Personas for Firefox

This post in a nutshell: Personas is a Firefox's extension that makes skinning quicker and more convenient without having to restart Firefox

Personas for Firefox is a extension that adds lightweight theming to your browser.



Personas is a prototype that builds upon the ideas that:

• themes today are too hard to find, install and use


• graphic designers should be able to style the browser without having to code


• browsers can be more than just desktop software, they can include online components


• people just want their computer to be a little more fun and personal

This version improves upon a prototype that was discussed and tested earlier this year.

We’ve just started talking about the possible benefits of taking advantage of an online component to deliver a better browser experience. There is certainly more to explore in this regard; Personas is but a simple example.

In this version, the Persona selector is dynamically loaded and populated from a JSON feed and all designs are loaded via URLs to remote resources. All changes to the browser chrome are applied instantly, with no need to restart.

We’ll shortly be releasing an API that will allow developers and designers to submit Personas that are based on Web content, including support for anything that can load in a content window such as HTML, CSS, PNG, JPG, Javascript, SVG and Canvas.

Features

• You can select a Persona from the dynamic menus and see results instantly without having to discover, select, download or install a separate bit of software or code.


• Personas can be added, removed or updated by their designers at any time, without requiring a software update.

Get Personas for Firefox

• Install Now for Firefox 2.0.0.* - 3.0b2pre, Windows/Mac/Linux
  
  Compatible with the default themes that ship with Firefox

Courtesy of Mozilla Labs

Fifteen Firefox Quick Searches

If you're a Firefox user who eschews the mouse, then keyword Quick searches are for you. Give it a try: in Firefox, key up to the location bar (Windows: Alt-D, Mac: Cmd-L), type dict eschew and hit Enter. You'll be automagically transported to the Dictionary.com definition of "eschew" (to avoid, shun). That's a Quick search in action.

Firefox comes with the dict search pre-installed, along with the predictable google keyword search. But you can set up any number of Quick searches with keywords that map to useful search engines. Today's feature offers 15 useful Quick Searches which you can execute in Firefox without ever taking your fingers from the keyboard.

Note: the Firefox search box can also contain any number of engines. However, it's not as easy to get to this box and switch engines using only the keyboard as it is using Quick searches.

To set up a Quick search, go to any search engine page with an input box using Firefox, like say, the Flickr photo search page. To set up a Quick search for Flickr tags, right-click inside the tag search input box and choose "Add a Keyword for this Search..." like so:

Then, enter a title for the search and a keyword you'll use to execute it, like this:

Once you press the "Add" button, your Quick search is set up. Now, from the Firefox address bar, type flickrtag puppy to search Flickr tags for - you guessed it - puppies.

Now, you shouldn't have to go through all the work of setting up Quick searches manually. I've gone ahead and made my Quick search bookmarks available for download, which includes 15 keywords I use on a daily basis.

Here's how to get it installed:

1. Right-click on this Quick search bookmarks file and choose "Save Link As..." Place the file somewhere on your computer.


2. In Firefox, from the Bookmarks menu, choose "Manage Bookmarks."


3. From the Bookmarks Manager File menu, choose Import. Choose "Import Bookmarks from File." Browse to and open the file you just saved.

Now you've got a "Quick Searches" folder in your Bookmarks, which includes all sorts of keyword searches. For instance, lh google searches this blog for Google references; wikiped Richard Stallman transports you to the Stallman page on Wikipedia; thes easy looks up words with similar meanings to "easy" in a thesaurus.

See a full list of all the Quick searches included in this file:

Quick Searches

1. Acronym Finder Quick Search
   
   Type "acronym <acronym>" to look up what an acronym stands for in Acronym Finder. For example, "acronym WTF."


2. Amazon Quick Search
   
   Type "amazon <product name>" to look up an item on Amazon.


3. Dictionary.com Quicksearch
   
   Type "dict <word>" in the addressbar to perform a dictionary look-up.


4. Ebay Quick Search
   
   Type "ebay <item>" to find something up for auction at Ebay.


5. Flickr Quick Search
   
   Type "flickr <search term>" to search all the tags, titles and descriptions of images at photo-sharing site Flickr.


6. Froogle Quick Search
   
   Type "froogle <product name>" to look up a product on shopping search engine Froogle.


7. Google Maps Quick Search
   
   Type "map <address>" to get a Google map of a street address or location.


8. Google Image Quick Search
   
   Type "image <search term>" to find images that match using Google Image Search.


9. Technorati Quick Search
   
   Type "technorati <search term>" to see what weblogs are posting about a topic.


10. Thesaurus Quick Search
    
    Type "thes <word>" to find words with similar meanings in a thesaurus.


11. Urban Dictionary Quick Search
    
    Type "slang <expression>" to look up a slang expression in Urban Dictionary.


12. Wikipedia Quick Search
    
    Type "wikiped <person|place|thing>" to look it up in collaboratively-edited encyclopedia Wikipedia.


13. Yahoo! Creative Commons Quick Search
    
    Type "cc <word>" to find Creative Commons-licensed items available for reuse with Yahoo!'s CC search.


14. Yahoo! Local Quick Search
    
    Type "local <business>" to find a business listing with Yahoo! Local.
    
    **NOTE: this bookmark must be edited to work in your area. Replace 92037 in the URL with your zip code.

Customize your Quick searches using the Bookmarks manager (Bookmarks menu, Manage bookmarks.) Browse to the "Quick Searches" subfolder and choose Properties of any bookmark. Here you can change a keyword shortcut (say you want a Wikipedia search to map to "wiki" instead of "wikiped") or edit a URL. (The Yahoo! Local Search URL should be edited to include your zip code.)

Got any other search engines that would make a good Quick search? Let me know in the comments.

Happy searching!