An archive of my writings from 2007 till 2011. If you're interested in the recent stuff, visit my Tumblr at dvirreznik.com.
I’ve been using Firefox for over 4 years now, so for me using the Fox is like a second nature. I even got my spouse to use it on her laptop – she just loves the weather gadget I put there.. 🙂
Anyhow, according to a recent analysis from NetApplications, Firefox has reached 20%, an important milestone in the browser’s short history. For those not strong in math, that means 1 in every 5 people browsing the web are doing so with Firefox.
Since upgrading to Firefox 3 some 10 days ago I’ve been trying to optimize its performance, both in UI (themes and extensions) and extensibility (plugins and extensions).
The installation went very smooth, the software remembered all my preferences, but I had some issues with daily usage: my ‘back’ button didn’t display the name of the site, some plugins were not suitable for FF3 and other extensions I wasn’t using that much. Some issues were answered by @firefox_help – excellent example of using micro-blogging to reach your audience. There are other examples here (Mashable) and here (Hebrew).
Niv Calderon asked me to share my extensions, as he did a while back. For the sake of saving real-estate space I decided to start with a blank page, un-install all my extensions and install only what I use on a daily basis.
There’s also a screenshot of my Search engines, what I’m using more frequently is at the top of course – web 2.0 related, either IBM internal or public – results are better coming from those sources.
So, this is how my Extensions window in Firefox looks like:
bluetwitsidebar – an IBM extension that adds twitter to FF sidebar, and integrates with internal IBM micro-blogging tools, such as BeeHive.
Colorful Tabs – cute, adds some color to your browser
Ctrl-Tab – super extension with cool UI, F4 opens up a tab mosaic for easy access to open tabs
Delicious Bookmarks – add bookmarks and search your existing ones
Facebook toolbar – Share button is most important, as I share quite often. The rest are nice, but can live without them
Forecastfox – what should I wear tomorrow? short sleeves or short sleeves…
FoxClocks – when working with Europe and the US a lot, it’s a priceless extension
Foxear – another IBM extension, that adds Lotus Connections’ social bookmarking buttons (similar to del.icio.us, only internal)
Gmail Manager – easy way to see what’s up in my Gmail inbox, without keeping the tab open
Google Preview – adds a tiny preview to Google Search results
IBM Bluepages Plugin – another IBM internal extension, for our employee directory. Allows me to add people to my Lotus Notes 8 address book, IM list or personal group
IE Tab – for those ‘great’ websites that support standards
Minimap Addon – just installed it, haven’t use it much yet to form an opinion
PDF download – open or save a file, without freezing your tab/browser
Screen grab – copy or save full screen, visible portion or selection – brilliant
Tab Mix Plus – probably one of the best FF extensions ever. The FF3 extension is still in beta
Tommy! – another internal IBM extension, that aggregates employee directory, IM, blogs, bookmarks and communities – in one mini-view
Undo Closed Tabs Button – ever closed a tab by mistake? here’s the solution for restoring it
Web 2.0 Unified Search – not an actual extension, but more a search engine plugin, IBM internal, that looks up in every web 2.0 repository (blogs, communities, bookmarks, social networks, etc)
Who is This Person – highlight a name and search various people finder search engines
If you have any extension I’m not using, that you feel I should – leave a comment.
I know wordpress and others allow for pretty much the same flexibility, and probably, someday, I will opt for WP in my own domain.
I’ve been incorporating some metrics into my blog, part of the openness and sharing I feel any blogger must adhere to. There’s no point sugarcoating things, not in the web 2.0 era.
Eventually, things come out. There are two interesting statistics I’d like to share, and your feedback and opinion are most welcome.
Firefox vs. IE
The first graph is analyzing traffic based on the user’s browser.
Apparently, people using the fox are spending double the time on my blog (65% to 32%), even thou the gap in number of visits (FF vs. IE) is only +200 pages, in favor of FF. I’m not the first to observe this, as FF is also the fav browser over at Luis Benitez. My guess is that FF users are more technology savvy – in a recent study, over 83% of FF users are running the most updated version. Also, I guess FF users are more custom to getting their daily fix by un-traditional medium – blogs, podcast, forums, twitter and such (in contrary to traditional sources as CNN, Fox, BBC, Ynet, Calcalist, etc). Then again, there could be no reason what so ever…
Twitter vs. Facebook
The second graph analyzes the top 10 referring sites to my blog, excluding direct traffic and search engines results. There are also columns for pages/visit and avg. time on site. I’ve highlighted in purple sites leading traffic to my blog, and in green the average time people spend.
In #1, way ahead of the rest, planetlotus.org, THE place to be heard, seen and read, at the Lotus community. The #2 site referring to my blog is Google Images. A surprising result I might say, but still, shows you the importance of image tagging and ‘alt name‘.
What I found more interesting is the 4th column, Avg. time on site. Apparently, people coming over from Blogger spend the most amount of time, over 5 min! In web 2.0 terms, that’s A LOT.
At #3 we can find traffic coming from facebook, which is also interesting. I tend to post stuff to my profile, from my blog and other sources. Good to know that although I don’t get that much traffic from facebook (only #8), my facebook buddies are spending 2min on my site!
Thanks friends. Conclusion: they like what they see, so I should keep posting.
There’s also the twitter angle. From time to time I tweet about the things I read. My followers are all early adopters, and technology savvy, so they will check the link out, but will ‘fast-read’ the page and move on. I guess tinyurl is also co-responsible for the traffic – you would click on http://tinyurl.com/63b28k and think twice on http://dvirreznik.blogspot.com/2008/07/my-bff-alan-lepofsky.html.
Hence why twitter is #4 on traffic referrals, but lower on time spent.
