http://www.freewebs.com/nerdcave/taskbarshuffle.htm

Some time ago Trillian was the good option, but then I discovered QIP, which was much better in many aspects. Unfortunately, QIP works with the ICQ protocol only, but I still highly recommend it to the ICQ fans who do not like to mess with plugins. QIP already has a lot of nice features in the standard package.

Pidgin looks rather simple right after install, but it comes with plenty of plugins. There are many useful ones, so check them out. Additionaly, I’ve downloaded Guifications, a customizable plugin for “toaster” popup notifications. You can see here how it looks.

Also, you may need Extended Preferences to remove Pidgin window from taskbar and Window Positions Manager to prevent it from constantly placing new conversation windows in the top left corner.

The interface is very clean, and though it do not have all bells and whistles as the latest ICQs, I still found it very suitable for basic communications.

This is the QIP Messaging Window:

Too many buttons. :( Guess what you need to press in order to add users to your contact list? A small button with an arrow to access the user menu.

This is how Pidgin Messaging Window looks like:

This is indeed the most often used buttons, everything else can be found in the top menu.

Bottom line: this great piece of software supports many commonly used instant messaging protocols, so you will not have the need to install 5-10 separate messaging clients. Pidgin is a freeware and has versions for Windows, Linux, BSD, and other Unixes.

ScrapBook is a Firefox extension, which helps you to save Web pages and easily manage collections. Key features are lightness, speed, accuracy and multi-language support. Major features are:

• Save Web page or entire site
• Save snippet of Web page
• Organize the collection in the same way as Bookmarks
• Full text search and quick filtering search of the collection
• Editing of the collected Web page
• Text/HTML edit feature resembling Opera’s Notes

Flashblock

Flashblock is an extension for the Mozilla, Firefox, and Netscape browsers that takes a pessimistic approach to dealing with Macromedia Flash content on a webpage and blocks ALL Flash content from loading. It then leaves placeholders on the webpage that allow you to click to download and then view the Flash content.

ImgLikeOpera

ImgLikeOpera allows load only the images that you want in Firefox browser. This extension is very useful for non broadband users. Features:

• placeholders for blocked images;
• (re)load image from context menu or Ctrl+rightMouseClick;
• policies for tabs;
• one of four policies for each tab:
• don’t load images;
• load cached images only;
• load images for the originating Web site only;
• load all images.
• filters.

All-in-One Sidebar

All-in-One Sidebar is a sidebar control, inspired by Opera’s. Click on the left edge of your browser window to open the sidebar and get easy access to all your panels: Bookmarks, ScrapBook, History, Downloads, Extensions and Themes.

Undo Closed Tabs Button

This extension allows you to undo closed tabs via a toolbar button, right-click context menu or even a shortcut (Alt+Z). Click the image one time to undo the last closed tab…three times to open the last three closed tabs and so on. Click the drop down arrow to see the list of last previously closed tabs and select which one you would like to undo.

Download Statusbar

Despite its compact size, Download Statusbar packs in more useful features than the standard download window. The fully customizable interface auto-hides when not in use, allowing full control without interruption.

Tab Clicking Options

With the Tab Clicking Options extension it is possible to set various actions to different clicking events on the tab bar.

• Double clicking
• Clicking with middle mouse button
• Left clicking with control, alt or shift key pressed

And the following actions can be assigned to any of the previous events performed on a tab or the tab bar:

• Open a new tab
• Reload the tab/all tabs
• Close tab/other/all tabs
• Duplicate Tab/Duplicate in New Window
• Bookmark Tab/All Tabs

With synergy, all the computers on your desktop form a single virtual screen. You use the mouse and keyboard of only one of the computers while you use all of the monitors on all of the computers. You tell synergy how many screens you have and their positions relative to one another. Synergy then detects when the mouse moves off the edge of a screen and jumps it instantly to the neighboring screen. The keyboard works normally on each screen; input goes to whichever screen has the cursor.

Do you wish you could cut and paste between computers? Now you can! Just copy text, HTML, or an image as you normally would on one screen then switch to another screen and paste it. It’s as if all your computers shared a single clipboard. And it does it all in Unicode so any text can be copied.

If you regularly use multiple computers on one desk, give synergy a try. You’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

http://synergy2.sourceforge.net