Firefox brings us the best of what a browser has to offer the user. Here, you will not only find a vehicle for online information, you will also find a vehicle for personal interests. Firefox allows you to enjoy personalized browser themes that are tailored to the individual user. There are a host of things to keep in mind when creating and designing Firefox skins.

Type of Firefox Theme

There are different styles of skins for Firefox ranging from a single, flat image to a robust combination of graphics and content. Your audience’s needs and desires will shape the best path for you to take.

Personas

Pros: Single image that’s easy to create.

Cons:Limited to distribution through GetPersonas.com. Provides simple background image only.

Mozilla defines a Persona as a lightweight theme that changes the look of your browser without changing the navigation buttons, toolbars, and menus.You can also preview a design by hovering over an image and install it in one click without needing to restart.

A Persona is basically a single image 3,000 x 200 pixels under 300K and only available at Mozilla’s GetPersonas.com site. When you go to the site and look at the gallery of Personas, you’ll see the entire image on a page. This is not what your users will experience. You can hover on the “Wear this Persona” button to see how it will look in the browser.

As a designer, you want to recognize that only about a quarter of the image will be seen by most users. The shaded region in the image below shows the area viewed by the majority of users. The “extra” space helps with wide resolution monitors or for the vertical height for users with multiple toolbars.

This is a single-layer flat file, you see a portion of the image and as the browser is resized you see more or less of the of the image.

http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/25991

Enhanced Personas

Pros: Layered graphics and full CSS for a more versatile layout. Galleries can be offered outside of Mozilla’s GetPersonas.com. Once a user has installed Personas Interactive, the preview and ease of install mirrors the regular Personas experience exactly.

Cons: Users have an extra step of installing the Personas Interactive extension for Firefox.http://brandthunder.com/personas

Enhanced Personas allow for the full range of CSS background attributes to be applied to the background, as well as providing more control over color. A backgroundImage attribute is required for an Enhanced Persona. Without it, no other Enhanced Personas attributes are processed.

Enhanced Personas give the designer more control and flexibility over the theme experience. The designer gets to use layers of images that are anchored independently of each other. For the images below, the ladybug is layered on top of the grass. As the browser is resized, the ladybug maintains position in the relative center of the theme.

When working with clients and brands, we find a lot of value by anchoring a logo to the left of the browser, a style element that anchors to the right and a color or texture underlying both that keeps the design seamless as the browser is resized.

Browser Theme

Pros: A completely unique experience that can serve a particular audience’s exact needs.

Cons: A great deal of work if you theme each attribute of the theme.

Themes change the full appearance of the browser including navigation buttons, toolbars, and menus. Installing a theme requires you to restart your browser, like with extensions and other add-ons. And as you can expect, something that goes into this level of detail is quite a bit of work. Ever since the release of Firefox 3.6 in January 2010, which built Personas into the browser, the volume of themes created has dropped off dramatically. The capability, however, remains.

Full description of how to create a theme is still available. Mozilla’s own blog offers a good place to start exploring the options.

If you need a fully redesigned experience, this is the way to go. For example, if you want to create a Steampunk browser theme, you’re not going to be able to give every element that style without redesigning each navigation element.The popular Night Theme for Firefox, shown below, exhibits some of these attributes.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nasa-night-launch/

Interactive Browser Theme

Pros:Visual redesign with engagement that increases interaction between a site and its theme users.

Cons:Listing product on Mozilla’s Add-ons site does not fall under their definition of Personas or Themes.

The Interactive Browser Theme is a step beyond an Enhanced Personas by adding content and functionality to the theme experience.This can give the users a more immersive experience related to the theme they’ve installed. It is also far less work than a full theme as it maintains the normal navigation elements of the browser.

The interactive component is also important for many brands seeking more than the brand awareness a theme can offer. The links and content drive up return site visits, purchases and engagement with the social media efforts of a brand. All are contributors to a company’s return of investment for their web investment.

Using a tool like http://bt-engage.com gives designers the ability to add a logo to their design. This is a left-hand graphic that moves the navigation to the right giving an unobstructed view of the logo. Logo integrity is a requirement of some brands and good flexibility to have.

http://thunderthemes.com/BT_ThemePage.php?themeid=159

Design Requirements

Basic Dimensions

Plan your Firefox theme with a 200 pixel high image. Your audience won’t see all of it, but it will address the majority of Firefox users while serving those with extra toolbars. For reference, users with Firefox versions 3.6 and below will see about 85 pixels by default. Firefox 4.0+ shows 110 pixels.

If you use a single background image, it’s best to follow the recommendation for Personas and make it 3,000 pixels wide. The majority of users still have resolutions from 1024 to 1280 pixels wide, so they’ll only see a portion of the image. Yet, you still need the wider image. With wide screen monitors and resolution improvements, there are also a lot of users that see more than the 1280 pixels.

File Size

Mozilla recommends keeping Personas under 300k and we agree. Like any web content, you want your image to be a light as possible so it pulls up quickly. The detail of the image you choose can affect this. That’s why many of the popular Personas have the graphic emphasis in the upper right of the theme design and fade to a single color.

https://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/98983

You can also optimize file size by leveraging the multiple images supported with Enhanced Personas. Split images are less weighty than single images which slow down performance. A great way to get a fully styled background with less file weight is to use screened elements and tiled textures/partial images. Many themes offered by brands will use two anchor images, one on the right and one on the left, with a color or texture connecting the two images.

Below, is the design template Brand Thunder uses for Firefox.We give guidance for using multiple images as well as the interactive capabilities.

Tips & Tricks

When designing a theme, it is important to know that only certain design elements are going to be visible in the theme. A browser at 1024 pixel resolution will show far less than one expanded to 1920 pixels. In the Daytona International Speedway browser theme shown below, at the 1024 resolution the blue background color is not visible. It’s only when the browser is in extra wide resolutions that you’ll see the color. The key here is to optimize for the smaller resolutions but make sure there’s a seamless transition if a user is at a very wide resolution.

Logo Size and Transparency

Keeping a logo on a transparent background will help ensure integrity with the rest of the design allowing it to meld with the background color or image that rounds out the design. Logos with a box or on a rectangle of color create a hard edge that makes the theme look unfinished.

Logos also work better when they are square shaped. Stay away from rectangles and wide images as the logo placement pushes the browser navigation to the right. Moving the browser navigation can be unsettling to users, so you want to keep this to a minimum. Look at the example of the College Humor theme below.

College Humor’s original browser theme used their wide logo. The most recent theme design for College Humor has a square logo that makes use of the space more wisely. There are less alignment complications throughout the browser.

 Keep Browser Buttons and New Tabs Legible

It’s tempting to build a beautifully designed and intricately detailed browser theme. This can, however, work against you. With all the text and small icons used in a browser, you can create a reading nightmare if your theme is too complex. If you’re going to use a detailed image, keep it to the far right of the browser and move quickly to a softer edge for a better backdrop for text to be read against. The Old Comic theme below is an example of a good concept gone bad in execution.

