It seems my friend Russ took exception to my Opera recommendation and, after abusing me over that, sent me a heads up on this cool, time-saving extension for Firefox (why do I always want to capitalize the second ‘F’?).
I don’t use many browser addons. I like my tools clean and fast and I’ve experienced many crashes and hangs over the years from addons to various browsers, not to mention the generally sluggish operation once they become “attached.”
That said, I will learn and use the Aardvark extension (thanks, Russ). Here’s why…
I read many articles on the web, but I often like to print some out for reading later (or send them to my friends). The problem is, the internet is a giant billboard and articles are frequently cluttered up with ads or perhaps formatted in ways that are not print-friendly. Doesn’t it bother you when you have to use two sheets of paper for a short article when, if the ad in the middle was removed, it would fit on one page? Ok, maybe that’s just me. Aardvark’s “r”emove command comes in very handy here.
Another great use would be to clip out all the junk from a text block that you want to quote or otherwise reuse (with proper attribution, of course). The “i”solate command is great for this.
I just got directions to my Vistage retreat on MapQuest — what a mess that page is! I didn’t want to wrestle with copy & paste exercise moving it into Word and then deleting things (Word doesn’t make that easy). So i started Aardvark with a right-click, then ripped off the page what I didn’t want (most everything but the directions) and printed it. Quick operation with a nice clear result.
Finally, it’s just an interesting tool for examining the various elements of a web page without having to look at the HTML. If you’re into that sort of thing.
