The Firefox add-on and Google Chrome extension ProxMate looks and feels like an advanced copy of the Grooveshark Unlocker, an extension that unblocks access to the Grooveshark site if it is blocked in a country.

The browser add-on adds two features on top of that make it more practicable. It first can unblock blocked videos on YouTube, so that they become accessible again. It detects blocked contents on YouTube Video pages, channels and search, enables the proxy and reloads the page to unblock the contents on the site.

The second new feature allows users to change the proxy server. This can be useful for privacy reasons, and in situations where the default proxy server may have been blocked or is not functioning anymore.

ProxMate works right after you have installed it in the Firefox web browser. Instead of seeing a screen like the following one that is telling you that you cannot watch the video,

you can watch it just fine with ProxMate enabled.

Please note that while this works automatically most of the time, you sometimes may need to reload the page a few times before the video starts to play.

You can change the proxy server in the settings. Here it is also possible to disable the add-ons functionality on select supported sites.

ProxMate is available for Firefox and Google Chrome. The extension can be useful if you like to access the Grooveshark website or encounter videos on YouTube regularly that are blocked in your country.

Update: Grooveshark Updater also came with options to change the proxy server in the add-on’s settings.

Ciuvo identifies items on shopping sites automatically, pulls price and other information from its database, and displays those information in a small toolbar that it attaches to the top of the web page.

This toolbar highlights the cheapest price it found in its database, the number of total sites carrying the item, and links to additional information like product videos.

You can use the information to compare the price on the site you are currently on to the cheapest price that Ciuvo found in its product database. This can be reassuring if the site you are on has the cheapest price, or a money saver if it does not. Details about each offer are displayed in the menu that opens up when you move the mouse cursor over offers in the toolbar.

Here you see the price and shipping information, whether the product is available, the store’s rating and a short description of the product.

A click opens the item’s page on the shopping site in a new browser tab. It is still important to compare the product details on all shipping pages to make sure that the same product is offered on both. The add-on had for instance issues identifying different product versions on a single Amazon item page. It always compared the price of the default product with its database.

Ciuvo checks YouTube for product videos which can be viewed directly on the shopping site. Just hover with your mouse over the video menu and select one of the videos to watch it directly in an overlay on the page.

Here is a short add-on demonstration video.

Ciuvo is only compatible with select online shops in the US, UK, Austria, Germany, France and Poland. Firefox users interested in an unobtrusive price comparison add-on should check it out.

The browser add-on, available for both the Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome web browser, monitors all browser tabs automatically from the moment it has been installed. It cannot notify you of updates if a website is closed though, which means that it is best for users who have their messaging and social sites up whenever the browser is up and running.

Tab Notifier can display notifications even if the browser is minimized or not visible on the screen.

The extension watches all open tabs but the active tab by default. This behavior can be modified in the extension options to a more stricter policy. Instead of watching all sites, it is possible to configure the add-on to watch only sites listed in the settings window.

Notifications furthermore can be configured to close automatically after a set amount of seconds, which may be useful for users who receive many throughout the day.

A right-click on a web page and the selection of the configure tab notifier for site context menu option displays a site specific configuration menu. This overrides the global extension settings so that it either offers to run a whitelist or blacklist of sites.

Advanced users can use regular expressions to fine tune title matches for specific sites. This can be useful if a site uses different page titles instead of just one (or to be only notified if the notification count reaches ten or more messages).

Notifications are displayed in the lower right corner of the screen, and not in the browser window. Firefox users can download Tab Notifier from the Mozilla Add-ons repository, Chrome users from the developer’s website. Apple Macintosh users need to have Growl installed to use the extension.

RequestPolicy for the Firefox web browser has been designed to put you back in control over the connections the browser makes. It works in this regard similar to the popular NoScript add-on, but with the difference that it does not prevent onsite scripts from running.

When you first install the add-on, you can add sites to the whitelist. The developer has prepared international and location specific lists.

