We Are 1

After talking with some friends about the way they browse the internet, I thought I’d share my workflow with you all to help us surf better and faster.

1) get Firefox (any platform)

2) add extensions to Firefox

A) Adblock+, I haven’t seen a web advertisement in two years

B) NoScript, changes default javascript to off, you have to give specific permission to run javascript on websites. Only running javascript you trust has two benefits, first, it’s a huge security improvement, and second, your browsing will be a lot faster.

3) setup your bookmark toolbar to be hierarchical folders.

Firefox’s Bookmark toolbar lets you put often used bookmarks right in your browser bar. What I do is to create large catagories here, like SF, ( I always use abbreviations to preserve screen real estate) Mac, Gadgets, Photo, ect. then make folders for those categories in the bookmark toolbar, like this:

Next always use RSS feeds instead of bookmarks, simply put the subscribed RSS feeds under your new categorized folders. For example put the RSS feed for SFGate under SF. After you’ve got a few RSS feeds under a category you can move your mouse down the column and read all the stories under SF quickly and easily like this:

You can also further organize by using folders within folders, for example, I break down my blog column by people blogs, political blogs, and consumer blogs, use whatever works for you, but keep the titles short to maximize your screen real estate.

I also recommend you regularly use Firefox’s bookmark manager to reorder your feeds regularly, put the best ones at the top. By doing this over time, you can rip through the day’s most important stories quickly, and not miss anything important.

I hope this insight into my web workflow helps you, and I welcome your recommendations for improvement.