Firefox was introduced in 2004 as a free open-source replacement for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Firefox offered improved security and introduced tabbed browsing, an integrated spell checker, and a download manager. Today, Firefox is the second-most popular browser, with almost twenty percent of the browser market share. The popularity of Firefox continues to grow primarily because of its speed, ease of use, and the availability of free “add-ons” which allow users to add additional features to customize the Firefox browser.
As the amount of scholarly material available on the web increases, so to does the need to an efficient means to find, sort, organize and cite the material. Below are twenty of the best tools available on Firefox that researchers can choose from to build a customized, highly efficient research tool.
Part I: Find What You Are Looking For.
1. Use Firefox Quicksearch
Setting up a quicksearch allows you to run searches from the address bar using very simple customized search commands instead of visiting a search engine or installing a toolbar to run searches.
For example, I’ve set up a quicksearch for Google, so that all I have to do to run a Google search is go to the address bar and type in “g searchterm” and hit enter.
Example:
Typing in “g olympics” and hitting enter
results in:
Adding thumbnails next to your Google results is covered later in the story. You can skip directly to it by going to Tip #12.
Creating a QuickSearch is as easy as 1, 2, 3:
- Visit any webpage that has a search field that you commonly use. (For example, go to http://google.com)
- Right click on the search field. Choose Add a Keyword for this Search…
3. The Add Bookmark dialog will appear. Give the bookmark a name, e.g. “Google” and create a keyword e.g. “g” and click “Add.” The Keyword is going to be the command you use to run the search so keep it short and make sure it is something that is intuitive to you.
Now to run a quicksearch, all you have to do is go to your address bar and type in the keyword and search term to run a quicksearch. If you set up the Google Quicksearch described above, try typing in “g olympics” in the address and then hit enter to see your results.
2. Find in Tabs
With the advent of tabbed browsing came the need to be able to sort quickly through open pages. The Find in Tabs extensions allows users to search multiple open tabs at once. It displays all occurrences of the search terms from your open webpages in a display pane that also highlights the search results in context, making sifting through search results a breeze.
Resurrect Pages allows researchers to bring webpages back after they have shed their ethereal coils. When a webpage is not longer available, either because the content changed or the website no longer exists, Resurrect Pages searches caches and archives that mirrored the content while it was available, so that in many cases you can still retrieve the information you were looking for. Resurrect Pages searches the best caches including Google, MSN, and Yahoo Caches, CoralCDN, the Internet Archive.
4. BugMeNot
BugMeNot allows users to bypass registration at many free websites. This is a great way to skip registering for news websites merely to read archived articles.
BlueOrganizer creates “smart menus” and “smartlinks” based on the page you are visiting to offer helpful features that aid in research. For instance, it recognizes book names, movies, individuals, and songs to find more information about those items quickly and effortlessly.
6. Surf Canyon
While Google is often a researcher’s search engine of choice, there are times when you don’t find what you are looking for on Google. For those times, there is Surf Canyon. It adds top search results from Yahoo, MSN, Craigslist to your search results. The additional results remain hidden under a bull’s eye icon and can be easily displayed and hidden again by clicking on the icon. Surf Canyon can also find the most relevant results from deep in your search results and bring them to the forefront.
This add-on removes Google ads from search results, suggests topics as you type, and allows you to quickly search other engines like Yahoo, Technorati, and Ask Jeeves.
If you have a page you want to watch for changes, Update Scanner will notify you of changes made the to the page. It highlights the changes made to a page since you last visited the page and can notify you when the page changes.
9. Breadcrumbs
If you have ever found what you were looking for, only to lose it again because you forgot to bookmark or print out page, you will understand just how useful Breadcrumbs is. Breadcumbs can search through the pages you recently visited so you can find the result you were looking for without retracing your steps by running the original search over again.
10. Read It Later
Read It Later is a tool specifically built for those pages you want to get back to to finish reading, but aren’t certain you want to bookmark just yet. Read It Later offers a simple interface that makes marking a page to read later as simple as clicking a check mark at the end of your address bar. Once you’ve read the story, click on the checkmark again to remove the page from your to-read list. You can also have your to-read list delivered to you as an RSS feed so it is accessible wherever you are.
11. Highlight All
This add-on highlights every instance of a given word or string of words on a webpage. To use Highlight all, hit F8 to enable the extension, and then select any word with your mouse, all other occurances of the word on the page will also be highlighted. This is an excellent way to focus you initial read of a long document when you are going through a large number of search results.
12. GooglePreview
GooglePreview adds a thumbnail image next to each of your Google search results so that you can quickly determine if the page is worth a further read.
13. Cooliris (Formerly PicLens)
Cooliris is to image and video searches what the iPhone is to phones. Cooliris offers an amazing interface that allows you to sort very quickly through hundreds of images and supports sites including Google Image Search, Youtube, Flickr, and Picasa. It is hard to imagine an interface that beats coverflow on Macs and iPhones, but the CoolIris interface does.
