SkipScreenis a FireFox plugin which lets users bypass screens and get to the download instantly on file sharing sites like, RapidShare, MegaUpload, zShare, etc..

If you’ve used any of the file sharing sites mentioned above you already know downloading files is not as smooth as it should be. Users have to click on multiple “Download” links to get to the real download page and then wait for up to 90-120 seconds before the download link becomes active.

These ads-filled pages have more to do with getting you to click on an ads or get you to signup for a premium account than to simply offer you a download.

SkipScreen puts an end to all of that! Once you click on the download link of Rapidshare it automatically handles all the pages in between and also skips the hold time of 90-120 seconds and offers the download immediately.

SkipScreen will actually make it look like you are using a free rapidshare accout or a megaupload account as you do not have to navigate through pages or wait for the countdown to finish to download files.

Watch the video below to see how this plugin works..

If you like what you see, click here to download SkipScreen.

The reason could be server timeouts, network issues, browser crashes, power failures, loosing connectivity and so on. In a situation like this we try retrieving the information but most often than not the back button, refresh, etc.. nothing seem to work. This is were a smart Firefox Plugin comes to rescue.

Lazarus is a simple solution to an annoying problem. It’s a free Firefox Add-on which makes a back-up of the data we spend hours in filling and have lost it for some reason. It stores this data and makes it available whenever required, if you need to re-fill a from.

Lazarus’s smart functionality certainly makes it one of the Best Firefox Extensions available out there..

Let’s have a look at how Lazarus works. It saves the data automatically when we are typing into the form and also saves the form when you hit the submit button.

If you’ve lost the information on the form and want to recover it, just go back to the same page, right-click in one of the fields in the form and select "Recover form" from the menu as shown below.

Forms can be saved in 2 different ways as mentioned below.

(A): Autosave: Saves the form while you are entering data into it.

(S): Submitted: The form was saved just before you submitted it to the server.

Lazarus saves all the form information inside a SQLite database ("lazarus.sqlite") located in your profile folder. This data is encrypted to ensure your privacy is protected.

By default your form information is kept indefinitely, but if you’re concerned about security you can have it removed after a specified time.

Lazarus works on *almost* all web forms and will save you from a lot of different server, browser, and connection problems that might cause you to lose your work. Two types of forms that Lazarus does not handle yet, 1) Richtext/WYSIYG text editors (eg TinyMCE), and 2) Dymamic (AJAX) forms, which function in different ways to ordinary webforms and are harder to capture. The new beta of Lazarus, soon to be released, handles those obscure types of "form" as well.

Click here to download Lazarus for Firefox

It is useful in situation where you would like to surf the internet in one window and be able to use the other part of the screen for a web mail service or a web app or compare 2 web-pages side by side or leave one Web page open and viewable while you are browsing other websites.

Yes you can definitely toggle between two browser tabs or even 2 browser windows while comparing 2 web pages or achieving different results however I can say Split Browser is definitely more streamlined and does work wonders.

To use Split Browser, you’ll need to have at least two browser tabs open. Once the add-on is installed to your Firefox browser it adds a new option to the Firefox menu called as "Split" as shown below.

To split your browser window into two, you would need to click on "Split Current Tab to" and select the position of the panes i.e. Above, Right, Left or below. By doing this your two tabs are now merged into one, with the screen split between the two of them as shown below.

There is no Limitation to the number of windows you can open inside your window or you can say Split Browser does give you the option of splitting your Firefox window as many times as your systems memory can support.

To download the Add-on click here, also check out the "Best Firefox Extensions" list.

VideoSurf recently released a nifty Firefox extension, which lets you scan through the video on Youtube and in your search results even before you play they video..cool right? (Download from here)

The idea is to save time by scanning through the strip of thumbnails of the video that is instantly created and skip the video if the you don’t find what you are looking for or if the thumbnails don’t seem interesting enough.

I have tried using this plugin on sites like Vimeo, Metacafe, Break, Dailymotion, etc. however, it just worked on Youtube and Google Search. It turns out that this plugin works only on Yahoo Search, Google Search, Youtube and Friendfeed for now, although it would be nice to see more video services on the list of this extension.

The extension earlier existed as a Greasemonkey script which only worked on search results..

The following image shows how this extension adds a image strip of the video and by clicking on any of the thumbnail you can start the video from that point on.  Not only that but the extension is designed to recognize if there is a face in the thumbnail and by checking a checkbox you can choose to see thumbnails with faces only..

Interestingly the extension manages to create thumbnails from video services other than Youtube, for example Vimeo. See the Image below …

Click here to download VideoSurf Firefox Extension

Users have found this plugin useful in more than one ways and have put it to use for both, good and bad purposes.  With this plugin you can keep a track of each HTTP request that is generated by the browser. By keeping a track of HTTP requests you can see what information is being sent from your computer.

This plugin can also be used by web developers to perform security checks on their web applications.