The browser theme will be utilized a great deal by the user and therefore should not be visually overpowering. The design needs to be minimal and clear, yet also bold enough to stand out from other elements within the design. There is obviously going to be a lot going on within the theme (tabs, URL bar, etc.) and the main design elements need to be strong yet subtle. Design should not too visually complicated for the user. Even the Buffalo Bills theme shown below maintains a style and energy, the color and intensity are consistent enough across the theme that it doesn’t interfere with usability.

http://www.buffalobills.com/fans/bills-browser.html

Build One Now

Browser design is an interesting and challenging endeavor. To get started visit the following sites and see which path you want to explore. The easiest, BT:Engage is a platform that will allow you to drag and drop images and create your own theme in a matter of minutes:

• BT:Engage: Firefox and IE theme creator
• Firefox: How to Create Your Own Persona for Firefox
• Firefox: Create and Host Your Own Personas Gallery with Personas Interactive

These themes are great for any type of Firefox user so without a doubt you will find one that’s suitable to your needs. Bring some color into your Firefox Browser and Enjoy!

1. Ambient

2. Chromifox Basic

3. Chromifox Extreme

4. Chromifox Carbon

5. Black Stratini

6. Past Modern

7. SilverMel

8. Aluminium Kai 2

9. Anthem

10. Camifox

11. VFox3

12. Midnight Fox

13. Midnight Foxy

14. iTunes Fox

15. Glaze Black

16. Abaca Classic

17. Dark Revisited

18. Devious Green

19. Bluetacular

20. Operetta Advance

21. iAqua

22. Purity

23. Phoenity

24. Minty Fresh

25. GrApple Yummy

26. SoCool-Calx

27. W3 V8

28. Aero Fox XL

29. Strata40

30. MacOSX Theme

31. Nuvola FF

32. Modern Modoki

33. NetFox

34. Gradient iCool

35. Vista AERO

36. My Fire Fox

37. Noia

38. Aeon

39. WhiteHart

40. Pimp Zilla

41. iPox

42. GrayModern

43. Old Factory

44. FoxScape

45. BlackX

46. Nasa Night Launch

47. Sky

48. OWN

49. MozXP

50. Kempelton

51. Kempelton Large

52. Simple Green

53. Phoenity Aura

54. Vista on XP

55. GNome Classic

56. Firefox 2 For Firefox 3

57. xBox Fox

58. Full Flat

59. Utopia White

60. Rein

61. Crystal Fox

62. Alienware Invader

63. zBlack

64. Office Black

65. Strata O Various

66. AvantGarde Nightlife

67. MonoChrome

68. Arctic Glow

69. MonGrel

70. SkyPlus

71. SlikerFox

That’s it! Don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS Feed in order to get latest design related stories and resources.

1. ScribeFire

To do Blogging, you need a Blog Editor and ScribeFire in Firefox acts as a nice blogging editor. The user can drag and drop text from web pages, insert images, and post to multiple blogs. Unfortunately, there is a tracking option enabled by default but it can be disabled. This addon can actually make your blog editing platform independent from your operating system.

2. Reminder Fox

Obviously, Bloggers need to sort out their future plans to groom quickly. Reminder Fox lets you do it with ease in Mozilla Firefox. You can manage To Do lists, set Reminders with alerts or alarms right in your Firefox browser conveniently.

3. RSS Ticker

Bloggers need to remain updated with other blogs and sources of information for which the defacto communication standard is RSS. RSS Ticker is a nice add-on which displays the Live Bookmarks in a scrolling fashion across the user’s screen. It means that the user gets updates while browsing and doesn’t need to log in feed reader specifically for accessing RSS feeds.

4. Faster Fox

This addon increases overall productivity of blogger by providing some commonly used tasks in a refined manner. It tweaks wikipedia by showing related articles, auto loads next pages, shows suggestions by Google for a keyword in address bar, enhances Google’s search results and many more. Its my personal favorite and highly recommended for you.

5. Similar Web

If you are facing difficulty in finding a related website to the one you are currently visiting, Similar Web can actually provide many alternatives. In this way, the blogger can easily hit upon many similar resources and refine articles comfortably. It helps a lot and boosts my productivity while researching for an article.

6. Zemanta

You are wondering for addon like “Similar Web” which can find relative content for your blog post then you don’t need to worry, Zemanta is here. It’s a content recommendation engine which helps you in finding and suggesting images, links, articles, and tags correlated to your content from a large number of quality resources like YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, Amazon, Google Maps, Facebook, Twitter, and many more. An awesome addon which you should install right now.

7. Readability

Having some difficulty in reading text surrounded by redundant information on a web page. Readability addon will rip off the unnecessary information to make content more visible. In this way, the web pages can be printed with less clutter. This addon also provides auto scrolling feature which can give rest to your fingers and scroll a web page without keyboard and mouse.

8. Gmail Manager

Gmail is currently the mostly used email service in general and this happens to be same in case of bloggers. Also Google provides free email solution in a package named Google Apps for domains. Therefore, an enhanced Gmail notifier is needed and Gmail Manager addon is best for many purposes.

9. Brief

It is another Firefox addon which acts as an alternative for a feed reader. Its features are not less worth than a full feed reader. The feeds are displayed in form of a full web page with a sidebar containing user’s subscriptions. The items can be searched and bookmarked. There is also a notification option which informs whenever there is an update in any feed.

10. Read It Later

If your bookmarks are getting messy with links which you intend to read only once then you should use this extension. The web pages can be marked with single click for latter reading. The items can read offline and it is also possible to synchronize them between multiple devices and workplaces.

11. Copy Plain Text

Bloggers need to copy content from different sources and paste it in their article but in most cases the content has its own formatting. You need to remove this formatting and then match it with your content. Instead of doing this, you can copy text from a web page through this extension which removes all formatting and makes it simple text.

12. US English Dictionary

Nonnative as well native English speakers need a dictionary for easy look up. For a Blogger, it is even more necessary as it can provide more sophisticated alternatives for a given word which can polish Blogger’s write up.

13. Scrapbook Plus

This Firefox addon lets a blogger organize a library of web pages or full websites. The addon supports filters which can be defined to exclude related links and web pages that are not required.

If you are a Blogger and starts utilizing these addons, you will quickly feel an improvement in quality of your work which is obviously the ultimate goal. There may be an addon missing which is your favorite one, do let us know in comments.

The Add-ons for regular Internet Surfers

1. The WOT Add-on (Web of trust)

Web of Trust warns you about risky sites that cheat customers, deliver malware or send spam. Never in my life did I have a problem with some serious viruses infecting my computer until about a month ago. Suddenly my browser got frozen and in about 5 minutes all the programs and applications on my computer stopped working while the antivirus software that I had (kasperski) haven’t showed any thread which surprised me tremendously. Having restarted the system I trying at least something I was continuously getting the notice that I have to send a sms to some address and buy the security code that should unblock my computer or something along that line. I had to reinstall the system on my pc but this was not the end yet.

