If you haven’t learned to love Windows Media Player yet, free plug-in Windows Media Player Plus might change your mind. adding tweaks like find as you type, disabling group headers, a new tag editor, and the Explorer context menu within your library.

We’ve already learned that Windows Media Player’s performance is pretty darn good, but there are still a few things in the program that many count as annoyances. Thankfully, it allows plug-ins like Windows Media Player Plus to get rid of those for you.

Atop the list of great features this plug-in adds is find as you type searching, which is exactly what it sounds like—as you type your search query, Windows Media Player will narrow down the results in real time (plus it’s pretty snappy). It also comes with its own advanced tag editor, which allows you to edit a lot of metadata (including tags that Windows Media Player doesn’t usually show). The addition of the Windows Explorer context menu in the library is pretty handy too, so you don’t need to search tracks out on your hard drive to access those actions.

A number of smaller, but still cool tweaks include listing the currently playing track in the title bar, automatic restoration of media on launch, and restoration of plug-ins after a crash. You can also disable group headers, meaning your library will show up as one long list of files instead of sorted by artist or album with their names hogging all the space. You can turn any number of these tweaks on or off to fit your needs. It makes the player much more well-rounded, which is nice if you don’t have (or don’t need) another program on your computer

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Windows: AquaSnap is a free multifunctional tweaking application that brings Aero-style effects to Windows XP and enhances Aero in Vista and Windows 7.

If all you’re interested in is taking advantage of Aero-style effects in Windows XP like snapping application windows to the edges of your monitor, AquaSnap has you covered. You can step beyond the basics in XP, Vista, and Windows 7 with additional AquaSnap tweaks.

You can set application windows to become semi-transparent when moving or when shaken, as well as specify whether you want to have windows snap like true Aero windows or snap with AquaSnap’s custom snapping that enables all edges of the monitor.

AquaSnap is freeware and works with Windows XP through Windows 7

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Among the changes in the official Firefox 3.6 release is a change to where new tabs open from clicked links—to the right of the tab they launched from. Liked it better the old way? Here’s the quick fix.

The Mozilla Links blog points out a few about:config tweaks that Firefox 3.6 users might be intrigued in, especially if the new version handles things a bit differently than you’re used to, and you don’t want to spend time getting used to the new scheme. To set new tab behavior back to its old ways—opening in the right-most slot—enter about:config into your address bar, click that you’ll be careful, then enter browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent into the search bar. Set that value to “False,” and your new tabs will open where they used to.

For more Firefox 3.6 tweaks, visit Mozilla Links’ post, which details tab preview behaviors in detail.

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Reader Sweetshop Union’s Windows 7 desktop has been completely transformed with the Gaia09 skin for Rainmeter, complete with widgets, wallpaper, and a visual style to match.

The desktop is a combination of:

• Rainmeter with the Gaia09 theme.
• Rocketdock
• Gaia09 Visual style for Windows 7 (includes wallpaper)
• Full instructions for installing Gaia09 Rainmeter skins can be found here.

This desktop not your style? Why waste time complaining? Instead, get started creating your own killer desktop with the easy-install Rainmeter 1.1 package and show the world what you can do. If you get stuck and need some help, join up with the Lifehacker Desktop Customization Google Group to collaborate on new ideas for desktop configurations.

Once you’ve created your own beautifully tweaked (and hopefully productive) desktop, post it over in the Lifehacker Desktop Show and Tell Flickr Group complete with a description of the programs and tweaks you used (and preferably links as well!), and we just might feature it here.

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If you hate installing all your Firefox extensions, plugins, and custom tweaks when you do fresh system installation, Silence of the Foxes will build you a custom and silent Firefox installation.

Silence of the Foxes works on both Firefox and Thunderbird, although most users will find it most helpful for streamlining Firefox installations.

Download Silence of the Foxes, extract the files, and run the main executable. You’ll need a Firefox installation file for Silence of the Foxes to unpack and repack. During the second step you’ll tell it what you want to include in the repack like your search plugins and bookmarks.

The default method is to pull from the existing Firefox installation—which makes it a great way to back up your present installation as-is—but you can jump into the .INI file and change where Silence of the Foxes looks for the Firefox installation and other settings.

Although it was originally designed for earlier versions of Firefox, the structure of directories and locations of key files has remained static and Silence of the Foxes still does a great job repacking all your favorite settings in a silent installation. Although we didn’t have any issues with Silence of the Foxes, we can’t emphasize enough the importance of backing up your Firefox profile before tinkering with Silence of the Foxes. We recommend previously reviewed MozBackup as a quick and easy way to backup your bookmarks, extensions, saved passwords, and more. Silence of the Foxes is freeware, Windows only.

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Windows: If you don’t want to spend time micro-designing an icon and you’ve already got a source image, SimplyIcon makes creating your buttons and icons a drag-and-drop matter.

Download the SimplyIcon package, extract the executable and DLL file to a folder, run the program, and you’re presented with a simple dialogue box and the instructions to drag and drop an image onto it. Once you drag and drop the image, SimplyIcon creates a variety of icon files in various sizes—up to 128×128 if you source image is large enough.

You won’t find any image editing tools or tweaks on SimplyIcon, it accepts whatever image you drag into it and cranks out an icon file. If that’s good enough for you, it’s definitely a download you’ll want to keep stashed in your home folder.

SimplyIcon is free, Windows only, and requires .Net 2.0 Framework or higher. Have a favorite icon creation tool of your own? Share it in the comments.

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Firefox with Greasemonkey: The YouTube Auto Buffer Greasemonkey script tweaks the popular video sharing site to fix some of its most common annoyances. Specifically, it stops videos from automatically playing, turns on HD/HQ playback for all videos, and hides in-video advertisements.

All three of the tweaks YouTube Auto Buffer makes can be toggled, so if you’d really like to get rid of in-video ads but don’t want to always watch videos in HD or prefer that videos play automatically, you can just disable the two unwanted features. Or at least they can be toggled in theory. I had trouble getting my preferences to stick, so your mileage may vary.

Either way, it’s a nice little script that aims to fix some users’ common YouTube annoyances. For some other YouTube-specific tweaks, check out our very own Better YouTube Firefox extension. (With any luck, maybe we can convince Gina to incorporate some of the YouTube Auto Buffer features into said add-on.)

YouTube Auto Buffer is a free download, works with Firefox and the Greasemonkey extension.

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