Firefox 3 Add-Ons: Five Must-Have Social Networking and Business-Friendly Tools
These five add-ons make your browser more social and improve the user interface, while making you more productive.
After installation, a small "T" resides in the corner. When a number appears next to it (say "1"), you know some of your friends have posted a "tweet" (a message on Twitter). The number increases as more unread messages compile. You can click on the box when you want to see what they've written. There is also an option to let their messages pop up for a few seconds in the corner above the T.
4. ColorfulTabs
ColorfulTabs are a great carryover from previous versions of Firefox that works on Firefox 3. ColorfulTabs allows you to differentiate what tabs you're working under automatically (it will assign a color) or manually (you can set one). One could set Gmail tab to blue and CIO.com to red, for instance. You can change the colors right away by right clicking on the tab.
The business value of this add-on is quite simple: if you have a Web-browser open all day for your job, having colors (rather than a static gray look) makes it easier on the eyes to differentiate the applications and websites you have open.
5. Delicious Bookmarks
Another staple, but the Add-on features for Firefox 3 really look great. Delicious is a social bookmarking site that allows you to save your bookmarks in once centralized location that you can access with a login and password regardless of what computer or browser you are on. This can be especially helpful if you are looking to share relevant pieces of content (news, etc.) with colleagues at work but aren't on the company intranet. Customers who also use the service could share content with you.
Like TwitterFox, Delicious Bookmarks for Firefox 3 now utilizes the right corner of the browser. There, you can see the del.icio.us symbol. If you click on it, you will be led to your home page on the social bookmarking site where you store your favorite articles and websites (and tag them). If you utilize the social aspects of del.icio.us (meaning, primarily, that you share bookmarks with friends on the service), you can also be notified that a friend has shared a link with you. Like the older versions of this add-on, you have a button at the top of your browser installed that says "Tag," which will allow you to save a page for bookmarking and tag it with a relevant label. Also, like on previous versions, if you right click on an article it will say "bookmark this in del.icio.us."
