Talkings of a Tyrant

After my review of what the most essential Firefox extensions were, I found I rather enjoyed reviewing Firefox extensions. Seems… interesting.

Just a note: I have Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 1 (the current end-user version is 1.0.7) so there are several extensions that I won’t review because of incompatibility. Lazy extension developers! Get your extensions updated to 1.5!!

Today’s extension is called “Aggregate Yahoo! and Google.” Currently it will work for versions 1.0 up to 1.6 alpha 1 (basically every version of Firefox since 1.0). It is definitely still in the works, but shows definite promise.

This extension takes Google’s results for a term and Yahoo!’s results for a term and places them on the page in comparatively sequential order. What I mean by that made-up term is that the first result for Google goes first, then the first result for Yahoo! (which is noted by a green background) then the second result for Google, followed by the second result for Yahoo!, and so on.

It is surprisingly quick and slick. There is little load time for me, though I would bet it is awful for those with dial-up. The simplicity of the extension really is appealing, as it is, also surprisingly, unobtrusive.

It is also fascinating to compare Google’s results and Yahoo!’s results.

While there are a ton of Yahoo! and Google comparing softwares and websites out there, this extension is so quick and simple that it is no real bother. If you don’t feel like viewing the other search engine’s search results, you just click the button at the top and it instantly reverts back to just Google’s results.

There are two main problems that I see. The first and most important is that you can see Yahoo!’s results on Google, but not Google’s results on Yahoo! Almost certainly this will be added in a future release (probably soon, the version history shows several updates in a matter of days).

Second, it would be nice if the extension would remember whether or not you chose to hide Yahoo!’s results. Currently, you can hide Yahoo!’s results, but when you reload the page, enter another search term, or even view the next page, Yahoo!’s results spring back into view.

An excellent extension of an idea that has spawned many Greasemonkey scripts and websites.

• Aggregate Yahoo! and Google -Firefox Extension (1.0 - 1.6 alpha 1)
• Get Firefox!

I’ve Reddit and it’s del.icio.us

That pun made my soul cry

I’ve added the ability to post any post you want to del.icio.us or Reddit. Heck, if you feel generous, and you like my blog (can’t imagine why you would) you could hit those new links on the sidebar to post ToaT (Talkings of a Tyrant) to either one.

Have fun!