Serial Box Crime

Ive been looking for an alternate browser to Firefox lately and came across Flock which is powered by Firefox/Mozilla. I was very happy to learn that the Firefox Addons that are available at the Mozilla website are interchangeable with Flock. Go Mozilla!

The Flock Browser’s main focus is social networking.   It integrates live feeds and connecetions to all of the major social networking sites such as Digg, Flickr, and your own personal RSS feeds.

The installation process for Firefox addons is simple.  You find the extension/addon you want to install on the website and then click the button that says “Add to Firefox”.  The extension will be downloaded and added to your browser and it will restart automatically.

To install extensions/addons for Flock simply follow the exact same process but from within your Flock browser instead of Firefox.  The extensions will be installed the same way and will work flawlessly from what I’ve seen since Flock is basically Firefox on steroids.

I have found two extremely useful addons that I have installed with Flock to make my browsing experience easier.  I am a massive multi-tasker and am always looking for ways to make browsing faster and easier.  This afternoon I came across Speed Dial and Showcase.

What does SpeedDial do for you?  If you were born during the 1980’s or earlier then you are familiar with the old speed-dial buttons on your home phone.  Assign the most commonly dialed numbers to a single button making it easier and faster to contact them without having to remember the number.  SpeedDial for Firefox/Flock does just that.  Once installed, when you CTRL+T to open a new tab rather than seeing a blank page that waits for you to type in an address you are presented with 9 thumbnail images of the websites you frequent the most.

The setup is simple.  Once the extension is installed all you need to do is press CTRL+T as you normally do and you will see the above screen.  Right click on one of the thumbnail images to edit the settings.  Input the URL to the site as http://serial-box.net (or whatever your favourite site is) and thats it!

Showcase is also a great extension.  Before I get into it I will say that I absolutely hate Internet Explorer with a passion.  The only reason I have it installed on my computer is for browser compatibility checks when developing a site.  I did find one useful feature in it though which was the ability to view your open tabs as thumbnail images.  The one thing I hate about Firefox/Flock is that if you have 25-30 tabs open you have to scroll through them all to find the site you are looking for which is time consuming.  Showcase simply implements a Hotkey SHIFT-F12 which conviently and instantly opens a small window that displays all of your open/active tabs as thumbnail images which are scrollable with your mouse wheel.  What more could I ask for?