Fireday - Firefox Extensions for October 27, 2006

Friday, October 27, 2006 4:00 AM

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

This week: Submit 'em Now, DataAnalytics, and LinkChecker.

Everyone has heard that Firefox 2.0 is now out and some have been wondering where my posting of it is at. Well, next week, I will be posting a full review of Firefox 2.0 after using it for a week.

I also wanted to tell everyone that since Firefox 2.0 is out, I will be covering extensions from here on out that were built for Firefox 2.0.

So let's get started...

Submit 'em Now

Rating: 2/5

If you've submitted your site to directories, you know how tedious it can be.

The Firefox Submit 'em Now extension is an extension that eases that burden. When you install the extension and restart Firefox, you'll notice another toolbar at the top. It may cryptic at first, but once you enter in your site and contact data, this will move along quickly.

Click on Project, then click New. A dialog box will appear for you to enter your site and contact data. After your data is entered, click OK and you will be on your way. As soon as you click "Next URL," Submit 'em Now starts at the beginning of the database of URLs and move through each site's submission page. The data will automatically fill into each input field on the screen. All you need to do is press the submit button.

As I went through each site using the "Next URL" button, some sites in the database weren't pulled up or they were shut down. I'm wondering about how current the database list is. Is it always up-to-date? Does it go out to the Internet to pull the most current list of directory sites for you to submit to similar to AdBlock Plus? This would be an excellent feature to add to the extension instead of using a manual way of add or edit the sites. I assume thats why the extension would be updated from time to time.

The Submit 'em Now has 113 sites in their database list of blog and rss submission sites. I would say that around 1/4 to 1/2 of them required additional information, such as a registration for a new account, sites that required additional fields that weren't included in the initial setup dialog box, or sites that just didn't exist or their account site expired/bandwidth exceeded.

One more issue I've run across. As I was writing this review, I was moving between tabs in Firefox and every time I clicked the Next Url button, the wrong tab would load. I would have to click on one tab and then click on the blank tab to get the tab to "register." Hmm...needs a little more testing.

It is a good extension to cycle through all of the sites for submission, but the extension requires more tweaking to provide a faster way to submit at least one site. Can you imagine if someone had 15 sites that needed submission into the directories and rss lists? Yikes!

DataAnalytics

Rating: 5/5

If you are a statistics geek (which I do know a lot of techno-weenies who are), you will enjoy DataAnalytics.

The Data Analytics Firefox extension will take either an HTML table of data or a Google Spreadsheet, parse the data, and present the data in a table format for the user to analyze the data.

I would see this being extremely helpful in the stock exchange sites. Highlight the HTML table of stock history and chart the data over time. Yes, I said chart the data.

You see, this is another XUL application. The application is activated when you highlight your cells in the HTML table, right-click the selected cells/rows and click "Analyze Selection." After the extension takes you through a wizard interface, your data is imported into a grid format for you to analyze your data.

The extension has a grid in the middle with 6 tabs at the bottom. The tabs allow you to:

  • Sort - sort on any field in the grid.
  • Group - group by any field in the grid
  • Aggregate - total fields (sum, count, etc.)
  • Add column - calculated fields can be created here.
  • Filter - apply a filter to the grid.
  • Highlight - highlight certain rows/cells based on a certain condition.

As you can see, you have a wide range of functions to work with. Most people would just call up Excel and start having a ball with the spreadsheet, but this extension, I have to admit, is great for small analysis.

The rating for this extension is a 5/5 because based on its simplicity, I didn't run into any errors whatsoever, no bugs reared their ugly heads, and the extension...err..application was actually good to work with.

LinkChecker

Rating: 4/5

The LinkChecker extension provides a great service to me. At one point, when I started looking at this extension, I thought it would spider all of my links on my site and let me know the status of them.

Nope.

If you have a page full of links that is 12 pages long, this extension is for you.

Install the extension and browse to a site that you enjoy and has a lot of links. Click under Tools and click Check Page Links. LinkChecker will display all of the links on the page in a certain color to represent each links status.

  • red - Broken Links
  • Yellow - Forwarded, Forbidden Links
  • Green - Good Links
  • Gray - Skipped Links

LinkChecker even has a toolbar button. Right-click on a toolbar and click "Customize..." The button is called "Check Links" with a big blue checkmark ("Ya can't miss it!"). Drag that toolbar button onto an existing toolbar and your off and running.

I thought I wouldn't need this extension at first, but after looking through the site, I've noticed I had some dead/bad links in the my pages. As I've said before, it doesn't have the ability to move through multiple pages, but that's what the other maintenance sites on the web are for. :-)

The extension gets a rating of 4/5 because of its usefulness. If you are working on a directory listing or a portal application, this extension would be extremely valuable to you. Literally, at the click of a button, you could find out if the external links (or internal for that matter) are dead or not.


Have a great weekend everyone! If you have any comments, please post them below or Contact me directly.

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