Web Worker Daily

Although many people swear by the Mozilla Firefox browser, there are still armies of web workers who use Internet Explorer, it retains leading market share, and many organizations are standardized on it. If you sit in front of Internet Explorer all day, using some of the free downloadable extensions and enhancements available for it is one of the best ways to upgrade what you get out of the browser. In this post, I’ll collect some of the most useful tools I’ve found.

Snipshot. If you happen to work with web graphics all day, Snipshot is a great Internet Explorer extension that you can download for free. It lets you right-click on a picture, and then select “Edit in Snipshot” from a context menu. You can also use it as a browser-based service and not an extension, and it’s a good Firefox extension as well. It eliminates the waiting and program launching that goes along with capturing and copying images into image editors. It’s fast and easy.

CG4IE. The CG4IE extension’s name stands for Customize Google for IE, which is exactly what it does. An open-source project, it lets you add many kinds of options to standard Google searches, including using Google Suggest to suggest words while you’re typing, adding result counters in search results, and more. Most usefully, when doing Google searches, you can use it to quickly get links from search engines other than Google. Here’s one to use all day long.

IE Tab. Here’s an unusual extension: IE Tab is actually an extension for the Mozilla Firefox browser, but what it does is embed Internet Explorer in Firefox tabs. This is the fastest possible way for any web developer to see what pages will look like when rendered in Internet Explorer.

Accelerate Downloads. You can greatly speed up the amount of time it takes to download files with Internet Explorer by using Internet Download Accelerator. It also lets you organize downloads very efficiently. It’s free for a 30-day trial, but you have to pay $24.95 if you want to keep using it.

Nutshell Toolbar. Nutshell Toolbar is a simple little free toolbar that works in Internet Explorer to let you jump right into searches at popular sites including Google, Amazon, Dictionary.com, and more. You can use it to instantly do a Google search on any web page you’re at, or instantly do a standard Google web search.

IE Open Last Closed Tab. The IE Open Last Closed Tab extension allows you to open previously closed tabs in Internet Explorer 7 by using the hotkey combination Alt-X. It’s useful when you get that “where did I see that?” feeling.

Do you know of any useful Internet Explorer tips or extensions?