There have been a couple of blog entries recently about FireFox plugins
that people CAN live without and I thought I'd put together a list of
the plugins that are absolutely essential (at least to me).
- BioBar
- this bioinformatics tool from the folks at the European
Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) makes it a snap to search a wide variety
of web-based databases such as Entrez Gene, OMIM, KEGG, and many others.
- Del.icio.us - There are a number of del.icio.us-related plugins but I've found the original one from del.icio.us to be the easiest to use.
- ConQuery - This plugin lets you run a search query by simply selecting a piece of text and right-clicking the "Search Web..." menu item.
- ColorZilla - this is useful for determining the hex string for any color in a web page. It really helps when you're trying to match a particular color in an image, or stylesheet.
- All-In-One Gestures -
ever since a friend of mine turned me on to gestures I've found it
difficult to browse without them. I keep hoping they'll add gesture
support to Eclipse and I've heard rumors to the effect that it will be added to Ganymede and might be available before then.
- DownloadThemAll - I've found this pretty useful when you're trying to download libraries from the Maven repository, downloading dependent JARs from Jakarta Commons projects, or downloading icon themes from art.gnome.org.
I also find myself using these search plugins pretty frequently:
- Google Translate - The Google Translate search plugins allow
you to translate text from one language into another. When you combine
this with ConQuery, you simply select a piece of text in a web page,
and then right-click ConQuery and select your translator and the
translated text appears in a new tab.
- Dictionary - The Dictionary search plugin makes it easy to look up words.
- Google Book Search - A lot of the reference books I use are now available through Google Books. Definitely cuts down on the shelf space that I need.
- ExampleDepot.com - This is a great site for code snippets.
- JavaDocs - no developer should be without this.
- Koders.com - this site gives you quick access to the source of a lot of the open source projects that I use.
- JDocs.com - this site is similar to Koders.com, but it's free and has plugins for most IDEs.
What kind of plugins do you find useful?