Check out the demo:
The interface is so good, that in response to user requests, CoolIris has even come out with a PowerPoint plugin and instructions for users of Keynote to add CoolIris functionality to desktop presentations.
Part II: Save, Organize, Annotate, and Cite Your Search Results.
14. Iterasi
As previously mentioned, Iterasi allows you to save dynamic webpages for future reference, even after the content of the original page has changed. Since I posted my review of Iterasi, Iterasi has added support for Mac OS X, and a scheduler which automatically archives webpages on a regular basis. In a conversation I had with Alex Williams, the Director of Product Marketing for Iterasi, I mentioned the availability of short permanent URLs to access the notarized pages would be a feature I thought users would really appreciate so they can more easily use Iterasi for citations in professional publications. I am happy to report that the most recent version of Iterasi offers this new feature. This is a company that is listening to what users want and responding quickly. Keep an eye on this add-on for additional features in the future.
Scheduler Tool Unveiled:
15. Zotero
Zotero allows you to “collect, manage, cite” your research sources. What is great about Zotero is that it not only organizes saved webpages, and search results, it also allows users to add external material like files or documents to the organized structure.
Delicious Bookmarks lets you to save bookmarks and tag the pages so you easily find them later. The bookmarks are available from any computer with access to the Internet by logging on to your Delicious account, which make it an ideal took for users who research from more than one location. Delicious bookmarks also allow you to find the most popular pages for any tag and access your bookmarks from any computer.
17. Fireshot
At its most basic level of functionality, Fireshot allows users to capture images of the pages they are visiting. Unlike taking a screenshot using your operating system, Fireshot can take a picture of an entire webpage, even when portions of the page are not visible on the screen. Fireshot also features a built-in editor that allows you to crop the pictures, annotate them, and save them for future reference or to share with colleagues.
18. Diigo
Diigo allows you to highlight, annotate, and save annotated webpages for future reference. While registration is required, and it adds a toolbar to your browser, pages 2 and 3 of the registration process can be skipped and the toolbar can be hidden.
19. Clipmarks
This allows you to save portions of webpages for future reference, print only the parts of pages you want, and email portions of pages to yourself or others. It is the perfect tool for printing or saving multiple non-continuous sections of a page.
20. PrintPDF
If your computer does not already have the capability of “printing” a file to PDF format, PrintPDF adds the capability to save webpages as PDF files directly from your browser.
If you have a favorite Firefox plugin or tip for researchers, or if you agree or disagree with the suggestions, leave a comment. Thanks!
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Written by Benson Varghese. ♦ Contact Benson.♦ Have Res Ipsa Blog delivered to you.
Customize Google is my favorite.
Some Firefox research tips…
TaxProfBog points to the Res Ipsa Blog which provides a very good post cryptically entitled “Top Twenty Firefox Add-ons that Make Firefox the Researcher’s Browser of Choice.” And, if you don’t know what a FireFox Add-on is, or Firefox is,…
Savvy post, Benson. Firefox is fantastic. I love learning about new ways to use the internet. Answers, Delicious, Gmail Manager, Morning coffee, Picnik, Smart Bookmarks, and Shareholic are my favorite add-ons so far. Keep up the good work!
Scotus – Thanks for the comment and mentioning the story on your site.
Crystal – Thanks! I’ve been meaning to give Morning Coffee a try. Picnik gets a definite thumbs up from me as well. Thanks for the tip on the Smart Bookmarks Bar, I hadn’t seen that one before and just installed it!
Looks like your posts are becoming staple material on Above the Law! Congrats!
Hi Benson,
Thank you for including Cooliris among your top 20 research Firefox add-ons! We truly appreciate it. We’re delighted to hear that you are enjoying Cooliris and we hope your readers will too.
For interested readers, please check out http://cooliris.com/demo to learn more.
Thanks again,
Luna and The Cooliris Team
FYI, there’s a problem with link for the “Highlight All” add-on. Also, thanks for posting these – as an avid Firefox user (and legal researcher) it’s nice to see a couple of add-ons I haven’t tried yet.
Thanks Robert! The link should be working now.
[...] Become an Efficient Researcher: 20 Firefox Add-ons to Make You a Research Master(@ res ipsa) As a law student, I do a lot of research. I know a lot of AoM readers are also students, so this article at Res Ipsa will be a valuable resource. [...]
Printing to PDF can be added to all of Windows with the PDFCreator tool.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
It creates a Windows printer that outputs PDFs.
Mac OS X, and Linux have printing to PDF built into them (see the Gnome and KDE print dialogs for Linux, and the “PDF” pull down menu in the print dialog for OS X).
Cheers,
-Adam
[...] Ipsa Blog gives us some helpful hints for how to use Firefox when we get back to work. And Jordan Furlong’s suggestion that non-lawyers can do the [...]
[...] If you use Firefox… September 8, 2008 at 9:25 am | In Legal Research 101 | You might want to read this interesting blog post from Res Ipsa Blog entitled Become an Efficient Researcher: Top Twenty Firefox Add-ons that Make Firefox the Researcher’s Brow… [...]
