Your Browser Can Look Like This

For the last couple of days, we’ve talked about increasing your elbow room in your workspace.  Once you’ve tackled that project, you might find yourself just motivated enough to handle some other issues in your office (home or work).  Removing clutter and reorganizing can also be applied to another important part of your daily workspace, your browser.  This might not be something you have thought about before, but once you see what is possible, you’ll realize just how crazy your browser was getting.

Remember when you first started on your new computer or new install of a browser?  It was clean, organized and ready for you to destroy.  You began browsing for work and/or personal use and quickly began collecting bookmarks, toolbars, sidebars, etc.  Reading your favorite blogs, participating in social networking, playing your favorite online games and checking your personal email quickly caused a disorganized, overloaded browser.  The more you used it, the less space you were actually left with to view web sites at all.

Internet Explorer Disaster

Thanks to a great article on the site Lifehacker.com, I was introduced to a great new, FREE tweak for my browsing experience and I want to share it with you.  You can use FireFox, along with some “add-ons” to create a simple, clean browsing experience that will help you gain back some of your “internet view.”  I know that many of you are already saying “FireFox!  I don’t want to change to FireFox.  I don’t like it.”  Don’t worry.  Adding an additional browser to your computer does not mean that your old one goes away.  Try FireFox for a few days and, if you don’t like it, switch back.  Your old browser it just a few button clicks away.

Step-By-Step (takes about 15 minutes)

• Install Firefox – Download HERE
• Visit the Add-ons page for Firefox (add-ons let you add features which aren’t part of the standard application)
• Locate Strata40 by searching or clicking HERE
• Click on the “Add to Firefox” button and follow the on-screen instructions (you may be warned about this add-on being experimental)
• Restart Firefox when prompted
• Locate and install the following add-ons
  • Strata-Buddy
  • App Tabs
  • Fission (download depends on your version of FireFox)
  • Tab Progress Bar

You are now ready to enjoy a browser experience that looks a bit more like this:

FireFox Browser after Strata40 and other Add-Ons

What You Can Do With Your New Setup

Now that you have installed the add-ons, you can begin tweaking your browser to match your tastes and needs.  Here are few of the highlights:

• Mini-Tabs – See those small tabs to the left of the JumpstartMyPC.com homepage (image above)?  To create a mini-tab you simply hold CTRL and click on any open tab.  Keep your most-visited sites open, but free up room for other tabs.
• Colors – You can change the color of the surrounding window and tabs.  Change from the default (shown above) to one of 5 other options by going to Tools/Add-Ons/StrataBuddy/Options.
• Toolbars – Notice in the image above that there are no toolbars.  Limit yours in View/Toolbars by removing the checks fbeside any you don’t want to see.

You’ll notice that the image above still looks a bit different.  Why is that?  Well I have been using add-ons for some time now and had already altered my navigation buttons and address bar to appear beside the the menu.  This shows you the power of add-ons.  There are thousands to choose from and no-limit to the areas of use.  I have add-ons that notify me of new mail, let me know when friends are online playing XBOX, show me previews of images from links, etc.  Visit the add-on site today and see what you can find.

Tags: add-ons, Firefox, organize, Strata40, StrataBuddy, tabs, toolbars, workspace

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 10:25 am and is filed under Firefox, Free Programs, Tips and Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.