Fireday - Firefox Extensions for August 18, 2006

Friday, August 18, 2006 4:00 AM

Posted by Jonathan Danylko | Tag: Fireday | Comments: 0 | View blog reactions

This week: MIT Libraries, SportsFox, and Package Tracking

This week, since I'll be gone for a couple days including Friday, I thought reviewing some extensions that are relaxing to us for these cooler days.

MIT Libraries extension

The MIT libraries extension provides a way for users to broadly search for scholarly literature.

The extension uses the following search engines to locate your data:

  • Barton
  • Vera Databases and eJournals
  • Google Scholar
  • SFX FullText Finder

The extension will search any one of the above four sites of your choice for scholarly literature by ISBN number, title, keyword, author, or subject.

There are actually three areas of interest with this extension

  • Toolbar
  • Context Menu
  • Embedded Links

The toolbar functionality pertains to the data we're looking for. Select the type of search engine you wish to search and bang! Your searching for it.

If you want to use the context menu, highlight a piece of text and right-click on it. This will provide a quick way to immediately search for your text in your specific search engine. If you use Google Scholar at all, you'll find this functionality a help in itself.

The last feature is the embedded links that occur on certain web pages. LibX puts the following image (LibX cue image) on web pages such as:

  • Amazon
  • Barnes & Noble
  • Google
  • Google Scholar
  • New York Times Book Reviews
  • Yahoo! Search
  • ...and many others

If you click on the little icon on the page, you'll be taken immediately to the online access of that piece of literature. Nice feature.

The idea of having multiple ways of searching for data is an excellent way of promoting this type of extension. I really like extensions that have numerous ways of accomplishing something. It shows me that the developers have put enough thought into the development  so users can make the most of the product.

The extension installed without any problems and is perfect for (college) students who need research and literature for their reports or thesis.

Rating: 5/5

SportsFox

Ok, YEAH! Here we go. NFL Season has kicked off, but not only do we get NFL scores, but College Football, NCAA Men's Basketball, NCAA Women's Basketball, NBA, NHL, and MLB.

Install this extension and you're all set to track you favorite teams. SportsFox is probably the best sports tracking extension I've seen so far.

The extension will display the schedule of your preferred league and highlights the next time your team plays a game. Right-click on the label at the bottom of your status bar and select "SportsFox options..."

In the options dialog, you can activate the ticker to display at the bottom of your status bar, turn a slider alert on, turn a timer on, select your favorite teams, and timer delay. Personally, I've got enough indicators on my status bar where I don't need another one. :-)

The overall feel for this extension is pretty good. Maybe I haven't tried out the extension thoroughly enough, but I'm wondering if the scores will display when the games are over or while the games are in progress. According to the site, I did notice that the extension has a slider alert to let me know the scores of the games, which is doable for me.

Overall, this should give me my NFL fix for the season.

Rating: 4/5 

Package Tracking Extension

Simple and to the point. I like these types of extensions. I always want to track my NewEgg.com shipments, so here is THE extension for making sure you know where your package is at, regardless of has it.

The Package Tracking extension takes a highlighted tracking code (that you highlight) and uses the context menu (right-click) to send the selected text to UPS, USPS, or FedEx to see where your package currently at.

The extension does what its supposed to do and it does it well. This type of functionality would be nice if it was incorporated into Firefox with version 2.0.

Oh, and by the way, for those who are adventurous, they also have a .NET Framework DLL available for download if you program in .NET. Another feather in their cap. Multiple ways to access the tracking functionality without additional programming.

Rating: 5/5

Has anyone else used these extensions? Let me know if you have any comments about them, jot them down in the Chatterbox below, or contact me directly.

L8R

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