Thing 25: Power Up Your Browsing

What a fun and useful activity!  You are absolutely right in assuming that I blindly use my browser 365 days of the year and usually don't think twice about it in terms of functionality or features.  It was a treat to actually make time to tidy up my menu bar to make it much more relevant for my needs and to take an opportunity to explore the Mozilla FireFox menu!

To respond to part one of the assignment - I explored all the settings and made some really useful changes.  I moved things I rarely use like Clearly to the Menu instead of the ToolBar, and deleted "Start a Conversation" all together from my browser because I frankly didn't see the need for it.  Conversely, I moved the "Print" icon from Menu to the ToolBar because I use that all the time.

Next, I explored every tab under "Options" and made a few helpful modifications.  First, under "General", I created a new "Downloads" folder in my Documents because I had a hard time finding things I downloaded when using FireFox.  Now, I'll know just where to look!  Finally, under "Search", I streamlined the search engines used during my searching.  Who knew I had control over that?!

When it came time to explore extensions, started by watching the video introduction.  Of course, after that, I could not resist choosing a theme.  I did have a theme back in the days when I used Explorer, but I never made the time to do so when I switched to FireFox.  Now I have a lovely new theme called, "Floral Birds" by daaanibby to make my web searching that much more enjoyable.  I considered trying one of the "Complete Themes", but I think I'm happy with just the top margin change for now.

Next, I browsed all the available add-ons and was surprised to see an EPub reader listed.  I'm wondering if that'll work with OverDrive for ebooks cutting out the annoying Adobe Digital Editions step?  That I plan to explore further.

And how cool is WOT (Web Of Trust)?!  This I installed because I was dying to see if it really and truly did accurately evaluate web sites' authority (validity).  Imagine how great that would be on our school computers when I'm teaching web site evaluation?!  But alas - I thought I installed it - I know I clicked install - but I am not seeing the traffic light warnings in my web searches, so I don't know what I didn't do to complete the process.  I looked in my ToolBar and under Menu, but I just don't see it anywhere.

Finally, I had to try Price Blink which is supposed to price compare, find coupons, and link to reviews when you're shopping - and that one does work!!  How cool is that?!  I just shopped for the Lego Friends Lighthouse set and used all three features.  Yippee!!

I truly enjoyed this assignment, and I certainly plan to continue exploring and customizing within FireFox :-)  Thank you, Polly!