could either activate the file or bring up the folder it was downloaded to, but it does nothing. You need to bring up Windows explorer, or show the desktop in order to find it.

Download Statusbar, on the other hand, will let you open the file after a successful download, pause it or cancel it, all while letting you see the speed of the transfer, the estimated time of finishing, a progress meter, and a few other tidbits of information.

Let’s take a look at it:

It’s simplicity at it’s finest, while having any information you could possible want while in the process of retrieving a file. Everything is customizable- the information, the colors, the placement, buttons, etc. Devon Jensen has done a wonderful job with this, and I encourage anyone out there who assumes the standard Firefox behavior is fine to really try this out.

Download Statusbar

SuperDragAndGo has the dubious honor of being the first Firefox extension that I will throw out Mad Props and Unrequited Love to in this new series of blog posts. I’d like to write about every extension that I think is extremely useful, and this one is on the top of my list. I expect Firefox to use this behavior by default, so any time I have a new installation of Firefox, this is one of the first (if not the first) extension I install.

So what is it? Basically, it allows you to select text, link, or image on a page, and “throw it” any where on your screen, and a new tab will open in the foreground (or background, if you want to try out the experimental build, which works flawlessly for me). If you select text, you can do a Google search. If you select an image, you can download it. The options menu lets you customize its functions:

Works in current versions of Firefox. Check it out, I think you’ll find it pretty damned handy.

SuperDragAndGo installation page

You want to be productive, right? Right. Here’s a Firefox extension that will possibly save your loafing butt from unemployment. Enter PaNIC: Productivity and Networking Information Component.

PaNIC is set to be activated by the Alt key and the tick ` symbol up there by the 1 on your keyboard. Press those two buttons at the same time, and all of your tabs in Firefox will get killed instantly, and replaced with a Google search for “increasing workplace productivity”. You can edit the hot keys and web page address via the extension’s preferences menu.

Important! This is tested on Firefox 2.0. This might blow up earlier versions of Firefox.

Install PaNIC 0.2
(Size: 8kb Release Date: October 24th 2006)

Tested on Firefox 2.0.

Changes the default error page from basically having a reload button to having the following choices: a google cache, an archival snapshot from the wayback machine, a ping, a trace route, and a whois lookup. Updated: version 0.2 adds a coralize feature.

Install ErrorZilla 0.2
(Size: 23kb Release Date: September 24th 2006)

Tested on Firefox 2.0b1.