Internet users have put this plugin to a lot of uses including tampering information at e-commerce sites to buy cheap stuff, manipulate scores for online games to rank higher, hack passwords for sites like MySpace, etc..

It’s fairly easy to use and does not require you to be an uber techie to take advantage of Tamper Data.

The following video shows you how this plugin can be used.

Youtube is your best resource to see how Tamper Data extension is being put to use for ALL the other reasons like cheating shopping carts, cracking passwords, etc… Click here to download Tamper Data.

Our Next Post will show you How to Crack Passwords Stored in Firefox even when they are protected using Tamper Data. (Update: We will not be publishing the post about cracking passwords saved in Firefox based on our readers request who do not want us to add to the wrong reasons for using this plugin)

MinimizeToTray 1.0 Firefox plugin will send you Firefox to the system tray whenever minimized; optionally it will also move Firefox to the tray when closed.

Once installed (click here to install), go to Tools > Add-ons and click on the “Options” button on “MinimizeToTray 1.0” to configure it. This Firefox extension is in experimental add-on category and works very well.

The image below shows the configuration options….

Click here to visit the plugin page and install it now…

Let me show you by taking an example. Following is how my context menu looked originally.

And following is how it looks after trimming down using menu editor.

All you have to do is

1. Install menu editor restart your browser.

2. Go to Tools->Add-ons

3. Go to extensions tab

4. Select Menu Editor and click Options

5. And now start hiding the context menu entries that you don’t need.

I am sure this will make your context menu in Firefox look better.

Download and Install Menu Editor

Firefox

MozillaZine maintains a list of “Problematic Extensions” which have a negative effect on the browsers performance (access the list here).

Last time I checked this list, I ended up removing at least 4 extensions and noticed considerable improvement in the browsers performance.

Click here to visit the Problematic Extensions and see if you have anyone of the installed. This page not only tells you what is wrong with the plugin and how it reduces the browsers performance but also tells you how to fix the issue.

You will be surprised to see a few popular plugins on this list.. for example: Firefox Google Bookmarks, FireFTP, Fasterfox, Adblock Plus, Google Toolbar, Yahoo Toolbar, etc..

Here are a couple more links which will help you troubleshoot slower Firefox

• Basic Troubleshooting
• Trouble-shooting Extensions and Theme

So what do you do when you want to save the file on your machine as PDF or may be send that file to your own e-mail address directly?

All of this and a lot more can be done using PDF Download Firefox plugin.

Once the plugin is installed (download it from here) any webpage you visit can be converted to PDF and downloaded to your machine or simply e-mailed to any or a default e-mail address.

Here is how you can convert any webpage to PDF

Right-click on any page and click on “Save Page As PDF” this will take you to the plugin site where the page will be converted to PDF with the option of downloading it.

Or you can click on the button which sits on the top right corner of the browser and select “Save Web Page as PDF”

Also, as you can see in the image above you can also select “Email Web Page as PDF” to send yourself an e-mail.

This plugin is also capable of converting online PDF documents to HTML. Click on any PDF link online and you will see the options as shown in the image below.

Options here are pretty self-explanatory

1. Download it: Download the PDF to your machine
2. Open PDF: Open PDF in the browser
3. View as HTML: Convert the PDF to HTML
4. Bypass PDF Download: Bypass the PDF Download plugins functionality and let the browsers default functionality take over.

Users can also configure the functionality of this plugin for ease of use.

Click on the “Options” to bring up the configuration panel

This plugin is developed and distributed by NitroPDF which claims to be an alternative to Adobe PDF.

Click here to download the plugin and here to visit NitroPDF.

Not that there were no features in the native Gmail, but Gmail labs has taken it to a whole new level. With Gmail labs you can now have Google Calender right within you gmail interface. However, I must say I am not a big fan of small little calendar that’s available with labs. But the good news is that you can now have a good number of applications which are not part of labs feature to sit right into your gmail.

Let’s say you want to have a Gmail, Google Reader, Google Calendar, Google Notebook and many other Google services on a single page, you wont get it in Gmail labs. Bu if you are Firefox user, you have an extension which does exactly this. This extension is called as Integrated Gmail. The extension is quite useful as it flawlessly integrates various Google services into your Gmail. It looks something like this:

Description

Allows you to make the Inbox Collapsible and loads your choice of Google Calendar, Reader, Notebook, Groups etc… seamlessly into the gmail interface. Works w/Google Apps Accounts.

The various services which are supported are as follows:

• Google Mail
• Calendar
• Reader
• Notebook
• Google Groups
• Google Maps
• Picasa
• Google Sites
• Google News
• Google Portfolio

There are various settings which can be tweaked in Integrated Gmail.

Using this extension could be a great productivity booster. However, it might not be the best extensions for users who have a slow Internet connection. In order to use this extension you’ll need a Mozilla account as this extension is still in experimental stages. You can register for a free Mozilla account here.

Download Integrated Gmail