mindless ramblings

Ever since the AMS FTP server decided to stop communicating with SmartFTP, I have been using Internet Explorer to upload files up to the SRC website. Now this might be perfectly acceptable to the average user, but personally I do not enjoy using IE for my web browsing, let alone my FTP needs. I’m not sure where the problem lies, but SmartFTP works on every other FTP server I use (this website, Shaw etc).

Enter FireFTP. FireFTP is a extension for Firefox that allows the user to have a little FTP app within Firefox (doh!). It’s easy to use (way more than that craptastic WS_FTP for sure), fast and works with the blasted AMS server. It’s not going to replace SmartFTP as my application of choice, but it’s pretty handy if you need a simple app to get files on and off a server.

A glance at my Extensions menu in Firefox reveals many other extensions that I have found pretty handy for my needs. Try them out and you might be pleasantly surprised! I’ll list them here, with a little blurb about what they do.

1. BugMeNot - Auto registration for those pesky news sites. It does not work right now, but it’s invaluable when it works.
2. Download Manager Tweak - Makes the integrated download manager look much nicer and adds the ability to customize download behaviour.
3. FasterFox - Performance and network tweaks for Firefox, makes browsing *seem* faster, and includes a little timer on the bottom right to show how long it took to load the current page.
4. Sage - I’ve talked about this in a previous post, but to put it simply, it’s a RSS/Atom feed reader. Probably one of the extensions I use the most.
5. Tab Mix Plus - Awesome plugin, allows rearrangment of tabs (natively supported in FF 1.5 now), custom tab behaviour (open all links in new tabs etc) and keeps a closed tabs list to let you reopen tabs that you might have accidentally closed. Highly recommended.
6. Web Developer - This is for the geeks out there. Very powerful extension that does a huge amount of things like disable java/javascript/css, show border boxes for finetuning your layout, validate your code and lots more. The feature list coud go on pages, but just click the link and check it out for yourself. Priceless if you do any kind of web design at all.