Ziink Surfer: Introduction

Ziink Surfer is a productivity add-on Mozilla Firefox. It helps you save time and surf the web with ease.

Private Browsing while retaining current session
Unlike the default FF 3.5 behavior of closing all your tabs and starting with a blank tab, this add-on enables you to continue with your current session when going into Private Browsing mode. Not only do you keep the tabs you had open, you also keep the cookies from your regular session. This means that you can continue using your browser without having to relogin to a site you were already logged into.

When you leave 'private browsing', all tabs with new domains are closed but earlier tabs remain open. You also have the option to not close any tab when exiting 'private browsing'. While you were in 'private browsing' mode, Firefox will not save any history, cookie, form entry and such. Read More...


Auto Page
Insert content from the next page into the current page when you reach the end of the page. It inserts only the main content and tries to keep the flow of reading smooth and without distractions. The goal is to not have to click on a 'next page' link ever again. Read More...


Linkify
Make plain text URLs into clickable links. Make US addresses into clickable links that open up in Google Maps. Read More...


Craigslist Previews
Provide image previews in the ad listings and show ad previews by hovering over the links.
a) Moving mouse over the image preview shows a larger image.
b) Moving the mouse over to the link to an ad shows a preview of the ad.
Read More...


Link Checker
Check links from Rapidshare, Megaupload and over 50 other file hosting services. Mark broken or expired links in red and available links in green. Read More...



Highlight Bookmarked Links
Highlight bookmarked pages in search engine results. Works on Google, Yahoo, Bing and more. Read More...


Turn image loading on or off
Firefox already has an option to 'Load images automatically' which is turned on by default. This add-on just makes it easier to access this feature by showing an icon on the status bar to toggle it on and off. Additionally it toggles the visibility of all images in the current page without having to reload the page. This is handy if you end up on a page with inappropriate images.

Show form action
When you move your mouse over any part of a form, the URL that the form with be submitted to will be displayed in the status bar. This will help you determine if the form is being submitted being submitted over secure http or not. Additionally the add-on warns you if the form uses JavaScript. Read More...


Open Address in Google Maps
Select an address, right click to get the context menu and open it in Google Maps in a new tab.


Add-on Options
Enable or disable any of the features. If any feature of this add-on clashes with another, or if you don't have a use for a feature, you can disable that feature. Read More...

Private Browsing Mode

Ziink Surfer allows you to go into 'Private Browsing' mode while keeping your current session. If you are logged into a site, you continue to be logged in.

To go into the 'Private Browsing' (PB) mode, click on the mask icon on the bottom right corner of your browser window.

Once you enter the 'Private Browsing' mode, the window title and the vivid mask icon in the status bar will indicate that you are in PB mode.

Any new tabs you open or any new site you go to in one of the existing tabs, will be marked with a colored tabs. When you exit PB mode, these colored tabs will be closed.

If you wish, you may exit the PB mode but not close any of the tabs. It's defeat the reason for going into PB mode in the first place but you have the option if you so choose.

To exit without closing any tabs, right click on the 'Z' icon in the status bar to bring up the context menu and click on the 'Exit Private Browsing' menu item.


If you want to start your private browsing session without any previous cookies, you always have the option of selecting 'Start Private Browsing' from your 'Tools' menu.

Auto Page

Auto Page loads the next page within the context of the current page and as you scroll down further, it keeps loading subsequent pages. Ziink Surfer already understands the layout of thousands of sites and you don't have to specify settings for individual sites. It just works automatically.

Here are some screen shots and some additional notes.

As you scroll, new pages are added automatically. A page break block is introduced between the page content to indicate that  Auto Page is working and to provide options to pause auto paging and to restore the page.

When you 'pause', no additional pages are loaded until you click on 'continue'. You may wish to use the 'pause' if you want to see bottom of the original page which might keep scrolling out of view otherwise.

When you are reading blogs, the comments and the post comment form are collapsed so it's easier to read the main content. If you wish to read the comments, just move the mouse over to the 'Comments' bar and any comments to the blog post are automatically displayed. You may also click on the 'Comments' bar to always keep the comments visible. This feature has been implemented only for some of the popular blogs.

Linkify plain text urls

There are a number of sites show the urls to various web pages but do not provide a link to the same. I'm sure you can think of a number of instances when this has happened to you. The last time, I came across this was just a few hours ago when I was testing the Auto Page feature on various blogs. Here's a screen shot. If you don't have Ziink Surfer or one of the other linkification addon, those green URLs you see, are just plain text. None of the links on this page actually point to those URLs.

Linkification is turned on by default and Ziink Surfer automatically linkifies any plain text URLs or email addresses. The appearance of the page is not changed though and the linkified text still look like plain text. This is to keep the new links from becoming a distraction.

Craigslist Previews

When browsing or searching in any category in Craigslist, thumbnails of images in the ads are shown below each individual listing. When you move your mouse over the link to an individual ad, you can preview the text of the ad. The images below explain the feature.

Craigslist without Ziink Surfer.

Craigslist with Ziink Surfer.

Move the mouse over an image thumbnail to preview a larger sized image.

Move the mouse over a link to preview the content of the ad.

Link Checker

Checks links to over 50 file hosting services and indicates whether the files are still available for download or not. Links that are still live are marked in green with a tick mark and links that are dead are marked in red with a cross check. Plain text links to these services are linkified.

File hosting sites that are checked are :
rapidshare, filefactory, megaupload, megarotic, megaporn, netload, easy-share, megashares, depositfiles, uploading, 4shared, hotfile, storage, getupload, sendspace, mediafire, ziddu, adrive, enterupload, bitroad, badongo, upit, ul, uploaded, midupload, uploadbox, zshare, egoshare, axifile, vip-file, rnbload, savefile, netgull, bigshare, up-file, ifolder, megashare, speedyshare, smartupload, turboupload, share-now, uploadpalace, gigasize, alexupload, sharebee, flyfile, kewlshare, filefront, letitbit, files, momupload, freakshare, usaupload, sms4file, sharecash, filemonster

Highlight Bookmarked Links

When you use a search engine, all the links in your result page are matched against your bookmarks and the pages you already have in your bookmarks are highlighted with a golden star. Since you've already found the page useful enough to bookmark it previously, this feature refines the search result to allow you to go directly to a page that's useful.

Show form action

When you move your mouse over any part of a form, the URL that the form with be submitted to will be displayed in the status bar. This will help you determine if the form is being submitted being submitted over secure http or not. Additionally the add-on warns you if the form uses JavaScript. Often forms use JavaScript to validate the information before it's submitted to the server but sometimes the JS code causes the form to be submitted to a different URL.

Hovering over the sign in form shows the submit information in the status bar.

Add-on Options

Enable or disable any of the features. If any feature of this add-on clashes with another, or if you don't have a use for a feature, you can disable that feature.

You can disable the entire add-on by clicking on the 'Z' icon on the status bar; no need to restart Firefox. Click again to re-enable it. Disabling the add-on won't undo what's already done.


Right click on the 'Z' icon on the right side of your status bar to get the menu. Select 'Options...' to set the options.