With CRM software on-demand increasing, as well as social bookmarking portals like Facebook, here are 7 productivity tips specifically aimed for Mozilla Firefox users when the requirement is “simply a browser”.

1) Set yourself up so that you’ll know everything you need to know about your sites and your competitors by installing SearchStatus. SearchStatus displays the Google PageRank, Alexa rank and Compete ranking anywhere in your browser, along with fast keyword density analyzer, keyword and nofollow highlighting, backward and related links, Alexa info and other SEO tools.

This tip alone could save your hours of ‘look up’ time.

2) Other immediate, in-depth competitor analysis can be had when you install Sparky. Sparky is a free FireFox browser plug-in built by Alexa, that accompanies you as you surf, providing useful information about the sites you visit without interrupting your Web browsing. Specifically:

• Learn about Website Traffic Trend information — Is this site getting more popular, or less popular?
• Get detailed traffic information including Reach and Rank — How does this site’s traffic compare to other sites on the Web?
• Surf more efficiently with Related Links for each page — If I like this site, are there others that I might want to visit?

Plus: surfing your own sites with this plug-in activated helps improve your Alexa score!

3) Learn to view Google results by country: Google Global Firefox Extension tells you everything you need to know about your competition in other countries. Ever want to see what people in other countries are seeing for a particular search in Google? For example, let’s say you are based in the USA and you want to know what people in the Canada are searching for. If you travel to another country, your default Google search page is that country’s top level domain (i.e. www.google.it if in Italy). The same tool can be used when traveling overseas to view Google results of your home country.

4) View the way your advertisers and clients see your site, easily with Browser Window Resizer. You may have a massive flat panel monitor but what are you displaying in 1024×768 mode? First, check your web logs majority of the viewers’ video resolution. Chances are it’s 1024×768. The Browser Window Resizer is useful tool for testing different screen sizes. It accurately resizes your browser so you can test to see if the web page you’re working on looks right in all of the standard resolution sizes. This plug-in supports 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×1024 resolutions.

As far as your advertisers are concerned, this is important for 2 reasons:

• Your right column may not be properly displayed without scrolling the horizontal bar
• If you advertise or publish banner ads “above the fold”, make sure it’s visible to the highest amount of readers.

5) Use FireFTP to upload files fast, free, anywhere: FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers. Very handy if you are traveling and don’t have your local FTP software on your PC or laptop!

6) Pick up exactly where you left off, say yesterday, by simply opening all your tabs from last session, automatically, the next morning. You don’t even need a tool. It’s just a setting to have all your open web pages restored each time you restart Firefox.

Go to Tools… Options… Startup box. Choose: When Firefox starts, select “Show my windows and tabs from last time”.

7) Organize your day, tasks per tab, and overall spark up your tabs using Colorful Tabs, a simple but powerful tab management tool. Simply choose a specific color for each tab, and then assign a task or project to each tab. Besides being rather pretty, the pastel tint options are actually easier on the eyes – something important for a pair of lookers who surf and write all day long.

Using these tips, I literally save many times several minutes each day, which easily clocks up to be over an hour, in which I can do other things.

Now you can do it too!