Even if you have not heard of the new browser wars, if you are a business user, you cannot afford to miss out on the veritable Swiss Army knife that is Firefox. Delve into the tool box of free add-ons and you will find may gems that can boost your productivity to the next level. Check out these juicy finds that I use every day.
Calculator
I use Vista at work and home. Perhaps you use XP. You may have distant memories of 98, 95 or even Windows 3.1. But, whatever version of this operating system you have before your eyes most of the day as you sit at your desk, you will probably have noticed that there is one familiar part that never seems to get upgraded. Yes, I am talking about our old friend, the Windows calculator. About the only thing that seems to have changed over the years has been that its corners have become more rounded. That's about it. When it comes to functionality, it's a fossil.
Now, there were a number of things that I always found frustrating about this little fella. First of all, it never wanted to stay on top. Say you were in your browser and wanted to calculate something, and you would find yourself flicking back and forth from browser to calculator.
Let's face it, another quibble is the functionality. I don't know if there is a particular Windows calculator team at work in the bowels Microsoft HQ in Redmond, but I am going to make a wild guess and suppose developing this little gadget is not exactly prioritized. Perhaps being sent to the calculator development team is the Microsoft equivalent of exile in Siberia. Yes, it can add and subtract, multiply and divide, but not do a whole lot else. Then, for me the final straw is that, despite being part of expensive and powerful hardware, its memory functions are primitive.
So, what's the answer? Well, boot up Firefox and head on over to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1194, where you will find the rather unexcitingly-named Calculator add-on. As with any add-on, simply click the "Add to Firefox" button, then follow the instructions and sit back while the browser reboots.
Once Firefox is up and running again, pop up the calculator by clicking Alt+C and you will immediately notice a couple of things: First of all, you can see right away that it can do a lot more than the plain-vanilla Windows program. Whether you are looking for mathematical functions, like cos and sin, or whether you need unit conversions, the abundance of features is clear.
Another leap forward is the history window. I find it useful for a couple of reasons when I am doing calculations. First off, there is obvioulsy no need to repeat a calculation where you can go back and see it right there. Quite a time saver. And not just time - it can also save you from mistakes: It is so easy to check that you have typed the right numbers in that there is no excuse for getting skewed figures again.
FoxClocks
Now, my company exports cars all round the world. So although I am in Japan, none of my customers are. And yet, with communication a vital part of international business, I need to know when I can get hold of my clients and when they are likely to want to get hold of me. This is where FoxClocks comes in.
Once again, first install it here from this page https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1117/. Now, when Firefox restarts, you can set up clocks for countries or regions where you have connections by clicking on FoxClocks in the Tools menu.
It's easy to add clocks or remove them. You can choose where on the browser window Firefox will show them, and FoxClocks will automatically keep abreast of daylight savings time changes for these locations.
This is all great, but for me the most useful function is that if you right click on a location, select "Location Properties" and then choose the "Display" tab, you will see that you can set it to change the display color of the time during certain times of the day. Set this for business hours of the countries or regions you are dealing with, and voila one glance will tell you whether your colleagues or clients there are available by the color alone.
TableTools
As a business user, data is your friend. You hunt out figures and Google facts. All very well when they come in easily-digested chunks, but what if the are buried in large tables? The kind of research I am doing often involves digging up Japanese car auction data for my car-dealer customers around the world. Being able to drill down a large table quickly is a real time saver. This is where the add-on called TableTools (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2637) comes in.
Basically, table tools adds the kind of functionality that you wish the web designer had put in in the first place: First of all, you can reorder the table. Perhaps it would be more useful laid out alphabetically, or maybe by time, or perhaps in numerical order. Simply right click, and TableTools can rearrange and display the table in any of these ways and more for you.
Another useful feature is that it can add search to each column of a table. Just type in what you are looking for, and it will top and tail the table so that only the items which match the search are displayed, and by choosing "Copy filtered as..." options under "Other table operations" you can copy just that section of the table for pasting elsewhere, such as into Excel.
The trick I use all the time is the select feature (Other table operations > Show / hide select filters), which adds drop down menus at the top of each table column. The beauty of it is that you can drill down the data by making multiple selections. For example, say your company has a page with all staff contact information arranged alphabetically by name and then by country and region - but you want to find all the staff that are in California.
Well, first you would simply get TableTools to show the select filters. Then, you would select "USA" in the country selection drop down menu, and then "California" from the region drop down. TableTools hides all the other data , so only the data you want from the table is left, and you can copy it using the "Copy filtered as..." option as above. Select, snip, cut and paste and there you are!
About the Author
Stephen Munday lives in Japan where he works for a company called Provide Cars which buys vehicles from Japanese car auctions for used car dealers around the world.
This article is (c) Stephen Munday 2008. Permission is given to reproduce this article in whole with the URLs correctly hyperlinked.
This author of this Article has choosen to make this article available with free reprint rights. Click here to copy this article.
Disclaimer: All information on this site is provided for informational purposes only! By no means is any
information presented herein intended to substitute for the advice provided to you by any health care or other professional
or organization.
