Howdy folks, I thought I'd let you all into a few little secrets, ten to be precise! I work withthe internet and computers a fair bit and so am always looking foreasier/cooler/prettier ways of doing mundane, repetitive tasks when stuck in front of the LCD monitor all day.

For many years I've used IE as my default browser, and was quite happy just chugging along like that, putting up with the many popups and other annoyances (those banner ads that yell "hellooooo" is a particular pet peeve of mine!) But since I've been working I've been using Mozilla's Firefox which to all intents and purposes seemed rather similar and I couldn't fathom why people on the internet used to argue over the superior browser.

That sort of changed once I was shown a particular tool that I needed for my job, it is a custom script/plugin that can provide information about websites that only works with Firefox. Once I started getting used to Firefox I did what I normally do when it comes to technology - got curious. I checked out the addons page at mozilla's site (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/) and found a bunch of cool stuff, a lot of it I haven't taken the plunge and tried since they have a crazy name that gives no clue as to what it does but I thought I'd share the top ten addons that I have used or still use on a daily basis.

First off the bat is this Smart Digg button, I love Digg.com in fact it's probobly the number one website I go to for news and random fun bits of information. Aside from reading stuff on Digg I try and give back and submit anything I've seen on my internet travels that I'll think others would like to read. This addon is pretty clever in that it adds a button that you can instantly add the story to Digg to nab the exclusive. If it's already been submitted to Digg then it will show you how many people have also Dugg the story as well as being able to Digg it yourself.

I really like this addon and a quick search on Mozilla's add-on page for Digg brings up a ton of other useful apps you could use. So check the Smart Digg Button out!

Google owns the internet, well if it doesn't already then it will do in a few years time. Whether you think this is a good or bad thing is regardless. The wonderful thing about "the big G" is that you can customise almost anytihng you like from the iGoogle homepage where you can have any information from IP info to cute themes (I thoroughly recommend the Teahouse theme, that l'il fox rules!).

The firefox add-on though lets you tweak Google in any way imaginable, I mainly use the Stream results function, this does away with the limit of results per page, instead the search results just keep on going, saves a little time but that little bit of time will soon stack up when you search on Google as much as I do! Other functions I haven't even tried include disabling click tracking, video related options...there's so much! I must get round to investigating the rest of this add-on. Anyway, here's the link to CustomizeGoogle, enjoy!

Not all the Add-ons I use for Firefox are for productivity reasons, some are just there because they brighten upmy work! Colourful tabs is one of these, I work with tabs all the time, with most instances of Firefox having about twenty open in some extreme cases.

So as a way to sort of recognize which tabs ar ehome to what Firefox will automatically colour them a pleasant tone. I have found this add-on won't play nice with some others so if you end up with a crazy looking browser window it may be worth disabling Colourful Tabs but I like injecting a bit of colour in to my work and just helps keep the mood up at 9:00 on Monday morning!

Inject a bit of colour using Colourful Tabs

OK, this is the second Google based add-on but I find it really useful. Google Notebook is a relatively unknown member of the Google Apps family, taking a backseat to GMail and Google Maps yet it's still something I use regularly.

When I'm in Internet trawling mode I may sometimes come across a really good site that I may want to reference at some point or go back to, I now use something different for these (I'll go into this later) but Google Notebook is still something I make notes in since my paper based notebooks are full of hasty scribbling and half the time I can't make out what I've written!

Google Notebook integrates well with both IE7 and Firefox so you Microsoft officianados can join the party too! It integrates with my Google account too so that's one less thing to log in to! Ge the app at google's site here.

Ooh, now this is a controversial one!All you webmasters out there (does anyone even call themselves that these days?) will know, when creating a site you need to consider the three pillars of Internet Browser mecca: IE, Firefox and Safari, them being the most popular ones available. If your site renders poorly in one browser then there's a good chance you'll lose a massive proportion of your potential audience.