The majority of suggestions allow connections between sites by the same company. Examples are to allow google.com connections when you are on gmail, or fbcdn.net connections when you are on Facebook. These can significantly reduce issues that users encounter after enabling the add-on in the browser. It is however not necessary to add any site combination to the whitelist.

This whitelist approach is different from NoScripts whitelisting approach, as NoScript allows connections from that domain on all websites, whereas RequestPolicy only allows them on one specific site.

RequestPolicy adds an icon to the Firefox status bar that acts as a control panel and indicator at the same time. A red flag indicates that connections have been blocked on a website. A click on the flag displays information about those connections, and options to temporarily or permanently allow those connections to be made on the current site.

The page is automatically reloaded if you allow connections to be made.

The preferences let you manage the whitelist, export or import settings, and modify the strictness of the add-on. The add-on by default uses base domains, e.g. ghacks.net to allow same-site requests. You can change that to full domain names, e.g. www.ghacks.net, or full addresses instead.

What I personally like most about RequestPolicy is the granular whitelisting which allows you to run the same scripts on some sites but not on others (for instance to show Adsense ads on Ghacks, but not on other sites). It is also less intrusive than NoScript if the whitelisting suggestions are added during setup.

The Classicish Add-on Manager add-on for the Firefox web browser restyles the current add-on manager to look and feel more like the classic one. The most notable change is that it moves the add-on manager from the browser tab into its own window, making it completely independent from the browser window it was opened in.

Another benefit of that approach is that you can change the add-ons manager’s window size without changing the size of the browser window itself. The interface lists all installed add-ons on startup. Add-ons are listed with a black font color on white background for better readability.

Each add-on listing takes up the same screen estate in the window, and displays the extension’s icon, name, description and an options button.

Everything else has been moved into the right-click context menu. This includes options to disable listed add-ons, to remove them or to check for updates.

The options button opens the add-on’s options menu. Depending on the add-on, it may either open in a new window or on the same page. The back and forward buttons, and the sidebar can be used to navigate back to the listing afterwards.

The sidebar lists add-ons, plugins, themes and userscripts, but no option to install add-ons from the window. Most Firefox users install add-ons directly on the Mozilla site anyway and not in the Add-ons Manager.

Classicish Add-on Manager is a useful add-on for Firefox users who prefer to open the add-ons manager in an extra window instead of the browser tab.

Firefox users can download the add-on from the official Mozilla website.

Some add-ons on the other hand do not show a remove option at all in the addons manager. Most of the add-ons that you cannot uninstall from within the browser are called global extensions. They are installed from third party sources, for instance when you install or update security software or another application on your system. The Babylon Toolbar is an example extension as it is often attached to software installations.

The majority of extensions are installed in the extensions directory of the Firefox profile folder. I’d suggest you start there to see if the extension that you want to remove from Firefox is listed there.

You may run into two issues here. First that extensions sometimes install with cryptic names so that it may be difficulty to identify them, and second that you may not find the extension that you want to uninstall listed here.

The easiest way to identify add-ons here is to load them into archiving software like 7-zip. Double-click on the install.rdf afterwards and look for name there.

Some extensions are already unpacked in a folder. Just open the folder of the extension in that case and double-click on the install.rdf file in there to identify its name.

It is however likely that you do not see the extension in the directory.

Global extensions

Global extensions can be installed into any directory. The most likely folder is the extensions folder in the Firefox installation folder. This is usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\extensions for 64-bit Windows operating systems, and C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\extensions for 32-bit systems. Keep in mind though that you can install Firefox into any directory. Portable Firefox users need to open the extensions folder under the portable path.

Repeat the steps outlined above to identify all extensions listed here.

The third and final option is the Windows Registry. You may find extension information under the following two Registry keys:

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mozilla\Firefox\Extensions\
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Mozilla\Firefox\Extensions\

Use the shortcut Windows-r to bring up the run box. Enter regedit in there and hit enter. Navigate to the keys in the Windows Registry and check if extensions are listed there.

