Customize Your Own Firefox Sidebar Web Page [Lifehacker Book Contest Winner]

Category: Science/Tech | Posted by laraib 1513 days ago

Readers are submitting their best life hack for a chance to win an autographed copy of our new book, Upgrade Your Life. Here's our latest winner.
Reader Zalary put some HTML skills to work to turn the Firefox sidebar into a one-stop shop of frequently used utilities. Zalary says:
Working in customer support, I have a lot of links and a lot of searches that I use and do a gobzillion times a day. I tried many variations of bookmarks, shortcuts, and life managers—but none were exactly what i wanted. Since I enjoyed browsing my bookmarks using the sidebar option, I thought up this way to incorporate more functionality in a similar setup.
After the jump, check out Zalary's sidebar and list of items.

Zalary actually hacked together the HTML page by hand, and stored it on a web server in a password-protected directory for access from any computer.

Here's the page on the left. Zalary writes:
A brief rundown of the included items:
* Lots of links I use daily. The "Support links" is actually an on mouseover with more links. (Editor: see below for a screenshot of that.)
* Searches I use daily. With a link to the site as a header.
* To do list.
* Notes to self. Can be used to paste in text I want to remember short-term, or I can click to send myself an email that is filtered into a folder.
* Personal links
* Weather and local links
* An editable iframe list of AutoHotkey shortcuts. I have a lot ;)
I made my husband write me a use-specific to-do list, but Remember the Milk fans can embed this module in an iframe and it works like a charm! Really, with all the other weblog/website widgets available, there's lots of option for making your sidebar contain exactly what you want.

Here's an image of the Support Links section expanded:

You could store this page on your hard drive; Zalary explains further:
For a while, I did keep it on my hard drive exclusively, but I eventually moved a copy online so that if I was stuck on another computer I could have quick access to my most necessary things easily as well. I have it uploaded to both my personal domain and my TypePad account currently, and I can't imagine why it wouldn't work to upload to a free blog service or host.

Congrats, Zalary! You just won an autographed copy of Upgrade Your Life. There are only three more books left! Submit your best life hack to win one.