The update, as we reported yesterday, brings new features to the browser, but nothing worth celebrating over.

The update features extension improvements with most extensions that work on Firefox 4 working on Firefox 10. It includes support for full-screen Web apps and anti-aliasing for WebGL applications.

Firefox 10 also debuts the new “Extended Support Release” for businesses. This allows the browser to only download necessary security updates so businesses no longer have to deal with a new browser update every six weeks. The ESR version will change every seven releases, so November will be the next update for those users.

For those unaware, Firefox changing versions so rapidly is due to Chrome being on the same release schedule. While Internet Explorer is still the most used browser on the Web, Chrome and Firefox are battling neck-and-neck for the number two spot. The sped up release schedule is helping Firefox remain competitive.

Firefox 10 will be released as a silent update to current users today. If you haven’t used Firefox yet, now is a good time to try it out. It’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux today.

PC Mag is reporting that the update will apply to the desktop formats as well as the mobile edition for Android. For those “people,” who never upgraded to Firefox 4, version 3.6 will be updated to version 3.6.9 which only adds security and stability fixes.

During a meeting today, Firefox announced a new hire for Mozilla’s marketing team. Pete Scanlon, who previously worked for Google’s campaigns for Chrome, is now working for Mozilla.

As with the past few full version updates to Firefox, there’s not much going on for consumers. The new capabilities are mostly for developers.

A big improvement from previous versions is how Firefox 10 handles extensions. Instead of rejecting extensions not specifically made for Firefox 10, it will assume extensions are compatible unless otherwise noted. Most extensions compatible with Firefox 4 will work fine on Firefox 10.

Interestingly, Mozilla reported that 75 percent of all extensions in use were not acquired from their own addon site. They have updated the browser to support those extensions as well.

The update will also allow users to hotfix update extensions themselves to address minor issues.

The Android version of Firefox 10 will get multitouch gesture support. Firefox Sync will also be updated to allow users to sync their phone or table with Firefox without having to be at their desktop computer.

The changes for developers are more robust featuring enhancements to code editors and anti-aliasing for WebGL content. CSS3D Transforms will bring 3D animation to 2D objects. They will also add in support for full-screen Web applications.

Firefox 10 will also be the first Extended Support Release version. The program was made for enterprise IT professionals who were concerned that the more-frequent Firefox updates were unsupportable in a business environment.

Firefox 12, which is a few more weeks out, will finally add a tab page that users of Chrome and Opera enjoy now.

The Fire Gestures add-on allows you to perform different Firefox operations with a simple gesture of the mouse. For example, you can open a new tab by holding a right click and moving left and right from anywhere in the window.

You can perform a lot of functions with different gestures, which are completely customizable via the add-on’s options. You cans set up which gestures you want to perform each operation.

The add-on is similar to other mouse gestures add-ons, but this one is compatible with Firefox 3.5.

2. Add to Search Bar

The Add to Search Bar add-on is incredibly useful if you do a lot of searching in your day-to-day tasks. Instead of having only the few default search engines to choose from, you can right click on any search box on the web and add that to the list of search engines in your search bar.

3. Drag & DropZones

The Drag & DropZones add-on makes the previous add-on even more useful. With this, you can highlight any text on a page and simply drag it to bring up a series of windows – one for each search engine from your search bar. This is also fully customizable. It can be more convenient than going up to the search bar, finding the correct search engine from the pull-down menu, and then searching.

4. Workaround Bug 489729

Ever since I downloaded version 3.5 of FireFox, I have encountered an extremely annoying issue where something I was doing was somehow taking the tab I was in and sending it to a different window. The problem was, I could not figure out what I was doing to cause this.

Eventually, I was directed to this Workaround Bug add-on, which took care of the problem. It turned out to be that clicking a tab once and then moving your mouse in a downward motion caused a new window to open – something I apparently, inadvertently do a lot.

This add-on allows you to disable this function.

5. IE Tab

The IE tab function allows you to convert the page you’re on to Internet Explorer view. This can be helpful for checking pages to make sure they look ok in both browsers.