On the next day I found out that I got the virus on my server that have infected all the .html and .php files. I knew from the server logs that the virus got there from my computer and thanks God I had files backed up.
Doing my daily job I visit hundreds of website and I had no idea where I could get such a deadly virus from. That’s when I started thinking that I need in some way to exclude the potentially dangerous websites or at least know what websites have low reputation. Now I’m a happy user of the WOT add-on. It works very simply and graphically clear.

Next to every link and in the browser address line you will see the circle that changes the color from green to red depending on website trustworthiness, green being safe and red very poor. They gather this information from website visitors using the WOT and you can also rank the website for several parameters like trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy etc. You can also leave a review if you say got infected from this website and want to warn the rest of the community. In case you get to the dangerous website they will show you a big pop-up with the warning before actually prompting you to the page, where you can choose where you want to see why the page is considered as dangerous, ignore the warning and go to the page or leave the page. If you have children there is also a children control option where the websites will adult content will not be available for browsing. You can get additional info on WOT add-on here.

2. Read It Later Add-on

Read It Later allows you to save pages of interest to read later. It’s very simple but very useful, at least for
me. Browsing tens of interesting pages daily I often don’t have time to read them right away. I used to add the pages I wanted to read to the bookmarks and then was totally forgetting about them or couldn’t find the pages I needed and finally I ended up with the long-long list of bookmarks cluttered with stuff of any kind one can ever imagine. Read it later add-on allows you to add the page to the read list in one click. You can right-click with the mouse anywhere on page you’d like to read later and choose an option “read this page later”.You can also copy the link and add it to the library clicking on small yellow arrow on the top right cornet of the browser.

3. Ad block Plus

A simple nice add-on that blocks add-on the pages. Once installed it will show up in a red hexagon in the top right of the browser window. Nothing special to say about it but it makes my life easier.

4. AddThis

AddThis is a nice add-on making sharing and bookmarking simple. The list of social icons will be added to your
browser toolbar area as well as to right-click mouse options. You just click on the icon, the application connects to your social network account and posts the update there. Here’s the sample how it looks in Twitter:

Though I use AddThis I still have a separate toolbar for stumble as this is one of my favorite websites and I love to have the options to leave a comment, thumb up or just view some cool stuff directly from the toolbar. You can install this add-on here.

Add-ons that I use in my work of a project manager

If you are starting the career of the project manager in some company or just have a start-up project I do recommend you to add this add-ons to the browser as they can not only make your life easier but help you choose the right direction in your marketing campaign as well as provide help to the customers if they run into some problems with the website.

1. Fire FTP

This might be one of the most Firefox add-ons. This plugin allows you to upload files to the server as any other FTP client but you don’t have to install it separately on your computer. The interface is quite intuitive. On the left you will see list of files on your computer and on the right once connected to the server you will see the files on the server. When you start the files upload or download you will see the how the process flows in the bottom area, the connection errors will show up there as well. You can choose the mode for files transfer (binary, ASCII and automatic) and whether to show or not to show the hidden files.

I started using FireFtp after my website files on the server were infected. Before that I was using Total Commander for years which I had to reinstall as well and since I didn’t want to get used to any other similar programs I decided to give a try to Fire FTP.

It’s not perfect and the websites in the other tabs and windows start working slower when FireFtp is working and there are now usual hot keys but it’s not bad at all. I like the error reports and I like when the program says ZZZZ when it’s connected to the server but not command is performed. This can be actually the only reason why I’m using it :)

2. HTTP Fox

HttpFox monitors and analyzes all incoming and outgoing HTTP traffic between the browser and the web servers. In simple words it shows you how the website interacts with the server and if any errors occur you can get the details of the error without having to check the server log files. I used to work for the company who developed a cool CMS system running on php and flex. Working with the customers, uploading files to their servers and helping them to actually manage the website I was facing some php or flex errors pretty often but the problem was that these were the errors the admin area was showing and I had no idea how to handle that. I’m neither a programmer nor a flash developer and this was a real nightmare for me. One of my friends recommended me to install the HTTP Fox plugin and there hasn’t been a single problem I couldn’t fix on my own.

I guess things would still work for me much easier if I had a better php knowledge. The way it works now- I start HTTP Fox (toogle HTTP Fox as they call it in the application), get the error description, go to google to type it there and then check for solutions how the error can be fixed on the php and flash forums :) With the HTTP Fox add-on you can also check whether some website will save a cookie on your computer as well as get some other useful info.

3. Fire Bug

Fire Bug is a great add-on that will be of a great help not just for a project manager but an advanced develop as well. The number of features is enormous but in my daily work I use just a few. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. I used Firebug multiple times to customize and make small changes on the WordPress themes, to get info on the images and embedded videos and flash files and get info about properties of the page elements. You can call the application from the Tools section of the browser or just right clicking on some elements on the page.

4. SeoQuake SEO extension

SeoQuake extension is a must if you perform any type of work related to SEO, links exchange, online advertising etc. It gives you a profound info about the website, helps you study your competitors and potential partners. At one glance you can see the page PageRank, the number of pages from the domain name indexed in Google, Yahoo and Bing, Alexa Rank, the age of the domain name and the direct link to the whois info. There’s information about internal and external links on the page as well as the information on the keywords density ( you can check what main keywords your competitors use and how often and where on page).

The SeoQuake extension has another cool feature- so called Yahoo links- showing the number (and the list) of external URLs pointing to the page and domain name. Extremely useful when you need to check who’s linking to your competitors.

5. Search Status

That’s a good alternative to SeoQuake but I prefer using them both. By default the Search Status add-on options will show up in the bottom right corner of the browser alone with the traffic stats from Alexa (alexa rank), Compete and mozRank by SeoMoz. Earlier I was using Alexa stats from the SeoQuake and had a separate Compete add-on installed and now I have them all in one place. Some of the other features Search Status add-on include: no follow links analysis, general page’s link report, stats about indexed pages and keywords density, whois info etc. There’s almost the same features as in SeoQuake and some additional ones but they are not convenient to use. I prefer clicking on an icon in the toolbar rather than going to the footer, clicking on the icon and only then getting the list of options available. It would be perfect is someone could combine these two.

That’s it, I’ve listed all the add-ons that I use daily. I’ll be glad to hear what add-ons you use and how they help you in your work. I still have a place for two or three until my browser stops working so do let me know :)

I have a friend who suggested to try Chrome again and I thought I will give it a try – now I will check how much and how good extensions Chrome has and is it enough to transfer now???

This article will try to answer to question – can designer, web developer, social marketing, SEO person actually transfer to Chrome without any loss of extension features. Are there something similar to FireBug, WebDeveloper, Color Picker, SEO For Firefox, Alexa ranks, debugging tools, which can be replaced to be used daily?

Let’s put Chrome on test – shall we?

If you know a little about Google Chrome read our previous article about this browser features – Google Chrome Review.

