Whenever we talk passwords, we always preach the same thing: Use strong, difficult-to-remember passwords, and different passwords for every site. Easy to say, extremely difficult to do through sheer willpower. I've tried many password-remembering systems, and this is what I've stuck with.

To paraphrase photographer Chase Jarvis, the best password manager is the one you have with you. Of all the password management utilities out there, I consider LastPass the most elegant compromise between convenience and security, and if you're not using it already, I recommend you start. It's mostly free, plugs into nearly any browser or smartphone, is KeePass compatible, and just works.

Firefox/Chrome: If you love using your keyboard and shun your mouse, you'll definitely want to try gleeBox, an awesome add-on that lets you effortlessly browse the web without your mouse. Check out the video inside to see it in action.

Click on the picture above for a closer look.

Browsing the web without a mouse isn't easy. Without any add-ons at all you're stuck furiously punching the tab key to move through all the available links on the page. Other add-ons help you to navigate without your mouse but often not very intuitively.

Gleebox offers a highly customizable and intuitive way to navigate web pages via keyboard. At its most basic gleeBox allows you to hit the G key, and every link on the page is highlighted and you can navigate to it by typing part or all of the link name into gleeBox. Check out the videos below to see it in action.

Ever seen a picture online that you're kicking yourself for not saving, especially now that it's been removed? There's a good chance it may still be saved on your computer; all you need to do is familiarize yourself with your browser's cache.

Front page photo by Jeffrey Beall.

We've covered resurrecting images from your browser cache once before, highlighting how to recover images in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari, but the browser landscape has changed a little since then. Luckily, recovering images from Firefox hasn't really changed, and popular alternatives like Chrome and Opera all have similar recovery methods. In Firefox, it works the same as last time we posted it:

The Greasemonkey extension has long been one of our favorite tools for Firefox, allowing us to bend the web to our will with light and simple scripts written in JavaScript. Now most Greasemonkey scripts work in Chrome, no extension required.

In fact, when you install a userscript in Chrome, it actually installs as though it's a regular old extension. That means, as the original Greasemonkey developer and Google employee Aaron Boodman points out on the official Chromium Blog, that Chrome users now have roughly 40,000 more extensions to add to the list.

Some scripts won't work with Chrome just yet because of differences between Firefox and Chrome, but it looks like that number is somewhere around 15-20%. Not bad, Chrome. It's getting more and more tempting to consider Chrome as a viable Firefox alternative every day.

The improved support for userscripts should work on any Chrome version over 4, which includes the stable version on Windows and both of the beta versions on OS X and Linux. If you'd like to try out a few good userscripts—for Chrome or Firefox—our list of the top 10 Greasemonkey user scripts is a good place to get started.

The Greasemonkey extension has long been one of our favorite tools for Firefox, allowing us to bend the web to our will with light and simple scripts written in JavaScript. Now most Greasemonkey scripts work in Chrome, no extension required.

In fact, when you install a userscript in Chrome, it actually installs as though it's a regular old extension. That means, as the original Greasemonkey developer and Google employee Aaron Boodman points out on the official Chromium Blog, that Chrome users now have roughly 40,000 more extensions to add to the list.

Some scripts won't work with Chrome just yet because of differences between Firefox and Chrome, but it looks like that number is somewhere around 15-20%. Not bad, Chrome. It's getting more and more tempting to consider Chrome as a viable Firefox alternative every day.

Google's Toolbar does a few nifty things, but it is, well, a browser toolbar. And it might track your browsing without permission. Here's how to get most of its features without having to install it, or nearly any extra software.

At its heart, the Google Toolbar is a horizontal strip that offers a Google search box—which your browser already provides, to the right of your address bar—and links to Google services and web tools. For nearly all of those extra tools, you can simply add a bookmarklet, a tiny little web script program, to your browser's own bookmarks bar by dragging it from the spot we've linked to. That way, you can rename, rearrange, and pick and choose the web tools you want to have handy at all times.

If you're more of a keyboard fan, or don't like the clutter of the bookmark bar, you can activate those bookmarks using tricks like keyword bookmarking in Firefox. The CyberNet blog details how to set up keyword bookmarks in Opera. If you're a Safari user on a Mac, you can quickly access any bookmarks in your bookmarks bar based on location—Cmd+1 activates the first bookmark (or, in this case, bookmarklet), Cmd+2 the second, and so on. If you're using Quicksilver, it can expand to cover your bookmarks for convenient access. Internet Explorer user? You can kind of get there with a registry hack, or by installing IE7Pro, which, oddly enough, works on Internet Explorer 8.