Information that you will find there includes the extension path.

Backup the Registry key first by selecting File > Export. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the directory of the extension. Backup that directory as well, before you delete both the directory and the Registry key that links to it. Repeat the step for all extensions that you want to delete.

Please note that you need to close Firefox before you start deleting extensions on the system this way.

If you follow the method, you should be able to delete any extension that you cannot uninstall from within the browser interface.

The Firefox add-on NOverflow takes the concept a step further by dynamically changing the tab width values. The add-on, instead of letting Firefox hide tabs in the tabbar, reduces the minimum tab width whenever necessary to keep all tabs visible on the screen. And when you start closing tabs, the width of the remaining tabs is adjusted again to use the freed room on the tabbar.

This works well for a medium amount of open tabs. Once you reach an upper limit, scrolling buttons are displayed again to scroll to the left or right. A quick test revealed that about twice the number of tabs were displayed at the same time with the extension installed. It should be noted though that this is only valid if the minimum width has not been altered previously.

The core benefit of the extension over adjusting the width of the tabs in the stylesheet is accessibility. All it takes is to install the add-on to get the tabs width adjusted automatically from that moment on. Tech savvy users may prefer to edit the stylesheet directly instead, as it will free up some ram and maybe even cpu that the add-on requires when running.

You can change the minimum width in the add-on’s options. It is set to 54 pixels which is nearly half of Firefox’s default value of 100 pixels. You can reduce the size to 36 pixels which would nearly triple the maximum number of visible tabs in the browser, or increase it to 72 pixels.

The remaining options let you hide blank favicons from tabs, the close button from the active tab and to use slimmer pinned tabs.

Firefox users who want to give it a try can download and install NOverflow from the official Mozilla Firefox add-ons repository.

Mozilla with Firefox 10 introduced the compatibility by default feature which enforces compatibility natively for the majority of add-ons.

As a consequence, the compatibility enforcing capabilities have been removed from Add-on Compatibility Reporter. The add-on is now only a reporting tool that provides Mozilla and add-on developers with compatibility information about their add-ons.

Firefox users who have installed the extension solely for the reason of enforcing add-on compatibility, can remove it from the browser as it is no longer offering that functionality.

The compatible by default feature does not enable all add-ons by default. Brian King lists the following exemptions from the rule:

• Add-ons marked to work with a Firefox version less than 4.0
• Add-ons with binary components
• Add-ons explicitly marked by the author as incompatible, i.e. opt-out of Compatible By Default
• Add-ons tested and determined to not be compatible with a given version of Firefox, and marked as incompatible by Mozilla
• Themes

Most add-ons currently installed in Firefox 10 or higher should be automatically enabled by the new compatible by default feature. Users who are still running pre-Firefox 4 add-ons on the other hand that they now are working in Firefox 10 and higher are left standing in the rain.

One option for them to make their add-ons compatibility would be to install the Nightly Tester Tools to force add-on compatibility. Another option would be to edit the Firefox add-on file directly. Check out Three Methods To Force Add-On Compatibility In Firefox for information on how to do that.

Please note that this affects Thunderbird and SeaMonkey as well.

The Firefox add-on Status-bar Scientific Calculator offers another option. It adds a single icon to the status bar of the web browser that expands to a form on click. Here it is then possible to make basic and advanced calculations without ever leaving the browser window.

Just type in the values like you would in a normal calculator, and keep in mind that you need to use brackets to change the processing order. The calculator supports all basic operations plus a lot of advanced operations that involve complex numbers. Among those are switching from decimal and hexadecimal to all other bases from 2 to 24.

Some options can be switched with a left-click on the icon and the selection in the context menu. Others are only available in the calculator’s options.

Here it is for instance possible to define constants and functions. Constants like pi, e or the Boltzmann constant are already available, with options to add more constants easily. These constants can simple be added to the calculation to make use of them.

