These are my 7 best time saving Mozilla Firefox Add-ons (plugins). One of the first things that attracted me to Firefox was the ability to have super cool add-ons in my browser.
However, you can go a little overboard and install so many add-ons that you bog it down and make it run slow (which is why I believe that Googe Chrome doesn’t yet allow for them). I also had an incident where my plugins were conflicting with each other and causing great confusion on my part until I figured out who the little buggers were.
…Rabbit trail.
Back to our discussion, the add-ons that I value the most are the ones that help me to save time so I can work on other important things. They have to be simple to set up and easy to use. All 7 of these fit this criteria.

1. CoolPreviews - www.coolpreviews.com (addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2207) – This add-on actually works in Firefox and Internet Explorer but the Firefox version has more bells and whistles. On any given website you will notice a little blue magnifying lense beside the hyperlinks. When you hover over the lense or click on it you get a snapshot view of what that webpage looks like. No more un-necessary click throughs and then hitting the back button. You add up all the seconds it saves me and I could sleep in an extra 30 minutes per day!
   

   CoolPreviews - 7 Time Saving Firefox Add-ons

2. Fasterfox – www.fasterfox.mozdev.org (addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9037) – This plugin allows you to tweak Firefox to speed it up. You can alter the network settings optimization, connections, pipelining, cache, DNS cache and initial paint delay. In additon, you can recycle the bandwidth for loading and caching all the links on any page you are browsing for more speed (read the FAQs for help with this touchy setting). I feel the need…the need for speed! (Did I just date myself…LOL)
   

   Fasterfox - 7 Time Saving Firefox Add-ons

3. FeedBurner Subscribers -  www.jackhumphrey.com (addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6369) – If you can’t measure it how will you know when you have succeeded? Feedburner does an excellent job of managing my feeds but it takes about 4 clicks to get to your stats. With the easy to install Feedburner Subscribers Firefox add-on your subscriber count is right in the lower center of your browser window. Plus, you can see how many hits your feed has had. I really wish you could check multiple feeds but at this time you can only see the stats for one feed. It’s always nice to see how many blogging friends you have (BTW Have you subscribed to this feed yet? No better time than the present)
   

   FeedBurner Subscribers - 7 Time Saving Firefox Add-ons

4. Google Toolbar – tools.google.com/firefox/toolbar/FT5/intl/en/index.html (addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6249) – You can add and remove the buttons so the toolbar will be totally customized to your liking. A few of my favorite buttons are Google Calendar (my entire family has their Outlook files sync’d and shared), Google Reader, GMail, Google Earth, News Article Search, Translate and the Chrome-ish splash page when you open a new tab. Not having to visit several webpages, navigate through drop down menus or weed through cumbersome bookmarking lets me get to sip my coffee a little longer and get to my destination a whole lot faster.
5. Hootlet – www.hootsuite.com – This great web app saves you time with Twitter, gives you great Twitter stats, auto-posts RSS/Atom Feeds, manages multiple Twitter profiles, allows for several users and has a Hootlet that makes all this a snap! Let’s say you want to send out a tweet about a great website you are visiting. With one click it grabs the page title, page info, the URL and shrinks it, gives you a character count, lets you check off which Twitter accounts to post to, the ability to send now or later, click Submit Tweet and you are done. Plus, you can check the stats later to see how effective your Twitter campaign was. My fingers thank you Hootlet for simplifying the process
   

   Hootlet - 7 Time Saving Firefox Add-ons

6. ScribeFire – www.scribefire.com (addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1730) – ScribeFire, oh, how I love thee…let me count the ways… This would be my #1 pick if I was to choose among these 7 time saving Firefox add-ons. Have you ever been on a site and had a brain storm idea for a post? Sometimes by the time you get around to it you have lost some of the passion, memory and oomph to get it done. No more. With ScribeFire you can write and publish right from within Firefox. Inside a webpage highlight a couple of pictures, some text add a few notes and post to your blog. Once you have added your blog to ScribeFire and you visit your site it magically makes a Quickblog menu appear near your browser tabs so you can quickly add a flickr image, YouTube video, upload an image, add a link, add a quote or just blog normally right where you are. I wrote this post using ScribeFire. Gotta love it!
   

   ScribeFire - 7 Time Saving Firefox Add-ons

7. SEO for Firefox - tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html – This precious little gem puts a ton of stats right at your fingertips. With one click you can check your PageRank, Google Cache Date, Traffic Value, Domain Age, Delicious Bookmarks, Diggs, Stumbles, Twitter, Yahoo Links, .edu and .gov links, Technorati, Alexa, Compete.com, Trends, Dmoz, Bloglines, Yahoo Directory, Whois, Yahoo position, Majestic SEO and others. It also has a nofollow links highlighting feature you can turn on or off (I like it off). This is a very quick way to check some of your sites SEO stats. How many man hours would all those stats take you manually? Don’t think about it or you’ll get dizzy.

I think you’ll appreciate all the extra time you will now have to do something more productive. What will you be doing with your free time? Me, well, I’ll be quilting of course!
What’s your favorite time saving Firefox add-on?

P.S. Save some extra time with the SEO Blogger tool from yesterday too!

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