Week 14, July 23: Browser Tools

Here’s where it all comes together — in your humble browser.

You know those Web 2.0 tools that we’ve been exploring over the past few months? Increasingly they can be controlled, streamlined and tightly integrated into that basic piece of software we all take for granted — the browser window that we use every day for accessing, displaying and bookmarking pages on the Web.

Think of your car’s dashboard. At its most basic, it houses a steering column, speedometer and fuel gauge . That’s all you really need for driving.

But over the years, dashboards have come to accommodate a plethora of features, some of them useful for some people but less useful for others: ashtrays with cigarette lighters; tachometers; temperature gauges; pop-out cupholders; stereo units with MP3 jacks for your iPod; and even GPS-based navigation systems. Not to mention DVD players and Blackberry cradles.

At some point it becomes a question of how many functions — and how much distracting clutter — can be squeezed into the spaces around our steering wheels.

Well, now our browsers are up for grabs. Fortunately, we have control over what goes on them. We can customize Firefox or Internet Explorer (or Opera or the rest) as personal dashboards. We do it by downloading extensions — small add-ons that add new functionality.

But wait, this has been happening anyway, with more and more features creeping into our browsers.

Browser History 101

Rewind to late 2004: Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) had driven Netscape out of the marketplace and commanded more than 90% of the browser market. Then, some staff at Mozilla (the organization that had produced Netscape) came up with a new browser: Firefox.

Unlike Netscape, Firefox was not “bloated” with features. It was fast and sleek. Unlike IE at that time, it was very secure. And it introduced a new paradigm: tabs. Instead of spawning new browser windows on your desktop, you could have them arrayed as tabs within one browser window. Other innovations: a built-in Google search box, and a popup blocker. The browser dashboard was getting snazzier.

Quickly people began downloading Firefox, which now has nearly 15% of the browser market, eroding IE’s dominance. Eventually last fall, Microsoft released version 7.0 of IE, with much better security — and those cool tabs.

Third-Party Extensions

But something else happened, too. Because Mozilla is a not-for-profit corporation, it makes its source code available to everyone — “open source”. Soon third-party developers began creating free add-ons — those extensions – to enable people to access and use their favorite websites directly via Firefox’s toolbars. (You may recall that a similar thing happened with Facebook — open source code and an explosion of widgets.)

Today several dozen extensions are available for Firefox, in several categories — for example: bookmarks; downloading & file management; language support and translation; photos & media; privacy & security; Web data & alerts (e.g. RSS feeds); search tools; and Web-developer tools.

Pimp Your Firefox

Adding these add-ons is popularly known as “pimping your browser,” because of the way they spruce it up — like a customized Cadillac. Typically, these extensions pull live data to your toolbar — so you can browse headlines, for example, without having to visit the websites that the data come from. For example:

• Local weather conditions when you mouse-over an icon;
• New-email notification for multiple accounts;
• the latest, most-popular del.icio.us bookmarks or Digg articles, available via a drop-down menu.

Other extensions let you work with the pages displayed within your browser window — customizing how Google pages look, for example. Firefox extensions for Web developers let you sample the colours on a page, or measure the size of a page’s images. Microsoft now lists extensions for IE, though there aren’t nearly as many as there are for Firefox.

The downsides of all this customization and personalization may be obvious. One is clutter – the more gizmos you add to your browser, the busier it looks and the more “real estate” it consumes on your screen, leaving less room for pages in your browser’s window, for example.

Also, it’s another form of bloat. If Firefox is checking your local weather + your email + Digg + del.icio.us every five minutes, that’s taxing your bandwidth as well as your PC’s resources, slowing down your browser and other functions. The fox no longer runs so much as trots.

Activities:

• Look at the extensions for Firefox and IE. Examine what they do.
• Download one and add it to your toolbar — you can always remove it later.

In your blog, respond to both these questions:

1. Find an extension for Firefox or IE that you like. Explain why it’s useful.
2. Looking at the extensions in general, do you think they’re useful tools? Give examples.

• Also, if you haven’t downloaded Firefox, download it and explore it and blog about your impressions of it in comparision to IE.
• Email your blog’s link to the gmail account.

Readings (optional):

• Internet Explorer Add-Ons (Microsoft)
  
• 23 Best Add-Ons for Firefox (Mashable)

Questions? Concerns? Email or phone Larry (x3535), or contact him via chat!