It is the same for functions, even though it appears to be slightly more complicated to create new ones as basic programming skills are required. The add-on ships with three functions.

You last not but not least can configure operators of which three are available as well.

The add-on supports up to ten digits after the decimal point, with options to increase or decrease that number in the settings.

Firefox users who would like to give a built-in calculator a try can download and install the extension from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.

One of the issues that you may experience on today’s Internet are sites which change the visited link color via CSS so that it looks like to the normal link color on the site.

Visited is a Firefox add-on that paints all visited links in a color of your choosing. It overrides the defined link colors on all websites, so that visited links can be distinguished from unvisited ones.

The default link color has been set to gold, which should highlights visited links clearly on most pages, but not all. It is possible to change the color in the advanced Firefox preferences (and unfortunately not in an options menu via the about:addons page).

To change the link color, you need to enter about:config in the Firefox address bar to open the advanced configuration of the browser. Filter for the parameter extensions.visited.color.visited and change the value with a double-click. You can enter a color name or color code beginning with # in the value field. You can for instance change it to #800080 to turn the visited link color to purple.

The feature can be activated or deactivated with the shortcut code Alt-v for text links, or Alt-Shift-v for image links. It is unfortunately not possible to disable the painting of links on selected sites (it is for instance irritating in admin consoles and interfaces).

Firefox users can download and install the add-on at the official Mozilla Add-ons repository.

The Firefox add-on Context Search X adds additional search engines to Firefox’s right-click context menu to run searches right from there.

Once you have the extension installed in the browser, you can start firing away searches with a right-click on the highlighted phrase and the selection of the search engine that you want to search on.

A list of all available search engines currently configured in the browser are displayed for selection. A click opens the search results page of the selected search engine in a new tab in Firefox.

You can click on Manage Search engines to change the order of search engines in the context menu, remove engines from the listing or modify the extension’s behavior further.

One interesting option is the ability to configure search engines to appear in the root context menu instead of the extension’s submenu.

This is done with a click on the Context Menu button in the interface.

Select the Outside Submenu option to have the selected search engine appear in the root context menu.

If your favorite search engine is not installed in the browser, you can do so by visiting Mozilla’s Search Tools page which lists hundreds of different search engines that can be added with a click. You can alternatively check out Add any Search Box to Firefox Search if your favorite search engine is not listed on the page.

Context Search X is a fork of the popular Firefox Context Search add-on which has not been upgraded for over a year. Firefox users who like to run searches from their context menu should take the add-on for a test drive. Those who are just looking to replace the default search engine can look at Replace Firefox’s Right-Click Search Engine to find out how to do that.

While it is possible to use programs like CCleaner for that, its all or nothing approach may suite everyone’s needs. Another possibility would be the private browsing mode, but that too has disadvantages like having to switch between normal and private browsing mode whenever necessary.

The free Firefox add-on Close’n forget adds a third possibility to the browser. The extension by default removes all cookies of the active tab. This alone may be useful in some situations, but it is not removing all traces of the website from the browser.

Users should pay a visit to the extension’s options where they can improve the functionality. Here they can enable the removal of the current site and the removal of all pages viewed in a tab from the web browser’s history. It is in addition possible to remove cookies from all subdomains of the root domain as well.

When you run the command then, the add-on will not only remove cookies but also the browsing history from the browser.

Firefox users have three options to run the cleanup. They can right-click on the page and select the close and erase cookies for the current site option from the context menu, or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-w to do the same.

It is alternatively possible to add one or two add-on buttons to a Firefox toolbar. This is done by clicking on Firefox > Options > Toolbar Layout, and dragging and dropping the buttons to a browser toolbar. The first button clears the cookies and browsing history of the active tab, the second does that for all tabs open in the current window.

The tab will be closed automatically, and all traces will be removed from the cookies storage and browser history.

The developer notes that the extension sometimes cannot clear the browsing history completely. This is the reason why the feature is disabled by default. You can verify that everything has been cleared by visiting the history page of the browser.