[...] student will keep informed. While I was browsing some of my favorite blawg sites I happened on this article from [...]
The list is awesome! It is great to learn all that we can do with these add-ons.
[...] Res Ipsa Blog – “As the amount of scholarly material available on the web increases, so to does the need to an efficient means to find, sort, organize and cite the material. Below are twenty of the best tools available on Firefox that researchers can choose from to build a customized, highly efficient research tool.” (via) Posted in Firefox | | Top Of Page [...]
Something you didn’t mention about Diigo is the ability to create sets of personalized search engines.
There is a checkbox in toolbar options to activate this. Then you can customize your search engines (you’ll have to login) : http://www.diigo.com/customize_search
Customization is pretty easy : you only have to copy/paste “diigosearch” query url in any search engine (e.g. : http://www.mister-wong.com/search/?search_type=w&keywords=diigosearch&btn=search or http://www.spock.com/q/diigosearch)
[...] Check out the posting Click here for the blog entry “Become an Efficient Researcher Top Twenty Firefox Add-ons that … [...]
[...] a gestionar esa información, tenemos que trabajar nuestro PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) para obtener el máximo de eficiencia ya que supongo que la eficacia ya la tenemos (pensemos que sí, ok?). En definitiva tenemos que [...]
Can’t wait
OpenURLReferrer and Screengrab! belong on this list.
From vBharat.com » Top Twenty Firefox Add-ons that Make Firefox the Researcher’s Browser of Choice…
Below are twenty of the best tools available on Firefox that researchers can choose from to build a customized, highly efficient research tool….
[...] Become an Efficient Researcher: Top Twenty Firefox Add-ons that Make Firefox the Researcher’s … [...]
-zotero is simply amazing – still waiting for remote access
-any reputable researcher will steer clear of digg and head straight to delicious
-great post
I love Zotero. I am in an communication research class presently and have used it the past two semesters. It permits you to collect your resources for easy citations later. It also has a plugin for Open Office and Word (The Word one did not work for me but open office did).
For data collection and proper citation this is great. My stickler for proper APA format just reviewed some of mine and said they were great (with minor corrections)
[...] Für den Firefox gibt es viele Hilfsmittel, um eine Recherche effektiver zu gestalten und die Rechercheergebnisse zu dokumentieren. Das Res Ipsa Blog stellt sinnvolle Erweiterungen in dem Beitrag “Become an Efficient Researcher: Top Twenty Firefox Add-ons that Make Firefox the Researcher’s Browser of Choice” vor. [...]
[...] Y muy lejos de ahi lo acompañan Mozzilla y otros navegadores mas rapidos como Opera. Notable esto ya que las ventajas de Mozilla sobre otros navegadores (algunas de ellas incorporadas al ultimo IE que por cierto no he podido, ni he querido bajar). Para quienes quieran ver, en particular aquellos que trabajan en investigacion algunas de las ventajas de Mozzilla, no hay mas que ir a http://resipsablog.com/2008/08/23/become-an-efficient-researcher-top-twenty-firefox-add-ons-that-mak… [...]
[...] Read the full article here [...]
I think LibX also belongs on this list (www.LibX.org), it provides direct access to your library’s resources.
[...] by the community to make you more productive on the web. Legal blogger Benson Varghese gives his top 20 in two parts: Part I: Find what you’re looking for Part II: Save, Organize, Annotate, and [...]
I recommend Select-n-Go by Cleeki:
http://www.cleeki.com/firefox.html
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7750
Firefox’s enhanced alternative to IE8 Accelerator (Activities). Select any text on your screen, and you can preview search results immediately in the same page. Support Google (text, image, …), YouTube, Maps, Amazon, etc. and you can manage/add your own channels.
Regarding doing research, here is what I do: I defined a custom search channel to search .pdf only, another channel to search google scholar only. And I am using both of them quite often. Very neat and convenient.
Very nice list, I found quite a few that will be useful to me.
[...] link to the article is here. [...]
Thank you. Very useful.
For lawyers, try CiteGenie. I can’t imagine how I ever lived without it. Automatic Bluebook citations when copy and paste from Westlaw and Lexis. And they are accurate, including using the correct reporters for your state.
[...] [upmod] [downmod] Become an Efficient Researcher: Top Twenty Firefox Add-ons that Make Firefox the Researchers Browser… (resipsablog.com) 1 points posted 7 months, 4 weeks ago by SixSixSix tags imported firefox [...]
Wow, great list. Thanks for putting this together. This is beneficial for students and practicing attorneys.
[...] Ipsa Blog gives us some helpfulhints forhow to use Firefoxwhen we get back to work. And JordanFurlong’s suggestion thatnon-lawyerscan do the work [...]
[...] Top Twenty Firefox Add-ons that Make Firefox the Researcher’s Browser of Choice: http://resipsablog.com/2008/08/23/become-an-efficient-researcher-top-twenty-firefox-add-ons-that-mak... [...]