Chrome Extensions For Daily Browsing

1. Aviary Screen Capture

Take a screen capture of the visible portion of any web page and it will open in an editor where you can crop it, add text and arrow markup, get color information or move around areas. You can easily save it to your desktop or host it online. The extension also lets you quick launch any of Aviary’s web editor design apps. View extension screenshots by clicking on the thumbnail and using the arrow keys.

2. Xmarks Bookmarks Sync

Backup and sync your bookmarks across computers and browsers. Xmarks is also available for Firefox, Safari and IE.

Since I am working on one computer at work and laptop, I love this automatic tool syncing my bookmarks  and allowing me to worry about other things.

3. AdThwart

Block ads on websites. Supports EasyList and many other ad blocker filter lists.

4. Evernote Web Clipper

Evernote’s Web Clipper extension let you save interesting stuff you see on the web.

5. LastPass

LastPass is a free online password manager and Form Filler that makes your web browsing easier and more secure.

6. RSS Subscription

This extension auto-detects RSS feeds on the page you are reading and upon finding one will display an RSS icon in the Omnibox, allowing you to click on it to preview the feed content and subscribe. Very handy extension for daily blog browsing.

7. Chrome Gestures

Allows you to execute common commands (like page forward/backward, close tab, new tab) by mouse gestures drawn over the current webpage, without reaching for the toolbar or the keyboard.

If you don’t know how mouse gestures work, check out this video.

8. Google Similar Pages beta (by Google)

Discover webpages similar to the page you’re currently browsing. I understand this extension works similar like StumbleUpon, but it’s more objective because it’s based on Google search engine and it’s been released by Google – cannot be bad!

Here I tested it on my own website and got 4 very popular design blogs displayed – first test looks good, I am trying it more definitely.

9. Feedly

A magazine-like startpage. A fast and stylish way to read and share the content of your favorite sites and services. Provides seamless integration with Google Reader, Twitter, Delicious, YouTube and Amazon.

10. Delicious Chrome Extension

Very simple and clean Delicious extension allowing you to simply bookmark page to Delicious. This extension adds just one button, without whole bookmark bar, I loved it!

11. Google Quick Scroll

Google Quick Scroll is a browser extension that helps you find what you are searching for faster.  After you click on a Google search result, Quick Scroll may appear on the bottom-right corner of the page, showing one or more bits of text from the page that are relevant to your query. Clicking on the text will take you to that part of the page.

Chrome Extensions For Social Networking

12. Google Mail Checker

Displays the number of unread messages in your Google Mail inbox. You can also click the button to open your inbox, very handy tool for daily browsing.

13. Chromed Bird

Chromed Bird is a Twitter extension that allows you to follow your timelines and interact with your Twitter account.

14. Facebook for Google Chrome

Extension which lets you read your Facebook news feed and wall. You can also post status updates.

15. StumbleUpon Extension

Simple StumbleUpon toolbar for Chrome, you should be very familiar with it if you are stumbling daily.

16. goo.gl url shortener

goo.gl url shortener is an extension which allows you to shorten the current website URL with the new Google URL Shortener service http://goo.gl/.

Chrome Extensions For Web Designers, SEO specialists and Web Developers

17. Lorem Ipsum Generator

Many other extensions of this type – in other browsers – simply complicate this task, using really extensive code, XHR, etc. The main purpose of this one, is to use the less amount of code (and also memory) and help the developer/user to get the job done.

Great and simple classic Lipsum extension, required in every designer’s toolbar.

18. Firebug Lite

Firebug Lite is a tool for web developers, that allows you to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

19. META SEO inspector

A Google Chrome extension useful to inspect the meta data found inside web pages, usually not visible while browsing.

20. Pastebin

Post and coloring source code (C, Python, Ruby, HTML, CSS, …) on a pastebin service. Although useful for the share on the forums, IRC or social networks (like Twitter).

21. Speed Tracer (by Google)

Get insight into the performance of your web applications.

22. Resolution Test

An extension for developers to test web pages in different screen resolutions, with an option to define your own resolutions.

23. Copy Without Formatting

Provides various ways (customizable keyboard shortcut, floating button, or auto-copy) to copy your selection WITHOUT formatting.

24. IE Tab

Use Internet Explorer to display web pages in a Chrome tab. Some sites can only be displayed using IE, and with this extension you can now see those sites without leaving Chrome. Great for web developers who want to test the IE rendering engine, users who use sites with ActiveX controls, and users who want to use the explorer view for local files (i.e. file:// URLs).

25. Chrome SEO

I couldn’t live without great SEO tool, where I could see stats of current page I am visiting, this tool is under development still, but already it’s very lightweighted, fast and working just excellent.

“The Google Chrome SEO extension provides easy access to Search Engine Optimization Tools that can help you with Competitive Analysis, Keyword Research, Backlink Checks and other daily SEO tasks.”

26. PageRank

Very simple and light extension which only task is to display pagerank automatically while page loads. For advanced browsing I would use Chrome SEO, but for automatic,fast stats display I like this plugin in my Chrome Extensions as well!

27. SitezMeter

SitezMeter displays traffic charts from Google Trends, Alexa and Compete side by side, as well as ranks. This extension is a handy tool to webmaster, web site owner and SEO/SEM specialists.

Of course, you can go to SitezMeter website directly, but this helps sometimes to do it faster in handy way, anyway – your pick!

28. Chrome Flags

Chrome Flags displays a country flag indicating about the physical location of the websites you’re visiting. The extension also provides access to detailed information regarding the website’s servers, owners, traffic and trustworthiness.

29. Eye Dropper

Eye Dropper and Color Picker extension which allows you to pick color from any webpage or from advanced color picker. You can also check option, that selected color HEX code will be automatically copied to clipboard. This tool is even more handier than ColorPicker on FireFox, because HEX code I needed to copy/paste manually.

30. MeasureIt!

Draw out a ruler that will help you get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage.

Yes, this popular Firefox extension for designers is available on Chrome as well! Great!

31. Pendule

Built in features for developers

I didn’t know there are already built in features for web developers, but wow, there is – and you don’t need to install anything.

This “Inspect Element” feature works similar like Firebug, but it has different features. Just select and element, text you are interested in, click right mouse button and check inspect element – you will get advanced and precise results right away! Very, very handy!

Read more about built-in features for developers in this google guide.

Summary

While testing all those different extensions, what I enjoyed the most – extensions are super easy and extremely fast to install/uninstall/activate. I was used to Firefox restart browser statement all the time, I never really thought about it. With Google Chrome you just click on install button and extension is live and working in seconds without any slow downloading or restarting, lagging. And in the same time, if I decided not to keep that extension, I could easily uninstall it as well without any problems.

I am amazed, it took me so long to try Chrome extensions, because I thought there could be nothing better then Firefox, all those thousands of plugins it has and there no way Chrome could compete with something like that EVER.