Also, when you happen to come across a page with some issues, you can switch over to IE with the click of a button, and see if it works better there.

6. Shareaholic

The Shareaholic button is convenient for those who like to share a lot of content. Basically, you can send any page to any social network of your choosing by right clicking and choosing the one you want to use from the menu. There is also a button that is added to the top of your browser. It is customizable so you can choose your preferred networks.

7. Smart Bookmarks Bar

The Smart Bookmarks Bar is one of my favorites. It eliminates the text from the bookmarks in your bookmarks bar, and leaves only the favicons. This means it frees up a whole lot of space, and you can fit a lot more bookmarks on that bar.

This way, all of your most-frequented sites can always be no more than a single click away. Just make sure you know your favicons.

8. TooManyTabs

Finally, the TooManyTabs add-on allows you to create multiple rows of tabs. If you frequently have a lot of tabs open, and would prefer to be able to see what they all are, this add-on will be of particular use to you. You can always send specific tabs to different rows, which can also be useful.

Wrapping Up

There are many add-ons available, and I’m sure I have barely scratched the surface of ones that can contribute to your productivity. What are your favorite add-ons? Share them here.

"As Firefox hit 1B downloads last week, the VideoSurf extension brings sophisticated video search technology to what has become one of the most ubiquitous browsers available," a spokesperson for VideoSurf tells WebProNews.

Although Twitter has been cracking down on the posting of malicious URLs, they probably can’t catch them all, and this could be good for that reason alone. The following video shows how it works. 

The add-on does more than just display videos on Twitter though. It also adds to the user’s experience in Google search results. Video results will display visual summaries and related videos will appear on the page. VideoSurf pulls videos from a variety of video sources.

With all of the add-on’s video displays, you can hover over the videos and they will begin to play, allowing for a similar preview experience to what Bing offers in its video search (you know the one that got people talking about watching porn at work when Bing first launched).

With the add-on installed, you also get some extra stuff when you visit YouTube, including results from other video sources beyond YouTube. You also get the visual summaries that YouTube doesn’t offer on its own.

This feature allows you to open different pages when you open a new tab, so you don’t just get the standard blank white page. Now you can bring up one of your favorite pages or one that you recently viewed. You can choose from up to 9 different thumbnails you have stored as well as recent bookmarks and recently closed tabs:

"You can edit the thumbnails, and all this data remains locally on your browser, which means none of the information about your most viewed sites or recently closed pages will be sent back to Google," explains Software Engineer Sergey Ryazanov of the Toolbar Team. "If for whatever reason you don’t like this updated new tab page, you can always change it back to a blank page or to the website of your choice through either your Toolbar or Firefox settings."

To edit your thumbnails, simply:

1. Open a new tab to view the new tab page.

2. Click the Edit thumbnails link near the bottom of the page.

3. Click the X icon for each thumbnail you wish to remove.

4. Click the Done button.

The second new feature of the latest toolbar release is the ability for Hebrew and Arabic-speaking users to access Toolbar 5, which includes right-to-left text support. Google also notes that some widely reported bugs have been fixed, though they don’t go into specific detail on that.

I’m sure you’re familiar with search suggestions. All the major search engines have them. You start typing and it gives you a list of possible queries.

"The list of suggestions refreshes as you continue typing or when you change the query," says a post on the Live Search Blog. "You can click the suggestion that best matches what you were searching for to speed you to your results."

The add-on, based on the Open Search standard, can be downloaded here. It uses the JSON interface supported by Firefox to get its autosuggestions. It is available in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland,  Australia, New Zealand, India, the Philippines, and South Africa.

- Colorzilla
– MeasureIt
– IE View
– WebDeveloper Toolbar

"Do you regularly work with your webpages and AdSense implementation, tinkering with HTML or PHP and creating images and code on the fly?" asks Laura Prado of the Inside AdSense Team. "If you do, Firefox add-ons can help streamline the process of creating webpages."

THE ADD-ONS

Colorzilla

The Colorzilla add-on allows you to get a color reading from any point within your browser. You can then paste this color into another program.

