The Internet has made it a lot easier for consumers to buy products in foreign countries. Most consumers do that because it is either cheaper to order a product in another country, or because it is only available in that country and not the domestic market. A problem that usually comes up is that the product page description lists different units and currencies, so that the consumer needs to find a way to convert them.
Some may be able to do that on the fly, while others might prefer tools to aid them on the unit conversion.
Converter is a Firefox add-on that offers to convert individual units and prices, or all units and prices on a page. To convert a single unit or currency Firefox users would select the unit or currency on the page and right-click afterwards. The right-click menu displays the converted unit or currency directly in its context menu.
Below are examples for a unit conversion and currency conversion.
The Firefox add-on should work on all sites, even https sites are supported. The add-on’s options determine the default units and currency that the program uses when converting units and currencies.
The add-on places an icon in the Firefox toolbar with options to convert all units and currencies on the active page. This is done by a left-click on the icon. It may take a few seconds before everything on a page has been converted; And it may result in display problems on the page as additional information are added to it.
The conversions are displayed for as long as the page is not reloaded or closed. It is usually much easier to convert a single unit or currency on the page than all units and currencies.
The options can be opened with a right-click on the status bar icon and the selection of – yes you guessed that one right – options. Only the first three tabs are available for all users. The developer has created a premium version of the add-on that adds additional options and features. More about that later.
The conversions tab determines the default units and currency. Available for selection are km/h or mph, Celsius or Fahrenheit, 24h or 12h and a currency from a selection of dozens of available currencies.
The add-on will always convert into the unit and currency selected by the user. The options offer additional settings. It is for instance possible to remove the icon from the status bar, enable auto convert to automatically convert currencies and units on all pages that are loaded in Firefox, selected thousands and decimal separators and to disable conversion options that are not needed. A user can disable unit conversions so that only currencies get converted in the browser.
Converter is available for all Firefox versions from Firefox 2 on. The developer has not uploaded the latest version to the Mozilla add-on repository yet. This means that users of the latest Minefield releases need to force compatibility to install the add-on, and that everyone finds a new version of the add-on at the developer site. This however adds a slight security risk to the add-on, since the new version was not checked by Mozilla yet.
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Now this is useful.
Question on the currency conversion: does this mean the add-on dials out somewhere for the latest currency rates?
It looks like it does but I could not find any information about the source.
Thanks for the info Martin. I’m just leery of any programs that dials out for my own good without telling me where to. This includes that Windoze 7 thing too.
Just saw this post, one year later… :) Anyway, I’m the author of the extension, and wanted to clarify what’s going on: the currency conversion rates are retrieved from Google (i.e. the extension makes a background request to http://www.google.com/). Please let me know if you have any further concerns.
If you don’t want to use an addon, there are websites that convert currency for you, Here is my favorite (for its simplicity) http://www.x-rates.com/calculator.html