Dear readers, I was very wrong – of course, there aren’t so many extensions available just yet, but already all of them works way better, way faster and for now I haven’t got any problems with Chrome at all – just big, positive surprises.

For designers and developers I would suggest to give Chrome a try and check out design related extensions, there are already. They aren’t so much but already very handy and fast to use, which usually wasn’t the case with Firefox however.

Huh..but for daily browsing, tweeting, stumbling, mail management, blog writing ( yes, I mean all bloggers) – I suggest to switch to Chrome today and give it a chance. Try it for 3-4 days, install several your favorite extensions from this list and I am pretty sure, you will not want to go back to Firefox for daily browsing. Just my personal opinion, but I was very strong Firefox lover until yesterday, so there must be something good with this new browser I think :)

Let me know about your pros,cons and experiences with Chrome comparing it to Firefox! Let’s go to browsing!

You can download latest Chrome version here, but you need to install Google chrome BETA version in order to use and try extensions as well – get it here.

I tested manually every theme here to be sure it’s really good, so you will not be disappointed. Just go on and scroll through and choose one on these themes and browsing with Firefox will become even more enjoyable!

1. Charamel Firefox Theme

Really beautifully designed theme with light brown colors. This one definitely is my favorite #1, I am currently using it.

2. Daum Blue Firefox Theme

Really elegant and clean theme using light blue and grey colors. One of my favorites.

3. Mac OS X Leopard Style Firefox Theme

If you love Macintosh, but your browser is Firefox, you definitely will enjoy this Leopard OS type theme. This theme consists of dark grey and blue color scheme.

4. Qute Firefox Theme

Simple,light and clean firefox theme with clear, colorful icons.

5. iPox Firefox Theme

iPox is an easy on the eyes, white and blue theme for Firefox.

6. Camifox Firefox Theme

Lovely colors and eye-candy shiny rounded icons used in this theme.

7. PitchDark Firefox Theme

Cool blue colored minimalistic theme.

8. Anthem Firefox Theme

Carbon like dark theme really standing out from the crowd.

9. iAqua Firefox Theme

Colors are really light and good looking, perfect for people, who enjoy clean and professional themes.

10. Past Modern Firefox Theme

Interesting theme using subtle colors and icons – such theme would be prefered by people who spend long time using browser, because it’s really easy on eyes.

11. Heaven Cube Firefox Theme

This is a dark modern theme recommended for those with a correspondingly dark OS visual style.

12. ArzoFox Firefox Theme

Light blue theme using cool icons with reflections.

13. MyFirefox Firefox Theme

This theme perfectly simulates Internet Explorer 8. Good choice if you like IE design and features, but don’t quite like it as browser. Works perefectly with Windows 7.

14. Vista Areo Firefox Theme

Similar to MyFirefox theme this theme simulates IE 8 but with Vista Aero style.

15. NASA Night Launch Theme

If you like dark colors and dark background this theme definitely will suit your needs.

16. Office 2007 Black Firefox Theme

Cool greyscale theme using really elegant colors and icons.

17. Black Stratini Firefox Theme

One more theme for people who enjoy dark colors and cool bright icons.

18. MidnightFox

Dark theme using brightly colored buttons and colors.

19. Fox World Firefox Theme

Very light theme full with glossy and shiny blue icons and colors.

20. Kempelton Firefox Theme

One more light, clean theme with really interesting 3D loading bar.

Which one is your favorite? Let me and readers find out your pick!

Guest post by Srikanth AD

Portable applications are handy when you are on move and can be run on most of the removable storage media like USB drive, mobile hard disk, iPod etc., Here in this article you will find extremely good 10 portable applications, that are very useful to carry with. If you are interested in application, just click through and you’ll get much more technical info and descriptions there. Hope this will be useful for some people!

OpenOffice.org Portable

OpenOffice Portable is a complete office suit that you can carry on any removable storage media. It includes a Word processor, presentation tool, spreadsheet, drawing package and database put together as a portable app. It enables you to carry your documents and spreadsheets and edit them from anywhere.

Mozilla Firefox Portable

Like the standard version of Firefox, you can install add-ons, extensions, and bookmark web pages in this portable version of Mozilla Firefox. You can save passwords and other browsing history without leaving any trace on other computers. This portable version of Firefox would be handy when you want to browse Internet on a public computer with all your favorite addons and personal settings.

Pidgin Portable Instant messaging client

Pidgin is a portable instant messaging client that supports multiple instant messaging platforms like Yahoo, Jabber, AOL, MSN, etc., With Pidgin you can chat with your friends and carry all your buddy lists with you where ever you are on the move. This is a must have portable applications if you chat regularly with friends.

ClamWin Antivirus Portable

ClamWin Antivirus Portable is the popular ClamWin AntiVirus boxed as a portable application. It enables you to scan files on the go. It’s free and can be deployed on any of the removable storage media and used on any computer without leaving any traces of personal information.

VLC Media Player

Using this application you can play video and audio files on the move. It supports DVD and other streaming protocols such that you can view movies and listen to music on any computer with ease.

ImgBurn Portable

This is a portable application using which you can burn DVD, CD, HD DVD and Blu-ray discs. It will prove very useful when you want to burn your data from a computer on to optical discs. ImgBurn Portable supports many file structures such that you can create the disc according to your needs.

Notepad++

This is one the most used application by any programmer to edit programs. Using this application you can edit program files like Java, C, C++, Pascal, etc., At first look, this application looks just like a simple text editor but with the syntax highlighting feature and other handy features it is more than a text editor. Using this application you can modify, edit or create a program easily on any computer.

ToDoList Resources

This is one of the best application to manage your tasks daily. Using this application you can create tasks and even sub divide the tasks to make it easily manageable. All the tasks are saved in an .xml format so that you can view or take a print of the tasks whenever you want.

Recuva

Using this application you can recover data that has been deleted due to a computer crash, a virus or malware. This application even helps you to recover any deleted data on media storage devices as well.

GIMP Portable

GIMP Portable is a portable version of the popular image editing software GIMP. It enables you to carry your images with you and do editing on the move. It can be used to convert between image formats, photo retouching, image compression etc based on your needs.

This is actually the first Guest article here – big thanks to Srikanth for contributing! May be shorter than usual posts, but let’s take this one as exception and remember good deed. And as always, if you know some more great apps, please – feel free and add your opinion in comments, will be much appreciated!

(*edited by Dainis Graveris).

Guest blogger Srikanth writes on Tech Inspiration blog about tips, gadgets, and technology. You can also check out his blog or Linkedin Profile for more information.

I divided this article in three sections – Web development, Social development related plugins and finally just overall handy plugins for better browsing.

Also I must remind you, you will not find already popular and well known extensions here, since the mayor community already are know such plugins like – GreaseMonkey, WebDeveloper or Firebug tools for example. Just scroll through the list, check screenshots and hopefully several of these plugins will be useful for your daily Firefox internet browsing.

