I have been using the del.icio.us Firefox extension for some time now. It’s OK, but it is not really a replacement of Firefox’s bookmark functionality. While browsing through addons.mozilla.org, I found another extension that integrates del.icio.us into Firefox. It’s called del.icio.us Bookmarks. This extension completely replaces Firefox’s bookmark functionality.

There’s a nice sidebar which can be used to browse through the bookmarks grouped by tags. It also has a search functionality that’s way faster than the one of the other extension since this extension caches the bookmarks from del.icio.us. Of course you can also use this extension to tag a page in del.icio.us.

Well, now I really imported all my bookmarks into del.icio.us and found a feature I haven’t seen before in del.icio.us. Bookmarks can be marked as private. So it’s now possible to have a collection of public bookmarks, viewable for anyone, and one, that only the owner of the account can see when logged in. That’s quite a good feature and the lack of it prevented me from having all my bookmarks on del.icio.us. For example I don’t want anyone to know at which banks I have accounts. And there are also some URLs related to my job that are of no interest to anyone but me. Of course - even with this feature - I would never put any bookmarks that also include passwords to ftp-servers and the like on del.icio.us.

After installing the extension I had some weird problems with my browser. Some pages where a bit jumpy - scrolling constantly up and down a few pixels. I disabled the extension then. I have used a customized layout where the contents of the bookmarks toolbar was on the right side of the menu. After installing the extension, this setup was lost but not really. I didn’t see the contents of the bookmark toolbar anymore, since it wasn’t available anymore. Somehow that fact irritated Firefox and made those pages a bit jumpy. I rearranged the layout to its default settings, reenabled the extension and now it works without any problems.

I came across Enso Launcher and had to try it out. Enso Launcher is an application launcher similar to Quicksilver, Launchbar or Find And Run Robot. You press some key, type in some characters and the launcher shows you a list of applications that contain those characters so you can choose it and launch it.

Enso Launcher extends on that basic concept in a way similar to Quicksilver, but IMHO much better. In Enso you type commands that can be executed on different kinds of items. If you want to launch an application you type “go fire” for example and will get a list containing Firefox. You can even select some file in Explorer and type “open with Paint Shop” in Enso to get it opened in Paint Shop Pro. You can change the active window by typing in “go” and then select one of the windows in the appearing task list.

So is it currently the coolest thing on earth? Unfortunately not! The interface is sleek, the ideas brilliant, but it’s totally unusable. To bring Enso Launcher up, you have to press CAPS LOCK and hold it down while you are typing your commands. Then you release CAPS LOCK and the commands get executed. For someone normally typing with all ten fingers that’s just horrible. It makes your small finger hurt very fast and you aren’t able to type anything that contains an ‘a’, ‘y’ or ‘q’ in it. There is one alternative to bring Enso Launcher up. Press CAPS LOCK, press ALT, release CAPS LOCK and then release ALT. Then after typing in your command, you have to type CAPS LOCK again. ENTER, the intuitive choice won’t do.

So after ten minutes I uninstalled it and am staying with Find And Run Robot. It’s interface is not as sleek, the DonationCoder website is horrible — more so since the invention of Cody than ever — and the name of the application is also somehow unimaginative, but it works.

I’d like to see some of the ideas from Enso introduced into FARR, though.