Firefly Firefox File Browser
Update: The file browser for Firefox has not been updated since 2008. It is no longer compatible with recent versions. An alternative does not seem to be available.
If you use Firefox throughout the day, you may like extensions and features that extend the browser beyond web browsing capabilities.
Firefly is an add-on for the web browser that adds a local file manager to it. The file manager itself is comprehensive and while it is not offering the same functionality as popular tools such as Total Commander, it supports all basic file operations.
The list of supported file operations includes viewing, opening, editing, deleting, moving and renaming files for example.This comes at a cost though as the installation file has a size of 1.4 Megabyte which is huge when it comes to browser extensions. It is the largest one that I came across up until now.
You can configure a start page after installation of the extension in Firefox that can list as many local folders as you want.The extension attempts to discover available hard drives automatically by default but there are options to manually edit them if something is not right. You can remove folders from the file manager for example if you don't plan to use it.
You can use the extension to browse any local folder or device by clicking on them. This works very similar to standard file browsers such as Windows Explorer or Konqueror.
A preview feature has been baked into the extension. Hover over a supported file type and a preview of the file is automatically displayed next to the mouse.
Another interesting feature is support for multimedia files of which you can play many right in the browser.
You can split windows to display several explorer windows at once. There is also sidebar space that displays the folder structure so that you can navigate between folders easily.This is a sophisticated file manager, great for everyone who needs something like this in Firefox. I see it more as a nice proof of concept of what can be done with Firefox add-ons.
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