Note: The MinimizeToTray Revived extension works with Firefox (3.0 – 3.5.*), Thunderbird (3.0.*), Flock (2.0), and Songbird (0.7 – 1.2.*).

Methods of Minimizing

Once you have the extension installed you have three ways to minimize Firefox to the “System Tray”. The first is using the “File Menu” and selecting the “Minimize to tray” command. The second is by using the “F9 Key”.

Prefer to use a button instead? Just access the “Customize Toolbar Window” and place the toolbar button in the location that best suits your personal preferences.

One click goodness for minimizing Firefox to the “System Tray”.

The System Tray

Once Firefox has been minimized, this is what the “Right Click Menu” looks like for the “System Tray Icon”.

Options

Determine “Minimize To Tray Behavior & Click Behavior” in the “Main Preferences Area”.

Choose which Firefox windows are minimized to the “System Tray” in the “Firefox Preferences Area”.

Conclusion

If you love keeping your Taskbar clear of programs in favor of the System Tray, then the MinimizeToTray Revived extension will be a welcome addition to your Firefox Browser or Mozilla-based app.

Links

Download the MinimizeToTray Revived extension (Mozilla Add-ons)

Download the MinimizeToTray Revived extension (Extension Homepage)

Before

Here is our example browser with a somewhat minimalized UI…not too bad but it could certainly be reduced further. Before you install the extension you should go ahead and hide your “Bookmarks Toolbar”.

After

As soon as you have installed the extension and restarted Firefox you will see the following message window. Click “OK” to get that wonderful button added to your “Navigation Toolbar”.

Now that is definitely looking better…all of that bookmark goodness in one little button!

Options

The options for the extension are easy to sort through…decide how you would like to handle searches, middle clicking on bookmarks, and the “Open All in tabs” option.

Conclusion

If you have been looking for a way to further reduce your UI in Firefox and yet retain easy access to all your bookmarks in the Bookmarks Toolbar, then the Bookmarks Menu extension will be a perfect fit for you.

Links

Download the Bookmarks Menu extension (Mozilla Add-ons)

Download the Bookmarks Menu extension (Extension Homepage)

Note: There is a bookmarklet available that you can add to your favorite non-Firefox browser.

Before

Here is the “Print Preview” for a weathernewengland.com story. There is a lot of additional “junk” at the top that you just do not need with a printed version.

The bottom of the “Print Preview” is even worse. Approximately two of the five pages for this article would be a total waste of your paper and ink. But this is a problem that is very easy to fix.

Setup

Once you have installed the extension the only thing that you will need to do is add the “Toolbar Button” to a convenient location in your browser’s UI. There are no options for you to worry with…

PrintWhatYouLike in Action

To get started simply press the “PrintWhatYouLike Button” for the webpage that you are wanting to print out.

A “Sidebar” will open with various commands that allow you to tweak the webpage to best suit your printing needs. Here you can see the areas being selected for removal are outlined in red. Click within the red border to select that area and hit delete.

Note: The selected area will have a “yellow tint” as confirmation for deletion.

Notice how much cleaner the article looks already with the removal of individually selected sections. It is also easy to remove certain areas of the article if you are wanting to exclusively focus on certain content or a specific area.

This is the result when we tried the “Auto Format – Do It For Me!” option. It did an extremely good job of cleaning everything up with only a single click. Notice that all of the text (i.e. article title, author name) even has the same color as opposed to the screenshot shown above.

Use the PrintWhatYouLike Website Directly

If you prefer to use a different browser (or want to avoid an additional extension in Firefox), you can visit the website directly to enter the webpage address. While you are there you can also add a bookmarklet to your browser.

Conclusion

If you are looking for a quick and easy way to clean webpages up for printing, then the PrintWhatYouLike extension, bookmarklet, and website are going to be your printer’s best friends.

Links

Download the PrintWhatYouLike Button extension (Mozilla Add-ons)

Visit the PrintWhatYouLike website

Options & Usage

Once you have the extension installed, everything is ready to go. There are two options that you can choose to deselect if you desire.

Right Click to access your Context Menu and there at the bottom you will see the Bookmarks entry. Quick and easy access to all of your bookmarks right there in the browser window without having to go back to the top of your browser to access them (nice!).

Note: This extension will not access any bookmarks that you may have in the Bookmarks Toolbar.

Conclusion

If you prefer being able to access your bookmarks from wherever you happen to have your mouse instead of going back to the top of your browser, then this is one add-on that you should take a look at.

Links

Download the Context Bookmarks extension (Mozilla Add-ons)

See our earlier review of FavBackup here.