Firefox users who are interested in the extension can download and install it from the Mozilla Firefox Add-ons repository.

If you are new to the concept, I suggest you take a look at the following guides that will get you started. Only this much: Most Firefox users use profiles to separate work related activities from private activities. This reduces the browser’s memory usage and accessibility, among other things.

• How To Create Multiple Firefox Profiles For Specific Tasks
• Run Multiple Firefox Profiles Simultaneously

Profile Switcher is another extension for Firefox that you can use for various profile related tasks. You can access the extension’s functionality with a click on the Firefox menu button. The two entries Launch another profile and Open profile manager have been added to the menu. The current profile name is displayed in the browser’s status bar as well. You can right-click the name to display the very same menu.

The add-on ships with a button that you can drag and drop to one of the Firefox toolbars instead if you prefer to work with the Profile Switcher extension this way.

The open profile manager menu lets you open Firefox’s built-in profile manager in normal mode or safe mode. You can use the profile manager to create, rename, delete or start profiles. Keep in mind though that Mozilla plans to remove this tool from Firefox to replace it with an external launcher.

The launch another profile menu allows you to launch one of the available profiles directly from within the Firefox web browser. Depending on how you have configured your profiles, you may be able to run multiple profiles at the same time or only one. If the latter is the case, you need to close Firefox before you can open the new profile.

The Profile Switcher add-on can be downloaded from Mozilla’s official Firefox add-on repository. The same add-on is also available as a version for the Thunderbird email client.

UI Enhancer improves the Firefox address bar in several ways. It first turns each web address into a breadcrumb navigation. A click on one of the crumbs opens that part of the page right in the active tab. That’s not new, and multiple Firefox add-ons like like Location Bar 2 have offered a similar feature for some time now.

What makes this special is the ability to display the last 15 pages for each subfolder. This is done by moving the mouse cursor over the folder to highlight it and clicking the right mouse button afterwards.

You can alternatively left-click when one of the breadcrumbs is only partially highlighted. The menu that is opening up displays additional options.

• Edit: Allows you to edit the highlighted part of the address.
• Add: Allows you to add something to the highlighted part of the address.
• Copy: Copies the url, but cuts everything off that begins after the selected part.
• Copy all: Copies the web address to the clipboad
• Delete: Cuts everything after the highlighted part of the address and loads the result.

You can furthermore use the scroll wheel to instantly display related urls in the address bar which you can then access with a click.

The extension supports middle mouse button clicks and Ctrl-clicking wherever possible so that pages are loaded in new tabs instead of the active tab.

The add-on comes with its own stylesheet, and options to load a custom stylesheet instead which may be interesting for users who know their CSS and prefer a different design and layout.

The Bookmarks Enhancer that the add-on ships with is disabled by default. This basically auto-hides the bookmarks toolbar and displays it only when you move the mouse over into the header area of the browser.

Firefox users who like the feature set of UI Enhancer can download the extension from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.

The most useful feature without doubt is the ability to display a history for each subfolder of a domain you are currently on. This can speed up site navigation and access of information considerable.

Lets say you open Google or Bing search, Reddit or Hacker News more than 50% of the time when you open a new tab in Firefox. Instead of having to load the search engine manually you could simply use the My Homepage extension for Firefox to have the browser load the page automatically for you.

The add-on works automatically after installation and restart of the browser. Whatever you have set your homepage to will be loaded when you open a new tab in the browser. Keep in mind that this can also be quite irritating if you have it set to open a page that you have open all the time in the browser.

This works best for pages that either provide a functionality that you use often, or pages that are updated regularly.

Please note that this will only load the first homepage configured in the Firefox options. The extension ignores the | separator to load multiple homepages in the browser.

You sometimes may not want to open the homepage in the new tab. The developer has enabled the shortcut Ctrl-Alt-M for this. When you use the shortcut to open a new tab in Firefox, a blank page will be opened.

