I’m really happy with Firefox 3.5, which was born about a week ago. Get it here (free).

Speed

The first thing I noticed was speed. Since Safari 4 beta I’d been using that for its speed. But Safari’s developer tools, while much improved over 3.x, aren’t quite as good, and the extensibility isn’t in the same universe. So when Firefox 3.5 seemed about as snappy as the quick Safari 4, I was all smiles, and back to using it full-time.

Extensions

The second thing I noticed is that many most of my extensions are ready for 3.5, a thing that had plagued me on all the 3.0.x increments. I LOVE how Firefox reports on extension problems before you upgrade, and helps you get the new ones with one click after an upgrade. Outstanding. Mac-like.

Shadows

The third thing, and one I never read about anywhere else, is support for the text-shadow CSS attribute. I was shocked this morning when I looked at one of my sites, and the headers had shadows. I thought “ooops I’m in Safari”… but no, it’s the new 3.5 support for this magnificent text-shadow. I love things that allow me to make sites look great while keeping them lightweight and SEO-friendly.

I just re-downloaded an audio book I bought and listened to exactly five years and 16 days ago, otherwise known as “02/04/2004″, and now it’s syncing to my iPhone.

I’d lost The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy file sometime between then and now, so I went back in (after having discontinued, then started up again my Audible account, mind you) and went to My Library and there it was. It was the first Audible audio book I bought. And also there were the other 22 or so audio books I’d bought since February 2004, all with a friendly orange download link next to them.

Some of the books are available to be re-downloaded, for free, in a much better bitrate than they were originally offered.

That’s good stuff there.

That’s right, the Apple Mac browser Safari will be released for Microsoft Windows.

Steve Jobs made it his signature “… one more thing” announcement at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference just 4 minutes ago. More on this later.

Upon sitting down at my fav cafe, I found myself opening my browser (Firefox 2), clicking Applekey-T three times (to create three more tabs), and clicking on  the following bookmarks to load pages:

1. Google AdSense — checking my vast revenue from yesterday
2. Google News
3. Google AdWords — see how my ads fared yesterday
4. Gmail

In that order.

And it struck me

Not only am I visiting four Google properties, I’m visiting them first, before any other pages on the Web (which is rumored to have tens of thousands of pages).

It’s a sign either of Google’s incredible domination of the Web, or of my predilection for the company’s services. Or both.

Am I putting too many eggs in one basket? What do you think?

Do a Google image search for “zune” and you’ll get a “Did you mean: zone”

I can’t say I recommend all these plugins, or that I’ve installed them all. This list is merely a group of plugins that have caught my eye for their reported/reputed utility. I make no claims that they work, they they’re benign, or that they won’t wreck your server and destroy your life.

If you care about SEO, utility and elegance, you might find this list useful. I looked at the descriptions of well over 500 plugins to compile this list.

The comments above each link are mine. Continue reading »