FoxyTunes Music Player, BugMeNot Tool Are Essential Firefox Plug-ins

Firefox has a host of interesting and useful plug-ins. In this article, I will provide a brief round-up of two of my favorites.

FoxyTunes
I wasn't quite sure what to think when I downloaded and installed the FoxyTunes extension for Firefox. This extension sits in the bottom right corner of Firefox and allows you to control your media player from the browser.

On the left side is a collapsible region that scrolls the title of what you are playing. Then, you have buttons for previous track, play, pause, stop, and next track.

After a separator, you have a button with a music note that displays the name of the current track in a tool tip when you mouse over it. Then, you have a button that resembles an eject button that opens a Open File dialog box so you can pick a file to play.

Show player and hide player buttons, a mute toggle button, and a collapsible volume region round out the interface. Also, the entire interface can collapse so that you can access most of its features from a standard Windows pop-up menu.

After playing with all the buttons, I found the tool extremely easy to use. I had iTunes running, and quickly discovered that you can have the player control iTunes by simply clicking on the menu button, selecting Player, and selecting the player you want to use. The tool is compatible with a large number of players.

The tool is much more robust than I was expecting. It is surprisingly convenient and easy to use. I have encountered no problems with it since I installed it.

I give FoxyTunes a 4 out of 5. Click here for more information on FoxyTunes.

BugMeNot
Folks, we all know of a few websites that are free yet require a user name to access certain features. For example, NYTimes.com is totally free, but to read most of the stories you have to register with some of your personal information. I don't like giving out my personal information for something that is supposed to be free. Especially on the Internet.

Enter bugmenot.com. The website helps you "bypass compulsory web registration" like I described above. Simply visit the website and enter the address of the site who's registration process you wish to bypass. If someone has already registered with fake details and has listed their login on BugMeNot, you will see a user name and password. Simply use these on the site to gain access without giving out a bit of your personal information.

Why use this? Most users don't enter real information into those boxes anyway. If they do, unwanted email becomes a distinct possibility.

This site is a must-bookmark.

What does this have to do with Firefox plug-ins, you ask? BugMeNot has an extremely useful plug-in for Firefox that automatically pulls log-in information from BugMeNot.

Just right click in the login box and select "Login with BugMeNot." The database will be contacted and a user name and password will be automatically pulled and entered into the login box. Then press the login button and you are good to go.

How can I give the BugMeNot plug-in anything but a 5 out of 5? It has one task and it does it well.

To download the BugMeNot plug-in, click here.