Firefox is well known for its plug-ins, but there aren't as many available
for Internet Explorer. Still, you needn't feel left out in the cold. In fact,
there are plenty of add-ins for IE as well.
In this article, I'll clue you in to my favorite Internet Explorer add-ins.
I'll ignore the obvious ones, such as the Google
Toolbar, Yahoo Toolbar
or Windows Live
Toolbar, because you probably already know about them. Instead, I'll concentrate
on lesser-known ones that do everything from killing annoying ads, to restoring
crashed browsing sessions, to grabbing video from sites like YouTube
and more. Better yet, everyone one of them is free.
Quero Toolbar
Tired of being besieged by ads, including exceedingly annoying Flash ads? Then
you'll want the free Quero Toolbar,
which includes a very good and customizable ad blocker. It will block just about
any ad you'll come across, including banner ads, Flash animations and many others,
including Google ads.
You can turn it on and off, of course, but better yet, you can customize it
for individual sites, allowing ads from some sites and banning them from others.
Better still, you can fine-tune it to a remarkable degree, for example, by allowing
Google ads and banner ads from a particular site, but banning Flash animations.
There's more to the Quero Toolbar as well, including a nice inline search feature
that jumps straight to text on a page as you type in a term, the ability to
search for any word on a Web page by selecting and right-clicking it, and the
ability to quickly resize windows. And plenty of included shortcut keys means
that mouse-haters need to reach for their rodent less frequently than before.
IE7Pro
For an even more comprehensive add-in, including ad blocking and much more,
get the free IE7Pro. It's
a remarkable add-in and has features that rival the best of Firefox plug-ins.
Like the Quero Toolbar, it will block Flash ads as well as other ads, although
it doesn't give you quite as many fine-grained controls over blocking or allowing
specific kinds of ads on a site-by-site basis.
The program truly shines in the way it handles tabs, and this may be its best
feature. If IE7 crashes for some reason -- and as we all know, there are plenty
of reasons why it crashes -- the program will automatically restore all the
tabs that were open at the time of the crash. You can also automatically reopen
the last tab you've closed to display the site you were visiting when you closed
it. And you can reopen tabs you closed before that as well.
This freebie has so many clever features that there's no way to list them all.
Here's a simple but particularly useful one: You can have the program automatically
scroll down a Web page at one of three speeds. It's great for when you're reading
a long Web page and don't want to have to scroll manually. Just choose the speed,
and it'll scroll for you. Similarly, you can have the program autorefresh your
current tab, at any interval you chose.
There's plenty more as well, including a forms filler and a mouse gestures
feature that lets you do things such as scroll up or down, close tabs and go
forward or back by right-clicking the mouse and making a gesture with it.
This is clearly the best of the bunch -- it's staying in my browser.
Feeds Plus
The feed reader built into IE7 is one of its niftier features.
Make it even better with Feeds
Plus, a free add-in built by members of Microsoft's RSS team. (Because Feeds
Plus isn't an official Microsoft product, though, you won't get support.)
It adds a few nice features to IE7's RSS capabilities, including being able
to read groups of feeds in a combined view, instead of one feed at a time. In
addition, you can tell IE7 to notify you when there's new content in a feed
-- the Feeds Plus tray icon will glimmer.
Inline Search
Hate the way that Internet Explorer searches on a Web page, and wish it were
more like Firefox?
Then you'll love this Inline
Search, which in essence duplicates Firefox's search capabilities.
When you press Ctrl-F to search on a Web page (called inline search), you don't
get the normal Internet Explorer floating search box.
Instead, as you can see in the nearby figure, a search box appears at the bottom
of the page and you jump to search matches as you type.
IE7 Open Last Closed Tab
How often have you closed down a tab accidentally and wished that you could
re-open it to the Web site you were just visiting? This little
free add-in does it. After you've closed a tab, and wished you hadn't, press
Alt-X, and the tab will re-open to the Web site you were visiting.
Even better, you can open not just the previous tab you closed, but ones you
closed before that one as well. Press Alt-Q, and you'll see a list of all the
tabs you've recently closed, as you can see in the nearby figure. Double-click
any to reopen it. You can control how many tabs the program remembers in this
way, from as few as five to as many as 200.