Firefox users can download My Homepage from the Mozilla Firefox add-ons repository.

If you are looking for something bigger, you may want to look at the New Tab King extension for Firefox which displays the most visited websites, recently closed tabs and other information when a new tab is opened in Firefox.

There may be other countries or networks where Grooveshark is not accessible anymore. It feels only natural that some users try to access the site even though it is blocked in their country or organization. Some may even have paid for a premium account and do not want to be left standing in the rain now.

Grooveshark Unlocker is a Firefox add-on that uses an ingenious method of bypassing access restrictions. Grooveshark checks the user’s IP address during the initial connection and either displays the blocked service announcement page or the normal Grooveshark website. The add-on enables a web proxy for that time, and disables the proxy again after the connection has been established and the restrictions have been bypassed.

The developer notes that users of the add-on may need to refresh the page several times before the protection is bypassed. This was not necessary during tests, each connection attempt worked right of the bat.

This method ensures that users get the maximum out of their connection, as the proxy is disabled after the connection has been established. So no slow proxy that is not fast enough to buffer the music stream.

Grooveshark Unlocker ships with a single proxy that may be banned by Grooveshark or discontinued. You can open the extension’s settings to change the web proxy to another one. A click on Find a proxy in the settings opens a new page that allows you to display a list of working proxy servers.

Grooveshark users who are blocked from accessing the service directly may want to try out the Firefox add-on so that they can access the service again. Interested users can download Grooveshark Unlocker from the official Mozilla Add-ons repository.

Lets take a closer look at how this works. The extension, available for the Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome web browser picks up mp3 files automatically that you happen to stumble upon on the Internet. This is automatic, and a player is displayed at the bottom of the browser window to play those songs directly on the page. Registered users get the additional benefit that discovered music is saved so that they can open it at anytime on the Ex.FM website.

The service works well with popular music sites such as Bandcamp, Soundcloud, the Live Music Archive or music blogs hosted on Tumblr. Songs are picked up automatically even if you do not play the songs on the site. They are then sorted automatically by site > artist and album on the Exfm website.

You can click on the extension icon to bring up the current music queue that offers all the options you would expect from a music player (back, forward, pause, stop volume).

If you do not want to look for music by yourself, you can use the trending and explore options on the site to get your daily music fix.

Trending displays the top 20 tracks of the last 24 hours on Ex.FM.

The explore section on the site offers several options:

• Site of the day – A new site every day that posts publicly accessible mp3 music.
• Genres – Pick a genre and get a selection of music that other users have found.
• Featured Album – A favorite editor picked album of the day.
• Tastemakers – Music discovered by popular Ex.FM members is posted here.
• Monthly Mixtape – A hand picked mixtape that changes monthly.
• Latest loved – Realtime music discovery, again from other users of the site.

The extensions are not needed to use the service. You can visit the service to access both the trending and explore sections of the site.

If you like to discover new music, or are simply looking for a versatile web music player that picks up songs that you find on web pages automatically, then you should take a closer look at Exfm. And since it is all about direct mp3 links, you won’t encounter country restrictions like you would with other services or players. Thumbs up!

Technology today can be used to track users across domains. A study in 2009 saw Google on 92 of the top 100 sites followed by DoubleClick with 70 presences (which are now also Google owned) and Microsoft’s Atlas with 60 occurrences.

Cookies, regular or Flash, are usually used to track users. These cookies can be accessed on all domains a company script is loaded on, which in the case of Google would mean the ability to track user movement on 92 of the top 100 domains in the world. While this percentage is surely going down a bit if the sample size increases, it is still common to be tracked across many web properties.

There are options available to not be tracked online. This includes clearing all cookies after or even during a browsing session, using private browsing modes, or installing extensions like the excellent NoScript to block third party scripts from running on a site.

