Windows/Mac/Linux: Firefox Tab Candy is a new tab management feature for Firefox that organizes tabs into groups to help you keep your tabs grouped by task. Not only does it offer incredibly handy features, but it looks beautiful.

Watch the video above, by Mozilla’s excellent interface designer Aza Raskin, for a quick overview. The idea is sort of like the new app folders in iOS 4, or like a better version of OS X’s Exposé—except for it’s all about your browser tabs. You can drag and drop to re-arrange all your tabs into groups, create new groups by simply dragging a web page outside an existing group and dragging another item on top of it, and name all your groups based on what task they’re related to.

Another favorite feature is that Tab Candy effectively collapses different windows inside of one, so when you’re looking at one group, your others are waiting inside the switching interface. Sure you can open a new window if you need multiple Firefox windows open at once, but most of the time you don’t need the extra clutter. Currently Tab Candy has a few hiccups in use, and there’s not much I can see for keyboard friendliness yet, but it’s promising.

I first tested Tab Candy on OS X, where these shortcuts don’t (yet) work, but I gave it a try and the shortcuts do indeed work in Windows. Handy!

Tab Candy isn’t currently available as an extension, but Mozilla is offering an alpha download of Firefox that includes Tab Candy by default (all platforms). We wouldn’t recommend anyone jump to it as their main browser, but if you’re eager to try it out and are comfortable with alpha software, it’s worth a look.

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Windows: If you’ve got more than one monitor, you’ve probably tried fullscreening a Flash video on one monitor while working in another. The problem: Flash exits fullscreen as soon as you click on something. FlashHacker fixes this problem.

A few months ago we highlighted a somewhat complicated method of tweaking Flash to fix this problem, but it hasn’t been updated for a while and doesn’t work with Flash 10 (the latest version of Flash). FlashHacker, on the other hand, should work like a charm on all versions of Flash. Just fire it up and click the big Hack My Flash! button. (Blogger Mike Pegg reports that he had to first click unhack and then hack, so if it’s not working the first time, you may want to try that.)

FlashHacker is a free download for Windows only. Any Mac or Linux users figure out how to address this issue? Let’s hear about it in the comments. Thanks badgerz!

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Windows only: You squeeze every bit of customization and productivity out of your computer, why let those lazy keyboard LEDs sit idle? Put them to work as network activity indicators.

Network Lights is a tiny application that turns the NumLock and ScrollLock keyboard indicators into incoming and outgoing network traffic indicators. Check out our video here to see the lights in action. The video starts with some simple browsing—we were looking for a Linux ISO to grab in order to really light things up—and by the end of the video you see the burst of blinking that occurs when the large ISO download was underway.

In addition to turning your keyboard lights into indicators, Network Lights also keeps stats on your network activity if you’re curious. Note: If you run the app and nothing happens, right click on the system tray icon and open the Settings dialogue. Check the box that says “Force Keyboard Capture”. Despite it being tagged as a solution for older motherboards, our test machine has a motherboard manufactured within the last year and an equally as new keyboard, we needed to use the force capture function.

Network Lights is freeware, Windows only. If you know of another app that helps you squeeze some usefulness out of your computer in an unexpected way, let’s hear about it in the comments.

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Windows/Mac/Linux: Last week Google announced a free DNS service designed to speed up your browsing, but just because Google wants to be fast doesn’t actually mean they’re the best option for you. Namebench finds the fastest DNS server for your connection.

After you download and fire up namebench, just click the Start Benchmark button to test out a handful of free public DNS services, from Google Public DNS to OpenDNS to UltraDNS. Once started, the test took about 12 minutes to complete using the default settings. When it’s done, you’ll be presented with a handful of handy charts displaying the results of the tests.

(Click the image above for a closer look.)

You can see the results to my test in the screenshots above and below. From the looks of things, UltraDNS is the DNS that’s going to do the most to speed up my connection. In fact, it claims UltraDNS will be 46% faster than Google Public DNS (the DNS server my computer was using when I ran the test)—so it looks like I may just be switching yet again.

(Click the image above for a closer look.)