Onward, now, to the toolbar liberation.

Filed under: Productivity, Freeware, Browser Tips

Don't you just love it when you find a way to make something good even better? Remember the Milk is a fantastic online task management application, and here are a couple of browser extensions that make it even better if you're using Firefox or Chrome.

Both of these extensions have existed in some form in Firefox for a while, but they have both recently been released for Chrome, and they're worth investigating for either platform if you haven't already.

A Bit Better RTM

Filed under: Internet, Features, Mozilla, Browsers

Firefox: Sick of having to start a completely new session (and get rid of your old one) just for private browsing? Firefox extension Private Browsing Window starts your private session in a new window without closing old ones, like Chrome's Incognito Window.

It's not quite as smooth as Chrome's Incognito Windows, but it works pretty well. Private Browsing Window essentially starts a new instance of Firefox alongside your existing session, with a new profile in which Private Browsing is enabled. You don't have all your old bookmarks or preferences in your new private window, but you don't have to end your non-private session, which is certainly convenient. This feature replaces the old Private Browsing feature in the Tools menu and adds a small shortcut in the bottom right corner of your screen. Note that this add-on requires the latest and greatest Firefox 3.6 to run, so if you haven't updated, what are you waiting for?

Private Browsing Window is free and works wherever Firefox 3.6 does. Thanks, Jason!

Filed under: Internet, Features, Mozilla, Browsers, Lists

Filed under: Design, Fun, Features, Mozilla, Browsers

Windows only: Portable utility FlashCookiesView displays a list of those hidden Flash cookies that web sites use to track where you are going, and allows you to easily delete them.

We've already explained how to clean up Flash cookies in our guide to browsing without leaving a trace, but FlashCookiesView makes viewing and deleting the cookies extremely simple no matter what browser you're using—just open the utility, and you'll see a list of cookies you can view or delete. You'll want to note that even when you use private browsing mode, Flash cookies are still tracking you across sessions—in the screenshot above, the offending cookie was generated in Google Chrome's private browsing mode.

FlashCookiesView is a free download for Windows only, but be sure to read our guide to browsing without a trace for an automated method to clean them up.

Filed under: Mozilla, Browsers

Filed under: Mozilla, Browsers

Filed under: Mozilla, Browsers

If you have been waiting for the official WOT extension for Google Chrome, Iron Browser, & ChromePlus then your wait is over. Now you can enjoy the full power of WOT in your Chromium-Code based browser.

Installation

Installing WOT in Chrome is quick and simple but you will have to click on “Install” when the confirmation message windows appears in order to finish adding the extension to your browser.

As soon as you have finished installing the extension a new tab will open up that allows you to choose the level of protection that you desire. The “Basic” level is selected by default… Once you have made your selection click “Next”.

According to global analytics web site StatCounter, Firefox 3.5 has edged past Internet Explorer 7 as the most popular browser on the market today. Keep in mind that the stats in question are differentiating by version, so it's actually kind of a lucky swing for Firefox at the moment, as Internet Explorer users continue to migrate from IE7 to IE8. (IE8 will most likely surpass Firefox 3.5 shortly.) If we were comparing browser share but ignoring version numbers, we'd be looking at a very different picture (though IE continues its steady decline while Firefox and Chrome usage appears to be steadily growing). Either way, it's a small victory for the non-default browser market. [StatsCounter via Mashable]

Chrome only: The oft-imitated New Tab button on Google's Chrome browser isn't bad, but it's not the most customizable either. Soup it up—and access your favorite bookmarked web sites quickly—with Speed Dial.

Instead of keeping 4,000 tabs or windows open so you can revisit web sites quickly, just drop them into Speed Dial and keep them all accessible in a single click. The next time you open Speed Dial, all your favorite sites will be neatly lined up with a thumbnail preview of each page so you can tell what's what at a glance. That's all pretty similar to how the default New Tab page works, but Speed Dial expands on that in a few ways.

This slick extension lets you choose how many favorite slots you want to have available, anywhere from three to 36. You can also customize the background color, theme, and whether you want the search box displayed on Speed Dial's main screen.

Once installed, the extension places a small icon in the address bar of your browser. When you're visiting a page you want to add to Speed Dial, just click the icon and it will appear in your list. Note: Sometimes it takes a minute or two for changes to show up.

Filed under: Internet, Open Source, Browsers

Filed under: Browsers, Web