Want to know what I have spent the morning doing?

I have been playing in Firefox. Everyone is always raving about how great it is and to be honest I have had it installed ages but it's never really appealed to me to use it for everything. I normally just use it for downloading stuff and reading my google reader. But since I am really really sick of Internet Explorer randomly closing with no warning (usually while I am downloading and mostly when it's at 99% done I swear it does it just to annoy me lol) and it's generally being a pain in the bum lately, I have tried another browser called Safari but truthfully it's slow and I am impatient so to me it's a bit useless so I thought I would try and explore some of Firefox's real potential. For me a web browser has to be quick, it has to download what I want it to where I want it to go, it has to be able to do multiple downloads and I need to be able to open as many windows as I want without it throwing a little tantrum. I have spent a while going through addon's for it and there are tonnes and tonnes I have already unistalled some of the ones I added because they were bugging me lol. Ok so these are what are currently installed into firefox and for now I think all of these will be staying for a while but we will see. This is the order they appear in I am not doing my favourite one first or anything like that. I have linked up the names incase you fancy downloading them yourself.

Accessibar - This one allows you to mess around with the display you can change colours, fonts, text size, spacing between lines of text, you can hide graphics and there's a feature called read aloud I haven't experimented with that one yet but it sounds interesting.

Ad Block Plus - This one is pretty self explanatory it blocks annoying adverts on websites, I don't really bother with it as much as I should do so I am not exactly sure of it's full worth on here. I usually block all those annoying screechy smileys when they pop up lol and that's about it.

Ad Block Plus: Element Hiding Helper - This one I will hold my hands up and admit I didn't even read the description when I installed it, so I am not actually sure what it does lol the description said it recommending using them together so I added this one.

Addictive Typing Lessons - I used to be very addicted to Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing when I was at school I could do a lot of words per minute if memory serves my average was 195 words per minute with a 93% accuracy, it's not that good now but I thought this might be something to do while I am waiting for photoshop to finish doing something lol.

Blogger Bar - I really like this one, it has a link to Blogger.com, a search function, search profiles, and my favourite bit a function called Blog This. The idea of that is when you find something while surfing the net that you think is worth blogging about you can hit that little button. So just for an example I will use this,
Amy is currently having a great promotion at Scrapbook Bytes, you can get all her layered templates for just $35, if I go to the posting and click the blog this button I get this.
Template Bonanza Sale by Amy Bleser :: Sketches/Layered Templates :: SCRAPBOOK-BYTES
I think it's pretty cool anyway lol but that's enough about that little addon for now anyway lol.

Colourful Tabs - (but it's American so there's no U in colour but I just can't bring myself to type it as I would consider it - wrong lol). This one is super simple it makes each of your tabs a pretty colour lol. I like colours so anything that's pretty to look at and not pink makes me happy. It gets a bit depressing spending as many hours on the computer as I do without some pretty things.

Download Statusbar - Makes all your downloads go onto a little bar across the bottom of the screen I love this one, so much easier than that silly pop up window thing showing the downloads. This one was one of the 1st addons I ever added to Firefox and I am so glad I did.

FoxClocks - This one displays world times, when I can work out which timezones crops are in I will add those as well but for now I have UK time and China time (I can't remember if I told you or not that Malcolm is working in China for a year) it helps me remember what time it is with him (7 hours ahead of us) so then when Nan asks I don't have to try and work it out lol.

FoxyTunes - This is a favourite of mine it's a music toolbar, handy when like now I have no charge left in my ipod shuffle lol but strangely right now I have it disabled, for no reason other than I was playing around and it was bugging me today lol.

Minimize To Tray - This one makes Firefox go down into the tray (next to the computer's clock/calendar function) means it doesn't take up more space across the bottom of my screen very handy for me, because with ACDSEE, Photoshop, Lightroom, Notepad and usually at least 1 My Computer screen and usually Hello open things tend to end up getting stacked up and annoying me. I like everything laid out where I can easily and quickly click through them. We have already covered I am impatient lol I multitask a lot I can't just wait patiently while something finishes what it's doing I need to be doing something else while I am waiting.

Minimize To Tray Enhancer - Just gives you a few more options with the Minimize To Tray one.

Morning Coffee - This was the 2nd or 3rd addon, this one is designed with the idea that people sit down with a coffee to look at certain websites either every day or one one day of the week, you can set them all up and open them with one simple click of a button. Personally I have my site daily downloads set up under every day and then I have digital store specials, promotions etc that happen on different days of the week under their day. These are the ones that I have set up.
Monday - New Lightroom Preset @ Lightroom Killer Tips, New 52 Inspirations @ Oscraps
Tuesday - New releases 30% off @ Digital Freebies
Wednesday - Special $1 pricing on selected item(s) @ Little Dreamer Designs
Thursday - New releases 20% off @ The Digi Chick, Thrifty Thursday's selected items 30% @ Designer Digitals
Friday - Froggy Friday @ The Lily Pad,
Saturday - New releases @ Sweet Shoppe Designs
Sunday - 2 new items for 25c @ Designer Digitals
Everyday: 1 Hour Scrap, 3 Scrapateers, Digitals, Digital Scrap Garden, Divine Digital, Go Digital Scrapbooking, Gotta Pixel, RAKScraps, Scrap Outside The Box and Scrapping Garden.

PermaTabs - The one thing I wasn't ever keen on about firefox was it's one home page I have 5 set up to open when I start or hit the home button in internet explorer. This is a little workaround you can make any tab a permanant meaning when you open the program it opens that window, it doesn't matter if you refresh, restart etc that window will be there when you reopen. These cannot be closed unless you turn the permanant tab on it off, very very useful. I only have one post set as a perma-tab my google reader.

QuickRestart - Everything you change, play around with etc usually requires a restart to show the changes (or if you have screwed up the colours lol to get rid of them) this allows you to do this a lot quicker than exiting out of the program and reloading it.

Save Session - Allows you to close all the windows you have open and reopen them in the same order.

Session Manager - Does pretty much the same thing as Save Session only you can name the sessions and save multiple different ones, I haven't decided which will be more useful for me yet.

Stop Autoplay - This one stops blogs, websites and pretty much anything else that plays music when you click on the page. This one is very useful for me since I am often on my computer late at night and opening a blog only to get blasted with really loud music isn't exactly appreciated by people who are actually sleeping (imagine that lol) at night.

TabRenamizer - The only lets you rename the tabs you have open, I would bet this one would be useful if you happened to be browsing something you shouldn't be at work lol I am not quite sure if I will use it yet since I don't have to hide what I am viewing from anyone.

Talkback - Lets you send an error report if Firefox happens to close for some reason or other. I think this one comes already installed because I don't remember adding it lol.

URL Fixer - Corrects common spelling mistakes made when typing URL's like if you typed .con instead of .com.

WebMail Notifier - This is my favourite one I have added, I have never really gotten on with firefox because I still needed msn messenger running (when it actually felt like cooperating) to let me know I had new mail. My alternative was having hotmail as one of my home pages which was slowly driving me insane. I have never gotten on with Yahoo and although a lot of people seem to like GMail I don't, I need my folders to sort everything into. I have my googlemail emails forwarded to my hotmail address. It tells me when I have a new message via a little pop up in the bottom right hand side of my screen. I can click the little envelope to open my inbox in a new window. All that is great but the reason I love it so much is it loads almost instantly not slowly or not at all like Internet Explorer has been doing lately.

I will have to let you how I get on using Firefox as my primary browser, I have a feeling I will still find myself hitting the Internet Explorer icon for a while since it's second nature.