TrackerBlock, available for Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome offers another option. The program can make sure that you are not tracked across the web. It does so in a number of ways:

• Do Not Track Me Header – Whenever you make a request to a website, you submit a signal that tells the website that you do not want your activities tracked. Websites and companies are not obligated though. Option to delete Flash cookies.
• Opt-Out Cookies – So called opt-out cookies tell websites, services and agencies that the user does not want to be tracked. This turns off data collection and tracking off more than one hundred companies.
• Tracker Blocking – Blocks advertising agencies and companies from reading or writing cookies on your system. The extension does that for more than 550 different companies.
• HTML5 Storage – Visualizes which companies are using HTML5 to store data on your system, with options to delete the data manually.

Click on an image to see how the settings and preferences look like in the Firefox web browser.

The program combines several anti-tracking options in one interface. Especially useful is the ability to write the opt-out cookies on the system, to clear Flash and HTML5 data storage that are often used for tracking, and to block advertising companies from reading or writing cookies on the system.

TrackerBlock can best be installed at the Privacy Choice website, as it is available there for all supported browsers. It is not really clear if the extension is available for other browsers as well. It is definitely available for Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer.

Cheevos takes that concept to the Firefox web browser. The basic idea of the add-on is to award achievements to Firefox users when they use browser features. This is most of the time linked to a simple task, like opening the add-ons manager, setting a new homepage or clearing the download history.

The add-on displays new achievements in an overlay window on the screen for a few seconds before they are removed again from the browser window. It adds an icon to the Firefox navigational toolbar that is displaying the user’s overall points. A click on the icon opens an overview page where all achievements can be looked at.

Here you see all achievement names and a short description that is often cryptic and not easy to understand. This is my main point of criticism, as it is often not clear what you have to do to earn the achievement. And while some users may see this as part of the game, I personally would prefer that the support page links are automatically displayed for all achievements, and not only those that are completed by the user.

As a consequence, some users may just click wildly around in the browser until they get all achievements without learning a single thing in the process. Advanced users furthermore will know most, if not all, of the activities that earn achievements.

Firefox users who want to add some fun to their daily browsing sessions can install Cheevos for that. (thanks to Ken Saunders for the tip).

Minimap Sidebar is a Firefox extension with a rich feature set. The extension displays a map in the browser’s sidebar by default which you can use to lookup addresses effortlessly. All it takes is to drag and drop the address into the minimap to have the add-on center on that location on the map.

The map behaves exactly as you would expect it to. You can use the mouse wheel to zoom in or out, hold down the mouse to move around on the map or use controls at the top of the sidebar window to change the map type, toggle traffic information or to add location information manually to the map.

Even better, places are saved automatically so that you can switch through all of them in a heartbeat. That’s useful for Internet users who often need to lookup addresses on map services such as Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Open Street Map or other services, and those who are creating a list of places to visit.

Minimap Sidebar uses Google Maps by default, with options to switch to Open Street Map instead. Locations can also be opened in tabs or as an overlay preview right on the page the address is displayed on.

And if you do not have an address that you can copy and paste, you can alternatively type in address information manually for the exact same functionality. Once an address has been located on the map, you can open one or multiple services in tabs for more information about the address. Supported services include Google Earth, Flickr, Panoramio or loc.alize.us.

What is more, you can set a home address to speed up retrieving driving information to other locations you have added to the extension.

Export options allow you to export the location as KML, CSV, GPX or minimap files, get a location’s geohash link or latitude and longitude, or search for the place on Amazon, ebay, Maps.com or upcoming.com (events).

The extension supports geo tagging, which means that it will automatically discover if a website you visit supports the technology.

Minimap Sidebar is a useful extension for Internet users who need to lookup addresses or get directions regularly. Instead of having to open a maps website next to the current website, they can now handle everything in one browser window.

Firefox users can download and install the Minimap Sidebar extension from the official Mozilla Firefox add-ons repository.

Update: The Minimap Sidebar add-on has been removed from the official Mozilla Add-ons repository. The Quick Maps extension comes closest, even though it does not display the map information in the sidebar.