Tuesday, May 13, 2008

I'm So Stylish ....

I just found the coolest Firefox extension. It allows you to control the style of any website that is loaded into your Firefox browser. The extension has a community website that users submit their own styles so that others can share. For example, I really love using Gmail but I think their look-and-feel could have been done by a 10 year old. I grabbed a really nice looking user submitted file and voila .... I have a very nice looking email interface.

The style control can be used for all sorts of things:
-Remove annoying ads
-Change color scheme
-Adjust usability of website

One nice option is if you know CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), you can modify the style yourself. I have downloaded the user styles that I liked the best and then tweaked the style to be more what I like. It is amazing what you can do with this extension and CSS. I modified the Google search results page to keep the search box and button at the top of the page as I scroll. Now I can have Google return 50 search items and still be able to easily adjust my search criteria without scrolling anywhere.

I've been using it for a week and I am in love. Check out the Stylish extension website at: http://www.userstyles.org/