Web Development Related Firefox Plugins

1.Palette Grabber 0.4.1

Creates a color palette for Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, GIMP, Flash, Fireworks, Paint.NET, or OS X based on the current page. This plugin is great using together with ColorPicker, actually extends possibilities.

2.LinkChecker (not for 3.5  just yet)

Sorry for misleading – this extension hasn’t been updated to newer version just yet, it’s still only for 3.0 version.

Check the validity of links on any web page, this plugin is good for web designers and actually bloggers too.

There’s also a tool-bar button that can be added for easier access to LinkChecker. Just right click on your tool-bar, choose “Customize” and look for the button with the underlined blue check.

3.View Cookies

Just a little bit faster and handier way how to check site cookies.

It adds a tab to the Page Info dialog box, which shows the cookies of the

current web-page. This is interesting for developers, privacy-conscious users and others.

4.ViewSourceWith

The main goal consists to view page source with external applications but you can also…

- open page source as DOM document, read faq

- open CSS and JS files present on page

- open images using your preferred image viewer (e.g. GIMP or ACDSee)

- open PDF links with Acrobat Reader or Foxit Reader or what you prefer

- edit textboxes content with your preferred editor and automatically see modified text on browser when you re-switch focus on it, this simplifies wiki pages editing, read faq

- open server side pages that generate the browser content, this simplifies web developer’s debug, read server-faq

- open files listed in Javascript console. When editor open file the cursor can be moved to line number shown on javascript console, read js faq

For desperate cases you can add Microsoft IE to editor list.

5.Text Link 3.1.

Allows URI texts written in webpages to be loaded by double clicks.

Without this extension, when you discover an URI text not linked, like “http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/”, you have to do following steps to load the page:

1. Select the URI text completely. (It may be a hard work if the page is rendered with a proportional font. This operation always chafes me.)

2. Copy it. (press “Ctrl-C” or use “Copy” from the “Edit” menu)

3. Paste it to the location bar.

4. Press “Enter”. Then, Firefox loads it.

or,

1. Select the URI text completely. (It chafes me again!)

2. Drag the selection string to the tab bar and drop it. Then, Firefox loads it.

With this extension, you can load the URI only following one step:

1. Double-click on the URI text. Then, Firefox loads it. I’m happy.

6.Custom Buttons

Gives a possibility to create custom toolbar buttons – beautiful for designers or just personalized theme lovers, suited for me perfectly at least!

7.Subtile

Subtile is a Firefox extension that provides generic support for toolbar menus.

The menu can be located anywhere in the browser toolbars, attached to an icon that can change its appearance when an event occurs.

If you are a Webmaster, you can create your own menus and distribute them easily to your users. With the dynamic capabilities of Subtile, you can alert people when some content has changed or new messages are available.

If you are simply a curious Web user, enjoy the available menu configurations from http://www.subtile.net/subtiles.php or build easily your own video site monitor from http://www.downloadhelper.net/st-build.php

8.FirePHP

FirePHP enables you to log to your Firebug Console using a simple PHP method call.

FirePHP is ideally suited for AJAX development where clean JSON or XML responses are required. All data is sent via a set of X-FirePHP-Data response headers. This means that the debugging data will not interfere with the content on your page.

You must have Firebug installed and the “Net” panel enabled to use this extension.

You must also download a PHP library from http://www.firephp.org/HQ/

9.FireShot

FireShot is a Firefox extension that creates screenshots of web pages (entirely or just visible part).

Unlike other extensions, this plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify web captures and insert text annotations and graphical annotations. Such functionality will be especially useful for web designers, testers and content reviewers.

The captures can be:

- uploaded to FREE public screenshot hosting;

- saved to disk (PNG, GIF, JPEG, BMP);

- printed;

- copied to clipboard;

- e-mailed;

- sent to configurable external editor for further processing;

10.SenSeo

SenSEO analyzes web pages and tells you how good they fulfill on-page Search Engine Optimization criteria. SenSEO is a Firefox add-on integrated with the popular Firebug web development tool. The code is based on the YSlow extension. SenSEO gives you:

- Overview of SEO-important web page components

- Analysis of on-page-SEO-criteria

In the current version SenSEO checks:

- Correct usage of Document-Title, Meta-Description and Meta-Keywords

- Headlines, Domain and URL-Path

- Other general content-criteria

You must install Firebug.

11.Foxy SEO

Foxy SEO Tool is a free, open source toolbar that provides quick and easy access to a multitude of search engine functions such as Google Site, Yahoo! Site Explorer, Live Fromlinks. Also included are famous web traffic analysis sites such as Alexa, Compete, Quantcast, popular statistic aggregators like Quarkbase and WebSiteOutlook. You can check a site’s listing in important directories like Dmoz and Yahoo! Directory, buzzing Web 2.0 sites such as Technocrati, Wikipedia, Digg, Delicious and links to useful network functions like Whois, Geotool, Internet Archive, etc.

12.Save Complete

As more and more sites use CSS, Firefox’s built-in complete save becomes increasingly less effective, as it doesn’t support stylesheets. This extension fixes this, and saves the complete page, including all images, stylesheets, flash, javascript, and anything else associated with the document, even imported stylesheets and images referenced in the stylesheet files.

13.Nuke Anything Enhanced

Allow hiding of almost anything via context menu ‘Remove Object’ or ‘Remove Selection’ with possibility of multiple undo of ‘Remove Object’. You can also make a selection and chose “Remove everything else” to clear the page and only leave the selected text.

Once you decide what you want to Remove, Right click on it or select it, then select “Remove this Object” from the menu.

The effect of this extension is temporary, which is useful before printing a page, you can use another extension, ‘Remove It Permanently’ if you want your removed objects to be remembered.

Social & Communication Related Firefox Plugins

14.Social Media for Firefox

This plugin actually is reason I thought about such article creation. It’s experimental plugin but I enjoy using it a lot, since I am very active on social networks.

Status bar that will show you how many votes content has at many social sites. Find good content first to build your social news accounts.

15.ScribeFire Blog Editor

ScribeFire is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog. You can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, upload images, and post to multiple blogs.

16.ClipMarks

nstead of copying and pasting links, Clipmarks is like adding a pair of scissors to your browser, letting you capture exactly what you want others to see (text, images or video). Your clips are saved on clipmarks.com and can easily be syndicated to FriendFeed, Twitter, Facebook or other sites. You can also post anything you clip directly to your blog (supports WordPress, Blogger, Typepad and more) or send it directly to friends or co-workers via email. Clipmarks also gives you a way to help the environment by printing only the parts of a page that you need. By printing just what you need, you’ll save ink, paper and trees, thus making a contribution to a cleaner environment.

17. Facebook Toolbar

Integrate your Facebook life into your browser, this toolbar will help not to spend so much time on Facebook page, but keep track on everything what’s happening there while you’re browsing the web!

18. TidyRead

TidyRead turns your web reading into a fast, smooth, no-fringe experience again. It intelligently extracts the core text of news articles and blog posts — even multi-page ones. TidyRead allows you to quickly grasp the main message of the page.