Browsers supported in this release: Internet Explorer (6 – 8), Mozilla Firefox (2 – 3.6), Opera (9 – 10), Safari (3 – 4), Google Chrome (1 – 4), and Flock (2.0 – 2.5).

Setup

As before, FavBackup is still portable so all that you will need to do is place the exe file into an appropriate folder, create a shortcut, and you are ready to go. Things are going to look different from before since the UI for FavBackup has been migrated to the Microsoft Ribbon interface. Notice that there are now additional backup and restore capabilities…focus on just one browser or back them all up at the same time.

The “Backup, Restore, Full Backup, & Full Restore Menus” are all identical as shown in the screenshot above, so the only ones shown here are those that are different. “The Convert Opera Profile Menu”…

Choose the theme that you like best.

And the “Help Menu”. At the moment this section is minimal and will link you to a webpage for help.

Creating the Backup

Here is the browser that we have decided to backup. This is a portable version set up on one of our Vista systems…

To get started select the “Backup Ribbon Menu” and choose the browser that you would like to backup.

Browse for the location where you would like to have the backup file placed…

Since we were backing up a portable browser, we needed to browse for the appropriate “Profile Folder”. Once you have your profile located, click “Finish”.

The earlier release created multiple files but now all the information is placed into a single easy to manage (and transfer) file…

Restoring the Backup

This is our fully installed “pre-restore” browser on a virtual Windows 7 install. Very fresh with only the homepage being changed…

To start the restoration process select the “Restore Ribbon Menu” and choose the appropriate browser. You will then need to browse to where you have the backup file located…FavBackup will automatically detect the file and display it as shown… Since we were restoring to a regularly installed browser no further “profile browsing” was required. Click “Next”.

Once the restore process has been completed all that is left to do is click “Finish”.

The End Result

Here are our two browsers “side-by-side”…one on our Vista system and the other inside the VMware Player window.

Conclusion

The earlier releases of FavBackup did a very nice job with backup and restoration of browser profiles and now the additional features have made it even better.

Know issues with this release: 

• General: Restoring backups directly from DVD/CD drive can give error. Copy backup to your PC first.
• Windows XP: When using low screen resolution, scrollbars might appear.

Links

Download FavBackup (version 2.0.0)

Before

For our example we chose an article that had embedded links, bold section headers, and varying sizes of text. The “Context Menu” only offers a single “Copy Command” and there is no doubt that the formatting will also be copied.

Here is how the text copied from our example article looked after being pasted into Microsoft Word. It is easy to see the intact links, bold formatting, and multiple text sizes. Not very nice to work with is it? But it is very easy to fix…

After

Here is our example article and “Context Menu” after installing the Copy Plain Text extension. Now you can easily chose between retaining the formatting or totally eliminating it when you copy the text.

This is much better and you can easily do whatever you desire with the text.

Options

The options for Copy Plain Text are easy to sort through…simply enable or disable features to suit your needs. Notice that there is an option to make it the “default copy action”.

Conclusion

If you have been looking for an easier way to remove formatting from the webpage text that you copy in Firefox, then this is definitely the extension to add to your browser.

Links

Download the Copy Plain Text extension (Mozilla Add-ons)

Before

Here is the example page we chose at YouTube. Obviously this one is not as bad as others that can be found there, but will prove sufficient for our extension test. You can see that there was some profanity (blacked out) and less than stellar writing (i.e. all lower case letters, etc.).

A close-up of the comments section pre-extension…

After

Here is the same YouTube page from before…look at how cleaned up the comments section is. Only one of the six comments made it past the extension.

Note: The results shown are based on the default settings shown in the “Options Window” below.

Here is a close-up of the comments section. Notice that a specific reason was given for each hidden comment and that there is an option to display individual comments if desired.

Options

Choose the specific type of contents that you would like to hide in the comments sections. Notice that you can even hide comments that exceed a personally specified number of spelling mistakes.

Conclusion

If you are tired of nonstop garbage and profanity in the comments at YouTube, then this is the extension to help you clean those comments sections up.

Links

Download the YouTube Comment Snob extension (Mozilla Add-ons)

Download the YouTube Comment Snob extension (Extension Homepage)

Combine the Reload & Stop Buttons

Normally the “Reload & Stop Buttons” are separate in Firefox, but what if you could combine the two buttons into one? That is something that is very easy to do with the Combine Stop-Reload Buttons extension. Simply install the extension and get instant satisfaction.

Here you can see the new combined button at rest and while a webpage is loading…only what you need when you need it.

Expand the Width of the New Tab Button on the Tab Bar

Perhaps the particular theme that you are using has made your “New Tab Button” smaller than usual or you feel it would just be easier to use the entire “empty” part of the “Tab Bar” to activate a new tab. Once again, something that is easy to fix.