Nambench is a free, open-source download, works with Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. If you give it a try, let’s hear what DNS server scores highest for you in the comments.

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It’s not officially released, but a gallery-like site for extensions has made itself known into the latest development builds of Google Chrome for Windows and Linux. Take a peek at what’s coming, presumably very soon, in these development screenshots.

The Download Squad blog was the first to notice the new new thing in Chrome—namely, a jigsaw-like page corner in Chrome’s new tab page, next to a message at the bottom that reads “New! Chrome now has bookmark sync and extensions!”, with both the message and the corner piece linking to http://chrome.google.com/extensions

I saw the same link appear in the chrome://extensions page on my copy of Chromium, from a nightly build Ubuntu repository. Clicking that link, however, re-directs you to Google’s home page. But as many are guessing, Chrome/Chromium wouldn’t push out a new link to leave sitting dead for too long, so we’ll keep watching that page to see when a full-fledged gallery pops up.

TechCrunch’s MG Siegler dove into Chromium’s Code Reviews section, and finds screenshots and discussions indicating that Chrome’s extensions will be able to add icons to Chrome’s top toolbar, inside the address bar, and in the bottom-right status bar, and that developers will also be allowed to customize items such as Chrome’s new tab page. Right out of the gate, developers are also indicating extensions from Google itself tied to its Maps, News, and a Gmail checker.

Exciting stuff, and even more so if many of Firefox’s developers take notice and bring over some of the same functionality that hardcore Mozilla users could never imagine leaving behind. Top and bottom photos from TechCrunch; new tab page image from Download Squad.

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Firefox only (Win/Mac/Linux): Firefox extension FlagTab adds relative tabs and customizable colors so you can keep your tabs organized more easily.

Once you’ve installed the extension, you can colorize a tab by simply Ctrl+Clicking to cycle through the colors. Once you’ve colorized a tab, the child tabs will have the same color as the parent tab—it’s similar to the tab grouping feature in Internet Explorer 8. You can access the color settings through the tab context menu to directly set a color, or clear the tab colorization. If the tab colors are too drastic for you, there’s also an option to only colorize the tab icon, instead of the background. FlagTab is a free download, works anywhere Firefox does.

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iPhone/iPod touch only: Dropbox, one of our favorite cross-platform file-syncing tools, has now made its way to the iPhone and iPod touch, complete with offline file viewing.

Once installed on your device, Dropbox for iPhone provides access to all your Dropbox files, allows you to view any file supported by your iPhone (including documents, photos, music, and video), uploads any photo or video you’ve taken on your device to your Dropbox account, and lets you save any file as a favorite for offline viewing. If you want to share a file in your Dropbox with someone else, the application can generate an email with a link directly to the file.

I first saw a demo of Dropbox for the iPhone way back at SXSW in March, so it’s great to see this app finally make its way to the App Store. In short: If you’re already a fan of Dropbox and you’ve got an iPhone or iPod touch, you’ll want to download this app. Like the Windows, Mac, and Linux versions, Dropbox for the iPhone is freeware and requires only a Dropbox account.

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Windows/Mac/Linux: Most developers did a bang-up job preparing their extensions for the Firefox 3.5 update, but on the Firefox 3.5 release day, one very popular extension didn’t make the cut: Google’s browser plug-in, Gears.

It’s a week later, and still no update from the folks at Google, but a few adventurous users have hacked together their own Firefox 3.5 compatible builds of Gears. We wouldn’t recommend that just anyone go download and install these Gears builds willy-nilly, but if you’re desperate to get Gears back up and running and you don’t mind a little risk (namely of your browser’s stability), it’s worth a go.

For Windows and Linux versions, check out these custom extension builds from this thread on the Gears Users Google Group. Mac users can try gearsff35osx on Google Code.

I’ve only tested the Windows version and so far everything’s working as expected. You’re mileage may vary, and as we said, if you’re not willing to take on a little beta-style risk (these aren’t official builds), you’re best off waiting for the official release from Google (which one would assume should be coming very soon). If you give it a try, let’s hear how the unofficial builds work for you in the comments. Thanks Matt and Eric!

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