19. Cluster Tabs for Firefox

Install cluster tabs for Firefox to end tab overload, make your browser faster and share public & anonymous cluster tab web addresses with others.

Help make search better, create clusters that interest you!

20. Feedly

A magazine-like start page. A fast and stylish way to read and share the content of your favorite sites and services. Provides seamless integration with Google Reader, Twitter, Frienfeed, Delicious and YouTube.

21. Chameleon Bob

Chameleon Bob is a free add-on that helps you to change a style of your Facebook!

Install the add-on and you will be able to change skins, backgrounds and colors in Facebook. Choose any skins from our collection that were created for your pleasure!

22. Shorten URL

Shorten long URL from context menu or toolbar button with your selected URL shortener and display the result in location bar. Supports up to 100 URL shorteners.

23. OnlyWire – Social Networking Auto-Submitter

Submit hyper-links to over 20 social networking sites with one button click. Join thousands of publishers and bloggers using OnlyWire’s free tools to streamline the social networking submission process.

24. Socialite

Socialite provides elegant Firefox integration with reddit.com and other sites using the open source reddit engine. Socialite displays a context-sensitive toolbar above pages linked from reddit, allowing you to vote articles up and down, view comments, and save pages to your profile. In addition, Socialite provides a streamlined lookup-or-submit button in the location bar that allows you to check if what you are browsing is posted to reddit and submit it with one click.

25. Shareaholic

Shareaholic is the ultimate add-on for the link sharing addict! If you use sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Digg, Gmail, LinkedIn, etc you’ll likely enjoy having Shareaholic by your side. Get one step closer to making your life a little easier.

Other Useful Firefox Plugins For Daily Use

26. SmoothWheel

Scrolls the document smoothly when scrolling the mouse wheel (or using keyboard arrows). I enjoy this plugin as designer, sort of resembles of popular jquery sliding effects :)

27. WordPress Detector

Ever wanted to know which of the sites you visit is powered by WordPress? If yes, then this small, nifty tool could be just for you!

28. Flash Video Downloader

Flash Video Downloader helps you to download embedded flash video (.flv) from YouTube-like video sharing websites in one click.

29.ImageBot

Bulk/Batch/Mass Image Uploader

ImageBot is bulk/batch/mass image uploader, it allows you upload your images to a free image hosting service (ImageShack or Photobucket).

ImageBot lets you sort, filter, and make image galleries out of your images in a snap. It is especially good for your eBay auctions by way of the Thumbnail Gallery template included by default.

30.HyperWords

With Hyperwords you can select any word on any web page and choose from powerful commands, including:

• Reference • Search • Translation • Conversion • Email • Twitter • Facebook • Tag • Blog • & More.

Highly customizable & very, very easy to use.

Demo Video available on YouTube.

Unfortunately those three plugins aren’t compatible with Firefox 3.5 just yet, but I think they still are pretty useful in several occasions, so I added them anyway hoping that these plugins will update soon, we can also be patient now:

31.CodeBurner for Firebug 1.1 ( version Firefox 3.0)

CodeBurner is a Firefox add-on that integrates with Firebug, to extend it with reference material for HTML and CSS.

The extension’s core functionality is centered around a new Reference panel, which contains a search tool for looking up HTML elements, attributes, and CSS properties.

32.Locationbar² ( 3.5 compatible *updated)

* Puts emphasis on the domain to reduce spoofing risk

* Linkifies URL segments (press Ctrl, Meta, Shift or Alt)

* More URL formatting options configurable

33.Extended Statusbar 1.5.3 (not with 3.5 yet)

A Statusbar with speed, percentage, time and loaded size (similar to Opera’s one).

Adds an Opera-like statusbar that shows:

- percentage of the page loaded,

- number of loaded images,

- bytes downloaded,

- average download speed,

Also consider checking my other previous Firefox posts showcasing really popular and well known Firefox plugins:

Popular Firefox Extensions for SEO masters

The Best 50 Firefox add-ons for Web-developers!

And maybe you know some more really good and new Firefox plugins, which is not so well known but should be? I also encourage You to comment this article – what’s your favorite plugin from this showcase and why? What kind of problems or successes you faced while using?

Finally also don’t use too much plugins and regularly clean your addons section from plugins you really don’t use – it’s the same as in WordPress – the more plugins you use, slower Firefox,Wordpress stay! I currently use like 20 plugins I cannot live without – what’s your number?

Digg is one of the best and the biggest social network right now. If you know how to treat it, you can get amazing floods of traffic regularly. However using just their homepage and simple techniques always aren’t enough. Do you know what’s hot now, how many of your friends digg your stories, actual trends and many other analysis about Digg? These trends always continue to change so you need several tools to keep up. And this is place where this article comes handy – I carefully tested many tools and then selected the most usable ones I enjoyed and I hope this research will help you too. Also I am using Firefox, WordPress and Greasemonkey in regular basis, so on this list you will find a bunch of plugins and scripts too.

1.Digg Labs

The labs provide a broader (and deeper) view of Digg. A lot of stuff gets submitted to Digg every day, so good things can sometimes fly right past you. Labs projects look beneath the surface of the Digg community’s activities. Here you can find several tools to make browsing and digging more fun as well as analyze activities.

2. OriginalSignal

This site shows Digg RSS feed in much more handier way, you can also customize font size, view more headlines, change the order of weblogs or just grab RSS feed. Definitely spares unnecessary clicks.

3.Di66

Find out which are top words in titles, top words in descriptions, digg’s stats, top users, top sources. This website analyses statistics to let You understand who and what’s hot on Digg right now.

4.SocialBlade

Similar site like di66, but this one offer more detailed analysis, graphs and statistics allowing You to understand how many comments, diggs, friend diggs etc. are needed to hit digg front page. Analyze, what’s really happening on digg’s front page.

5.Digg Explorer v1.1

This is a tool for exploration of the 500 most popular recent stories from Digg. It uses small circles to represent items of interest which are fluidly positioned in various ways to emphasize patterns of interest. Version 1.1 adds a new graph of the top Users and also fixes a bug in the domain parsing logic.

6.Digg Top

DiggTop is an application for Windows and MacOSX that lets you view a blended list of your favourite Digg topic or keyword feeds. In addition to the full Digg submission information, it will also display a slideshow of images it can scrape from the linked article.

View video submissions from your favourite Digg video categories, and preview some videos right in the application. You can also set up keyword and Digg count filters that will notify you with a sound and icon when new stories match your criteria.

7.MiniDigg

A digg.com widget that allows you to view and track stories, track Your friend activity and the best of all is, this Adobe AIR application refreshes automatically, default refresh rate is 30sec, but You can change that.

8.Digg Alerter

This tools tracks your submitted stories informing with sound when story gets new digg, as well as comments and who dug your submission.