Simply install the Big New Tab Button extension and you are ready for easy click activation of new tabs.

Conclusion

While these tweaks may not be for everyone, they can be very nice for people who have a specific UI need or style that they prefer for their Firefox Browser.

Links

Download the Combine Stop-Reload Buttons extension (Mozilla Add-ons)

Download the Combine Stop-Reload Buttons extension (Extension Homepage)

Download the Big New Tab Button extension (Mozilla Add-ons)

Download the Big New Tab Button extension (Extension Homepage)

What the Sidebar Looks Like

As soon as you have installed the extension and restarted Firefox you will be presented with the fresh install webpage. The “Extensions Sidebar” will also be visible to allow immediate access to All-in-One Sidebar’s options if you are ready to start customizing at that moment.

This is how the sidebar looks in minimized mode…not taking up much room at all.

You can collapse the sidebar even further into a slim mode to help conserve screen real-estate whenever needed.

A Closer Look at the Panels

All-in-One-Sidebar has six panels that you can quickly access and switch between using the toolbar buttons. Here you can see the “Bookmarks & History Panels”…

Followed by the “Downloads & Extensions Panels”. At the moment the add-ons are displaying in slim list mode…

Display a webpage, view the source code, access about:config settings, or view information about a webpage in the “Multi-Panel & Page Info Panels”.

Options

The extension comes with a nice assortment of options to help you customize All-in-One Sidebar to best suit your personal needs. The first two options areas come with multiple sub-tabs…

Decide which side of the browser that you want your sidebar to be active on and the exact width sizes in pixels in the “Appearance Tab”.

Note: The default setup is shown here. To access “Advanced Mode” use the “Settings Menu” in the lower left corner.

Determine sidebar/toolbar behavior at startup and in full screen mode in the “Behavior Tab”.

Enhance switch behavior and appearance in the “Sidebar Switch Tab”.

You can choose to deactivate the bookmarks and/or history functions in the “Bookmarks/History Tab”.

Decide if and how your downloads will appear in the sidebar in the “Downloads Tab”.

You can disable add-ons appearing in the sidebar if you prefer using the regular window or enable the regular style appearance in place of the slim list style.

Select the functions that you would like to appear in the “Multi-Panel” in the “Other I Tab”.

Decide if you would also like the “Error Console” to open in the sidebar and which visual style that you prefer in the “Other II Tab”.

Choose the additional commands available in the “Sidebar Sub-menu” in the “Menu Area”.

Make any desired changes to All-in-One Sidebar’s keyboard shortcuts in the “Shortcuts Area”.

In the lower left corner of All-in-One-Sidebar’s options you can restore the default settings, access the advanced options (these add some extra tweaks to the various options shown above), export or import settings, and copy All-in-One-Sidebar’s settings to the clipboard.

Conclusion

If you are wanting to add some nice customizable (and multi-functional) sidebar goodness to your Firefox Browser, then All-in-One Sidebar is an extension well worth looking at.

Links

Download the All-in-One Sidebar extension (Mozilla Add-ons)

Download the All-in-One-Sidebar extension (Extension Homepage)

Note: There is a bookmarklet available that you can add to your favorite non-Firefox browser.

Before

For an example we decided to use the first article in our “Building a New Computer” series. Now if you have ever started preparing for something like building a new computer or saving up special tweaks for your next install, then this is definitely going to be a very useful thing for you.

By default you could save this page as an html file, directly print it, or copy and paste it into an “office” document. Those are all nice options but having it saved as a pdf file would be so much nicer.

Web2PDF Converter in Action

As soon as you have installed the extension you are ready to go. A “Toolbar Button” will automatically be added at the right side of your browser’s UI as shown below. There are also no options to worry with…

Once you have a webpage chosen, click on the “Web2PDF Button” and you will see your new pdf file being created.

Once your new file is ready you will be presented with a download link. “Right Click” and save the pdf in a location of your choice.

Notice that the pdf file will have a preset name based on the webpage/article name…very convenient.

Here is our example pdf file once opened…the text can be selected, highlighted, or have other actions performed on it. Definitely no images as pdf files here.

Use the Web2PDF Website Directly

Perhaps you are using a non-Firefox browser or are keeping your number of extensions to a minimum. Just browse over to the website where you can add the “Web2PDF Bookmarklet” to your favorite browser or simply enter the appropriate web address.

Conclusion

If you have been looking for a better way to save articles and a unique webpage in a pdf file format, then the Web2PDF extension (or bookmarklet) makes a great addition to any browser.

Links

Download the Web2PDF Converter extension (Mozilla Add-ons)

Visit the Web2PDF website