This add-on is fairly unobtrusive, basically adding an extra option along side the "Open in new tab", one that says "Open in IE tab" so you can check how your site looks in IE form the comfort of your own Firefox flavoured home. Not really that important since you need IE in order for the plugin to work so maybe you could just click the big e on your desktop instead. Anyway I found it useful and again can help save time so IE Tab gets my nod of approval.

This add-on is probobly the one I use most at work, so much so that if I use another workstation and it's not got Mouse Gestures then I feel lost and confused without it. That may be a bit melodramatic but this one is amazing for saving time on context menus. Infinitely customisable you basically attach macros like "open new tab" " next tab" even "show metadata" to movements of the mouse, I have mine assigned to whatever movements I make whilst the right mouse button is held down. You can chang eit as you see fit, you can even make it show a trail of your movement to help illustrate the movement you made.

I think if I had to pick just one add-on over all the rest it'd definately be Mouse Gestures you should really check it out.

I know there's plenty of different web based email services (Live Mail, Yahoo among others) but my weapon of choice is Gmail. At home when I only need my personal email address I can use google's own little system tray notifier program. The trouble is that in work I have multiple accounts that I need to keep up with, and when they're important emails that I need to respond quickly to this add-on.

If you are like me and need to get notified of emails without opening the client/window every few minutes then check out this GMail Notifier

This works hand in hand with my many many tabs I have open and can help me save time opening them all up again. If you hover over a tab it will drop down a small box with a preview of the tabbed site in it. So you can be sure when you select the tab that you'll be getting the right one.

I have noticed some other versions of this add-on and this one is the most stable, I have however found some other add-ons that may conflict and cause trouble. So if you are like me and have tonnes of tabs open each day then Tab Scope is what you'll need!

Enough of the productivity add-ons? Well here's another strictly aesthetic one for you, I'm a fan of Apple's design (secretly most PC users are) and like the look of Safari even though it refused to run on my home PC.

But that's neither here nor there, this add-on simply rounds the corners of the address bar and search box at the top of the browser's window. A neat little touch and something I think makes the browser look less clinical and more friendly. I just realised I describes a browser as friendly and now feel decidedly foolish....anyway here's the Well Rounded add-on for all you secret mac fanboys and girls!

I have saved this one til last as it is a recent discovery by me, it actually has replaced my Google Notebook for when I find a site I want to visit again in the future. I'm always finding good sites at the end of the day in work and have to log off, I don't want to save them to bookmarks as much as I don't want to have to trawl through search engine results all over again.

InstaPaper allows you to save these sites to a list which you can visit later on. Setting up an account is easy and once you do you can drag a button to your favourites bar at the top of your browser called "read later" now whenever you find a good site which you want to check out later you just drag the site onto this button and a dialog box opens to confirm it's saved.

Now when you go back to InstaPaper and log in you'll find all the sites you added in a handy bookmark like form, neat huh? This is great especially if I find a good site I may want to check out at home after work. I thoroughly recommend this app and thanks to Sarah Lane from Revision3's PopSiren for pointing this out in their podcast. InstaPaper rocks!

Phew, that was a lot of work! Hopefully this hub will have opened your eyes to the many different Firefox extensions available. It may have even converted a few IE followers too (joke). A funny fact is I only use Firefox in work, at home on my gaming PC I'm using a Beta of IE8 at the moment, for some reason using Firefox at home felt a bit..."wrong".

Oh well, this is by no means a definitive list of the apps you should be using, they're just some cool ones I use alot and though maybe some of you folks out there would find them interesting. One thing I didn't cover is themes, but in my experience I've found Firefox's skinning system to not be the best at working well with some of the extensions I've mentioned.

I love finding out the latest buzz in Tech and so if you know of any other add-ons then by all means post a comment, also if you found any of the add-ons I mentioned useful then let me know, there are a few like CustomizeGoogle that I haven't even scratched the surface of. Thanks for stopping by!