9.Feeddit

Feeddit is an improvement to the standard rss feed on Digg.com, it’s longer, fatter and more awesome. These new feeds are 100 stories long and has the actual link so you can skip past Digg and get directly to the story. This site lets you follow to digg front page even easier! Just subscribe and let the news come to you.

10.Neaveru Digg Comment Statistics

Fill in your Digg username right on their site to get statistics about your Digg commenting.

11.Digg Comment Viewer

Online application which lets you view all your Digg comments quickly and easily. It also can track your friend comments easily as well, several more options.

12.Digg Notify

Digg Notify is an application that pops up a small box in the bottom right hand side of your screen. It tells you when your story hits front page as well. The window never gains focus so it should not bother you. You can configure the minimum amount of diggs before the messages start coming. You can also configure the amount of stories it scans for. Once your story hits front page it will notify you of that and then ignore it so you don’t get swamped with messages. You also have the option of ignoring/unignoring certain stories.

13.Digg Friend Statistics

I just cannot explain how valuable this tool is. Must have – to let you evaluate some of your Digg friends or fans and some of them just remove.

Enter your Digg user name and this script will tell you which of your friends are digging your submissions – and which aren’t. DiggStatistics.com will analyze your Digg friends list and tell you which of your friends have dugg the last 10 of your digg submissions, and which of your friends have not. It will also tell you which users in the digg community other than your friends have dugg more than five of your submissions.

14.The Digg Oracle

This tool lets you find already long time ago dugg stories – useful if you use Digg as bookmarking tool.

Why not just go to Digg.com and search?

Digg no longer allows you to perform searches on your voting history. Many people use Digg as a bookmarking tool, and thus intend to reference back to specific articles. There may be thousands of stories on the same topic, not all will contain the same content as the story you are looking for.

15. DiggLicious

Digglicious.com is a mashup of three fantastic websites; digg.com, del.icio.us and reddit.com.This site combines information from these three sites to provide lists of items that are being dugg, items that are being bookmarked on del.icio.us, and items moving up the homepage of reddit.com. The main page uses AJAX to show activity for the sites.

16. DiggWatcher

This simple Flash app is designed to run in the background and monitor a Digg story of your choice. It will alert you with sound upon receiving new diggs, new comments, and becoming popular.

Firefox Extensions

—————————–

17. Smart Digg Button 1.01

The Smart Digg Button is simple Firefox extension which allows you to see whether or not the web page you are currently viewing has been submitted to Digg and lets you submit it if it hasn’t.

Unfortunately not yet compatible with latest Firefox version.

18. The Digg Toolbar

The Digg Toolbar for Firefox lets you Digg, submit content, and keep track of Digg even when you’re not on the Digg site itself. With a notification window built into the toolbar, you’ll never miss a popular story or when friends Digg, submit, or comment on stories.

I am pretty big fan about this extension, it’s similar like Smart Digg button, but this one offers more options. However if You don’t need them, I’ll suggest previous extension.

19. TADSEE

The Anti-Digg/Slashdot Effect Extension provides, in the right-click context menu, options to open the Coral/Google cache versions of a link in a new tab.

20. Socialphile

Socialphile Firefox Extension assists users with comfortable searching based on ranking of each search result at social news websites like Digg.com

21. Digg Sidebar

Shows the Digg stories in real time in the Firefox sidebar.

Greasemonkey scripts

—————————–

Download Greasemonkey Firefox plugin

22.Digg.com shorturl remover ( Greasemonkey script)

Digg.com direct url in front page – I enjoy this script, because usually I digg stories and if I want to bookmark them, I click through and get digg link. This scripts practically saves You one click through.

23.Digg Button Animation Enabler

Enables the animation when pressing the digg button on an article that includes one, so you can digg it and keep reading.

24.Google reader digg news

Adds a digg control to every news-item in google reader

25.Digg Rating Extender

A greasemonkey script (for Firefox) to show the digg ups and digg downs on digg stories. Here’s a picture of what it looks like:

26.Digg – Add mirrors

Adds links to rorr.im, Coral Cache, DuggBack and Archive.org wayback machine to every story. What separates this from the rest is that it’s better integrated with digg: it’s displayed beneath every digg-button.

WordPress Plugins

—————————–

27. Digg Digg

Integrate “Digg Button” , “Reddit Me Button” , “Dzone Button” and “Yahoo Buzz Button” Into WordPress Content. Setup screen provided to let user choose where user want to display Digg , Reddit , Dzone and Yahoo Buzz buttons. I am using this plugin on my very own site.

28. diggZ-Et – digg WordPress Plugin

diggZ-Et is a digg WordPress plugin that automatically displays a “digg” button for each post/page, with several admin settings so you can customize as you need.

29. WP Digg This

WP Digg This is a plugin that adds a Digg button, but with a twist. Instead of adding a Digg button to all your posts, WP Digg This plugin selectively adds the button only to posts you want.

30. Digg widget

Displays your past 10 dugg stories and make it a widget.

However feel free to add your foundings too, maybe I missed something?

1. Silvermel

Silvermel is excellent light, clean theme looking like apple design classic style and really detailed one.

2. Aero Fox

This is one black vista style theme I personally use for a while already, looks really cool.

3. Mac OSX

Beautiful and light theme, Mac lovers will evaluate this one.

4. NASA Night Launch

One more dark theme, with almost black interface and stylish look.

5. Mostly Crystal

Mostly Crystal is designed by known designer Everaldo with lovely detailed icons.

6. PimpZilla

Maybe a little bit overdone, but really visually stunning theme – Pimp Your Firefox!

7. Nemesis

Crystal like look theme with really cool icons all over.

8. BlackX 2

Maybe not so colorful, but however visually good looking theme.

9. GrApple

Really amazing and visually stunning Apple style theme, You can choose between 4 similar, but visually little bit different themes.

10. Vista Aero

If You love Windows Vista and new Internet Explorer design, then You’ll love this one.

11. ChromiFox

ChromiFox is inspired from Google Chrome browser with bright soft and light blue design.

12. Elementary FireFox

Simple, but really good looking Elementary Firefox theme will grab Your sympathies.

13. Gradient iCool

Really cool looking and harmonious black/blue theme based on Windows Media player design.

14. Vista On XP

You don’t like the green in the XP theme of Firefox 3? Get the blue one of Vista for your XP!

15. Aquatint Black Gloss

Great dark theme with lovely hover effects and glassy aqua icons.

16. MonoChrome

Beautiful monochrome and light theme right for You, if You don’t want to be bothered with too much colors.

17. Noia 2.0 Extreme

Extremely good designed theme, with cool looking icons and clean look.

18. Utopia FFSE White

Very originally designed theme, with clean look and nice subtle colors.

19. Heaven Cube

Dark modern theme with great detail and harmonious colors.

20. iFox Metal

And the last one will be this iFox Metal theme – again giving apple style – but I know, we all love it – beautiful theme indeed!

So I hope with this list You’ll be satisfied for some time. Good using and if You know more great and visually stunning Firefox 3.0 Themes, share with us in comments!