Now that I’ve don’t the little talk, I’m curious as to what libraries are actually using with their Firefox installs. I took my best guesses and included some stuff that I use, but what do you use? SkaGirlie starts it off with her list.
10 thoughts on “Firefox, pimped”
Comments are closed.
I’d love to have Firefox installed. I do what I can with IE Bookmarklets.
You can read my list in the article I wrote in Library Journal last December: Firefox at the Reference Desk. Library Journal declined to include my list of URLs for each of the add-ons, so I put them up in a post about the article on my blog.
We currently have Firefox (as well as IE) installed on all of our adult public use computers. I try to remember to direct our patrons toward Firefox when I am helping them. Strangely enough, we have found that some websites that will not open in IE will open in Firefox. Several of our staff prefer the Firefox browser and use it as their main browser.
Fiona
Have you seen PortableApps.com – that lets you install things like Firefox to a USB stick. You’d have to do the actual install on a PC where you have install rights (at least, I set most of my PortableApps up on a PC that I had control over, and then tried to add a few other things on one that I don’t. They didn’t install, but I guess it’s possible you might be able to install some of them on a limited PC. I’ve just never managed it with the tools that I’ve tried!)
Hi Emma,
Alas portable apps doesn’t work – security is such that any non-installed exe file simply won’t run on any machine.
At least I can have Firefox at home :)
http://emailofchris.googlepages.com/Snapper1.3.xpi is the new version of Snapper that works in Firefox 2.0
We have Firefox on all our staff and patron machines. Trying to get the IE tab add on added to all the Firefoxs (it allows an IE tab to be opened IN Firefox.)
My library uses Public Web Browsers for our PACs, so there isn’t anything to do there. However, I added three search plugins for our library catalog which can be added from the library homepage. Visit http://www.seminolecountyfl.gov/library and you will see the three searches in your search engine dropdown box.
I use Zotero with my Firefox browser to organize my own research.
I recently installed the Meebo Message Notification to help alert us to incoming IM reference questions. We haven’t officially started IM reference yet, but it’s been working during testing.
Also, not a Firefox extension, so I’m cheating here, but a really helpful little tool for IM reference is PhraseExpress, which will save common phrases and type them for you as you start typing (or you can use a keyboard shortcut.) Like MSWord’s Autotext, but you can use it in any program/webpage. Great tool for those lines we tend to repeat.
We have a test PAC Wellfleet, MA, that uses PCLinuxOS, Firefox and Openoffice.org. It also has Skype and IM.
Firefox has some good addons for privacy, :”auto restart” and “public fox” prevent users for seeing other user’s info and also prevent people from altering the Firefox configuration.
Some patrons will no longer use Windows.
The curious thing about PCLinuxOS is the ease of “re-mastering”, so I could send a Live-CD copy. It boots, runs and installs on most any old PC.
All free software. No spyware problems or viri, to speak of.