Fire Fox is an extremely customizable internet browser. There are hundred if not thousands of different add-ons for Fire Fox that can make your life easier, or just make browsing the internet more fun. These are five of the must have add-ons for the internet blogger or freelance writer.
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The StumbleUpon add-on is basically the same as the tool bar you will download on the StumbleUpon homepage. One advantage of downloading the Fire Fox version is you will receive update screens from Fire Fox like you do on every add-on. The StumbleUpon tool bar will do two things for a blogger or freelance writer. The first is, when you sign up for an account you can start submitting your content to the StumbleUpon database which will effectively bring large streams of traffic to your site if used correctly. Another benefit is if you specialize in a certain niche you can select to “Stumble” through content in that niche to get ideas for new content.
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SeoQuake is an add-on more specifically meant for people with their own blog; however it is of some use to freelance writers as well. SeoQuake can be placed in a few ways. You can have it as a tool bar, or a bar that will open just beneath the tabs. This bar can tell you the Google Page Rank of a page, how many times Google has indexed the page, Yahoo Links, Alexa Rating, the Web Archive age of the site, the number of internal links, external links, and the density of keywords. There are a few more options you can select if you want them, but it makes the tool bar a little too big. If you click on any of the above options it will bring you to the page that is feeding it the information. So it will bring you to the Alexa site, or Google search engine showing all the indexed pages. It is very helpful for bloggers to see this information.
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QuickNote is a simple note taking pad. What makes this more effective than the wordpad installed on your computer? You can easily pull this up from your browser, and it's easier to take notes with this than a wordpad on your computer. When you would like to take a note you go to Tools > QuickNote and you will have three options depending upon your needs. You can have the QuickNote open in a new tab, open in a side bar (similar to opening favorites in a side bar), or have it open and float above the page like a normal wordpad would. It will automatically open every page you've saved on the QuickNote, so if you close it you can open it just as quickly and continue you where you left off. Great for taking notes on potential ideas, saving links, or just starting your articles.
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Split Browser is a very handy add-on for those of you doing research on products. When listing details on products such as specific numbers, or if you're writing an article with another screen open giving you information this is the tool for you. You can effectively combine this add-on with QuickNote if you're a freelance writer by opening QuickNote in a new tab. If you are a blogger simply open your blogs posting area. Then you can split your browser screen so that your typing area is on half the screen while your information is on the other side. Now you can easily write segments and then read on without having to switch screens.
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Zotero is a quick and automated way to cite your resources accurately. Before you may have used an automated site where you fill out information such as date accessed, website name, author, ect and it gave you correct citation, or you credited the author incorrectly with a simple link to the “original article”. It integrates very easily with Microsoft Word which is what most freelance writers are using anyways. Never again be emailed by an author who thinks you've incorrectly cited their articles.
All of these add-ons are best used by freelance writers and bloggers. They can help you reduce the time you spend writing every day. With the time you save by using these tools you can write more, or be done sooner. I have all of these downloaded and they are spyware free to my knowledge. I'm not responsible for any problems occurring from the result of downloading these.
