One thing I very much hate about Firefox is the download window. Whenever I download anything an annoying window pops up. I would be ok with it if it would materialize in the background, but instead, after each link click to download it springs up in my face.

Of course I don’t really hate Firefox for this, since there had been an addon around for ages to help with this problem. Download statusbar puts all your downloads in a bar at the bottom of the browser, saving you from that nagging download screen.

All finished items can be cleared with a mouse click, but if you don’t clear them the only problem it causes is a 15 pixel bar at the bottom of the screen. It increases my productivity a bit because it removes the pop up, and also because now I don’t have to click close every time I download something. This is one of my must-have addons, after each OS reinstall it’s one of the first ones I download.

I just started using Pidgin as my client and decided to get in touch with all my readers who want to talk to me, so I have also been advertising my IM handles openly. I didn’t know this kind of spam existed, as Mark from Make Use Of says, this means dozens of spam messages eventually.

I immediately felt at ease with Pidgin, since he also showed a great way to stop this spam, using a plugin called Bot Sentry. It forces people not on your contact list to answer a question you specify before they can send you a message.

This is such a simple, but very effective way to stop these messages. A simple question like “Write down every second letter from these characters: aIsmmalwneaslogmde” will keep away bots for a while.

As part of my day job, I needed to get people to correct a lot of posts on Wordpress blogs. I wanted to create a table which would help the person doing the majority of the work, so all he need do is click on the links. For this, I had to copy the links of all the posts, on multiple blogs (I’m talking about hundreds here) and I found a tool to make this all relatively quickly possible.

A Firefox Addon, the aptly named Copy Links came to my rescue. This little addon embeds itself into the right-click menu and enables you to either copy all links on a page, or copy just the selected links. They are all neatly copied in separate lines, so copying them into a text or Excel file is simple.

One of the features of the Wordpress post management interface is that it gives you the posts in a table form. If you click on box around the first “View” link, pres control and while keeping things clicked you drag down, you should be able to select all links vertically. Then I just needed to right-click and select “copy selected links” and voila!

While I used this for a very specific reason, it could do a lot of good in other places as well. If you want to see if your site has been tampered with, you can keep a record of all your links. Then just copy all the links on the site and see if there are any discrepancies. A great tool for a simple job.

If you use Google Docs a lot, I found an extension for you that not only helps you in organization, but also lets you upload and view any document in the blink of an eye. Apart from being beautifully done, you can work with added productivity, since you don’t have to have the Google Docs tab open, or visit the page at all. Just open the sidebar and click on any item you need.

The filtering capabilities are great, you can view files by type, arranging them by time, date and author, and you can of course search your docs. The search also looks inside the content, so you should be able to find anything in seconds.

Another great feature is that the app allows for drag and drop uploading, making the organization of files a breeze, you can back up whole folders this way if you want to.

Overall I love both the look and feel and the usability of this Firefox addon. If you use Google Docs take it for a spin, I’m sure you’ll love it!

Download Google Docs Bar from its website found via Lifehacker