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TECH SUPERCHARGE YOUR BROWSER
WE use the web for everything – from entertainment,
in the form of online videos and games, to working with documents and
databases in the cloud, and even keeping in touch with friends and family
through our social networks. It’s no wonder then that our web browsers are
the most important pieces of code on our machines today. But did you know
that you can add extra functionality to this software in the form of free
plugins and extensions?
Download YouTube videos
We all love watching online videos. But did you know you can download
your favourite videos using browser plugins?
People who use Internet Explorer can use IE
Download Helper. Get Version 3.3 of the software because the new 3.5
version puts a limit on the size of the video file for free users.
www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Download-Managers/ IE-DownloadHelper.shtml
For Firefox, we suggest Video DownLoadHelper
(available on the Firefox extensions page). When you access a web page with
embedded videos in it, this extension processes the links from where the
video can be downloaded in either FLV, MP4 and 3GP formats in resolutions
of up to 1080p.
Chrome users can use YouTube Downloader. This works
best as it creates a download button under the video you are watching. And
it even works with sites like Vimeo and Dailymotion.
www.chromeextensions.org/utilities/chrome-youtube-downloader
Control music playback
Do you listen to music while browsing the web? Download FoxyTunes. This
plugin allows you to control audio playback from within your browser if you
use Internet Explorer or Firefox (version 18 or lower). After you install
it, you can change volume settings, skip tracks and pause songs from your
browser window, without switching to your media player running in the background.
FoxyTunes manages this feat by mirroring your playback software in a
toolbar under the browser’s URL bar.
www.foxytunes.com
Read lengthy articles and take notes
Whenever you read an article on the web, you are often plagued by
sponsors who’ve placed advertisements – in the form of links, images and
pop-ups – around that piece. Evernote Clearly is an extension that strips a
web page of all that distraction and leaves behind just what you want to
see. You can select between light and dark themes – and if you have an
Evernote account, you can even clip the article or highlight portions of it
for future reference.
EC is available to users of Firefox and Chrome from
their respective extension pages. Those who use Internet Explorer can use
Evernote Web Clipper after installing the Evernote program on their PC.
evernote.com/webclipper/
Manage multiple tabs
Incredibly powerful and yet easy to use, TabMixPlus (available on the
Firefox extensions page) is a tool that helps you manage open tabs within
Firefox. Once installed, you can use it to group tabs, view them as
thumbnails, lock them in a position and recall pages after closing – and
most of these features can be accessed with a right click inside an open
web page.
For Chrome users, there’s TooManyTabs (available on
the Chrome web store) that comes with similar functionality.
Play Angry Birds
Yes, you can play the world’s favourite mobile game in a browser.
Chrome users can simply install the game as an extension and play it not
only when they are connected to the web, but also when they are offline.
Firefox and Internet Explorer users, however, can play the game on www.chrome.angrybirds.com. This will make the office a little less
boring. Just keep an eye out for your boss.
CHROME
Attachments.Me: This is a nifty tool that allows you to quickly save
files from your Gmail account onto online services such as Dropbox, Google
Drive, Box or Skydrive. The extension, which also allows you to attach
files from cloud storage, creates several easy-to-use buttons within
Gmail’s compose and view windows. And users are also provided with an
overview of all their files saved across the services.
HootSuite: This is a full-featured extension of HootSuite, a program
that allows you to track your social networks using a single window.
Install and connect it to your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts.
After that, you can use it from within the browser to keep an eye on your
social media feeds, as well as tweet or post status updates.
SplitScreen:
This
is a great tool for when you work with two pages simultaneously. After you
install this extension, click on its icon to open a single Chrome page with
two windows; each with its own URL bar. By default, however, one half
serves as a blank notepad, allowing you to take notes. These can be saved
as a local file, or cached automatically so that when you open SplitScreen
the next time, your data is intact and you can start working from where you
left off.
MagicActions for YouTube: A “must-have” for video junkies, this
extension adds several features to YouTube – the most important being its
cinema mode that puts the clip inside a black box and removes all
distractions from the page. And you can also use it to auto repeat your
favourite song so that it plays repeatedly in a loop. Other options include
sharing videos on Facebook; choice between a light and a dark theme; and
volume control through your mouse scroll wheel. All Chrome plug-ins can
be found at ‘chrome.google.com/webstore/category/home’ and can be installed directly within
the browser.
FIREFOX
Thumbnail Zoom: With TZ, you don’t have to click on an image to view it
in full size. Simply hover over a thumbnail to see it in a floating window.
This not only saves time, but also helps you keep your browsing session
neat and tidy. By default, this extension works with over 15websites
including Facebook, Twitter and Imgur.
CopyPlainText:
If
you’ve ever copied text from the internet and pasted it directly into a
rich editor like MS Word, you’ll know what a mess its formatting can
create. Most users therefore prefer to paste into Notepad before copying
and pasting into an email compose window or MS Word. CopyPlainText strips
away the troublesome formatting from web text and helps save some time.
FireTube:
Install
this extension to turn YouTube into your personal radio station. It adds a
tiny toolbar –complete with fast forward, rewind, pause, and volume
controls buttons – at the bottom of the page from where you can search a
song on the video service and stream it as an MP3. But that’s not all. If
you want, you can even download the file in MP3 format.
Feedly: Now that Google Reader is dead, you can use Feedly to manage
your RSS subscriptions. Or if you are not into RSS feeds, you can use it to
just browse fresh daily content from websites like New York Times or CNN.
This extension adds a Feedly button near the back and forwards buttons and
clicking on it opens a tab with the news of the day. Feedly is also
available for Chrome.
INTERNET EXPLORER
ieSpell: IE 10 has an inbuilt spell checker, but if you’re running
version 8 or 9, you should download ieSpell. This tool is a boon to those
who compose emails and blog posts in their browser. Once installed, spell
check can be accessed in the contextual menu that pops up after
right-clicking. With ieSpell you can also highlight a word and look for its
meaning on the Merriam Webster web site.
www.iespell.com/download.php
iMacros: With iMacros you can record the actions that you perform on
a web page to complete a task. For example, to access Twitter you first
type twitter.com into the URL bar, hit enter, then
login using an id, hit tab, enter in your password and hit enter again.
With iMacro, you can record these actions, and subsequently log onto
Twitter by simply replaying the macro. You can use this tool to record as
many macros as you want.
download.cnet.com/iMacros-for-Internet-Explorer/ 3000-12512_4-10586882.html
ALOT Radio: This toolbar is easily one of the best there is for
music lovers because it allows easy access to hundreds of international
radio channels. It even has a Facebook tab that allows you to keep an eye
on your feeds; an eBay tab to browse through products you may want to buy;
a YouTube app for video search; and a weather tab for local forecast.
download.cnet.com/ALOT-Radio-App/ 3000-12512_4-75147660.html
Google Toolbar: We don’t usually recommend the use of toolbars, but
this one adds several features to IE: It allows you to carry out an
internet search without going to www.google.com; automatically translates text whenever
you encounter a web page in a foreign language; and if you give it
necessary permissions, it also gives you one-click access to your Google
services including Google+.
www.google.com/intl/en_uk/toolbar/ie/index.html IE plug-ins have to be installed on
your PC before they can be used within the browser.
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