MeasureIt

The MeasureIt add-on allows you to draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage. It will allow you to define how much space you have left for your AdSense ads.

IE View

The IE view add-on is great for cross-browser compatibility testing. It lets you load pages in IE with a single right-click, or mark certain sites to always load in IE.

Web Developer Toolbar

Finally, the Web Developer Toolbar add-on adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools such as JavaScript display, form and CSS elements, screen resizing, HTML validation, etc.

What About Chrome?

Prado says that hopefully Google will soon have a similar set of add-ons for the company’s own Chrome browser, but until then, these Firefox ones should do nicely. Although it is interesting to see Google promoting the use of a competing browser.

Nick Nguyen, senior product manager of del.icio.us announced on the del.icio.us blog the release of the "Delicious Bookmarks" add-on that brings with it features from the Firefox add-on, plus some new stuff.

The add-on was released in beta last month, but is now apparently finalized.

As noted in the initial announcement, features include:

- Near instantaneous searching with very large accounts (over 10K bookmarks)

– Full del.icio.us sidebar and toolbar implementation with bookmark sync and typedown search

– Toolbar indicators for new network activity and links for you

It’s compatible with Internet Explorer 6,7, and 8, on Vista as well as XP. It is not compatible however, with all users.

The announcement was met with a few complaints in the comments section of the blog.

One complaint is that it is not functional with the IE sidebar like the Firefox version.

The screenshot above does not do justice to the visual experience. PicLens is hands down the best I have ever seen photos look online.

PicLens is an add on for Firefox users. You can go get it here. When you add PicLens to your Firefox experience, photos on many internet sites (including Flickr and Zooomr) have a little play type triangular icon over them. When you click on this icon it transforms your viewing experience and takes photos to a brand new level. Only photos are loaded on the screen and you can move your mouse to scroll through the photos or enlarge or shrink photos in your viewing experience.

With PicLens photos float through your browser like beauty flowing from a waterfall. The motion effects are outstanding. Best of all though, PicLens allows you to see photos in the true splendor that they are best seen in. Large. One of the problems with viewing many photos large on the internet is that you have to click and wait for a new page to load. This gets boring and tiresome. Not with PicLens though. Simply move your mouse scroll button up or down and photos get larger and smaller.

As amazing as PicLens is for browsing photos on the web I do wish that they improve one thing.

Right now interacting with photos on PicLens is very difficult. While you can click through to any photo to fave/comment/bookmark/etc., when you do this PicLens ends abruptly. After you interact with the photo there is no easy way to get back to the PicLens page where you were browsing before you clicked out of your PicLens experience.

What would most easily fix this would be if PicLens allowed you to ctl-click (on a PC) or cmd-click (on a Mac) and have that photo’s page load in Firefox in the background. This way you could browse someone’s entire stream, favorites, etc. in PicLens, all the while cmd-clicking (in my case) as you go to go back and interact with the photos that you liked best once you were done.

Alternatively, TranceMist suggests that people simply could be allowed to fave/comment on a photo from within PicLens.

Looking at photos on PicLens is like seeing them in a fine art gallery or museum. Photos take on a whole new beauty. But more interactive features are still needed.

More on PicLens from Read/Write Web and Webware.

Comments

Such customization requires ceding a little of the search experience to Google; people have to be logged in to Google to benefit from the Search Add-ons. Google Operating System noted how a subscribed link will be triggered when queries match a pattern for the add-on.

To see these specialized results, people subscribe to the link provided on the Search Add-on creator’s Google Co-op profile page. Get enough people to subscribe, and the add-on could be added to Google’s directory of subscribed links, where more people should be able to find it.

On the security side, Google’s patent application for the Subscribed Links/Search Add-ons described how they will counter potential issues like destructive output text, or induced overflows of the system.

Only a few Search Add-ons appear in Google’s Add-on Directory, unsurprising due to the relatively unknown nature of the service before today. We don’t see it as a worthy competitor yet to the Smart Answers used at Ask.com, as Google has few add-ons available and requires one to be logged in to use them.