This add-in duplicates one of the features of IE7Pro, but it's ideal if you
just want the tab-handling feature and not the other functionality of IE7Pro.
GooglePreviewIE
Google may help you narrow down your search for information, but wouldn't it
be nice if you could get a better sense of whether each site really matches
what you're looking for? GooglePreviewIE
add-in helps. It shows you a thumbnail preview of each of your search results,
so that you'll have a better sense of what you'll visit if you click. It works
for Amazon and Yahoo as well. You'll only see thumbnail previews if you use
the search box on the GooglePreviewIE tool bar itself. Searching from Google,
Amazon or Yahoo -- or from Internet Explorer's own search box -- won't show
previews.
ieSpell
How many times have you been embarrassed by a spelling error you've made on
the Web -- for example, when creating and sending e-mail from Web-based e-mail
sites such as Gmail -- or on your blog?
Probably more than you'd like, or more than you even know. Here's a simple
solution -- get ieSpell.
It's a simple-to-use spell checker that integrates directly into Internet Explorer.
It works just like the spell checker in a word processing program and lets
you add your own words to the dictionary. Also, ieSpell works anywhere you type
in text, including forms, blogs, Web-based e-mail and more.
In addition to checking your spelling, it also will look up definitions in
Merriam-Webster online or link you to Wikipedia. You can even integrate the
spell checker with your Microsoft Office spell checker so that they share the
same custom dictionary.
Leech Video
Frustrated that you can't download and save videos from video-sharing sites
such as YouTube, or from other sites such as CNN? Then get this simple add-in.
Leech Video installs as a button
on your tool bar. Play a video, click the button, and a pop-up appears (shown
nearby). Right-click the link toward the bottom of the pop-up, choose Save Video
and you'll be able to download and save the video. Note that you'll have to
tell Internet Explorer to allow pop-ups or Leech Video won't work.
StumbleUpon
This add-on combines two of the Internet's most popular activities -- finding
new Web sites and connecting and sharing with others. Install the tool bar and
tell it what topics you're interested in, and when you click on the Stumble
button, you'll be sent to a Web site that matches your interests. Every time
you click the button, you'll be sent to another site related to your interests.
For each site you visit, you can click a button saying whether you like or dislike
it, and StumbleUpon
learns from that and fine-tunes the sites to which it sends you. In addition,
as you surf the Web on your own, click a button saying whether you like or dislike
the site you're visiting on your own, and StumbleUpon learns from that as well.
You can also recommend sites you visit to others, connect with those who have
similar interests to you and visit Web sites others have recommended. All in
all, this is one of those add-ins that you'll either hate or love. If you like
social networking sites and discovering new sites in a leisurely fashion, you'll
enjoy it. If not, you won't see its point.
del.icio.us
You've probably heard of the del.icio.us
site -- though you may not have a clue what it's about. Like StumbleUpon, it's
a hybrid that combines Web surfing with social networking. At its most basic
level, it lets you bookmark sites and apply tags to them, so that they're later
easier to find by searching or browsing through keywords. The bookmarks and
keywords are stored online, rather than in Internet Explorer, so you can access
them from any computer.
You can also share bookmarks with friends, family and co-workers and see bookmarks
they share as well. And you can also see what sites have been bookmarked most
frequently by other visitors to the site, as a way to find new and interesting
sites. In addition, you can browse through sites that have been bookmarked based
on tags -- for example, see the most popular sites tagged with the words Internet,
Java or politics.
McAfee SiteAdvisor
If you're looking for an all-in-one security add-in for Internet Explorer, this
is the one to get. It's particularly useful if you want to make sure you
don't visit potentially dangerous Web sites or sites that may host spyware.
Whenever you visit a site, the SiteAdvisor button turns green (for safe), red
(for dangerous) or yellow (possibly dangerous). Click the button for details
about the site's rating. In addition, when you do a search on a site such as
Google, a red, green or yellow button appears next to each individual result.
The add-in does more as well, including a warning about potential phishing sites.
