Here’s how you can get it:

1. Install Chromifox Basic.

OK, this part is totally optional. I just like the blue look. You can skip this step, so I guess this guide is really six steps.

2. Get rid of unnecessary buttons.

Right-click in the toolbar area and choose “Customize.” Drag everything you don’t want into the box that pops up to get rid of it. I even got rid of my Home button, although not everyone will want to.

3. Install Stylish and the Combine Stop/Reload Buttons style.

This will make Stop and Reload one button to further reduce the number of buttons.

4. Install Fission.

This turns your address bar into a progress bar.

5. Install URL Tooltip.

This lets you see URLs of links by hovering over them.

Once you have this and Fission, you no longer need the Status bar. Hide it by unchecking it under the “View” menu.

6. Set up Firefox to quickly search the Web from the address bar.

On the dropdown menu of your search box, choose Manage Search Engines.

Here you can assign a keyword to each search engine. For example, if you assign the keyword “g” to Google, you simply have to type “g [your search term]” in the address bar to search Google.

Since there’s no more need for a search box, you can get rid of it just like you got rid of your other buttons in step No. 2.

7. Ditch all the toolbars except the navigation bar.

Right-click in the toolbar area and uncheck everything except “Navigation Toolbar.”

If you need the menu bar, you can hit the “Alt” key to temporarily show it again. You won’t need the bookmarks menu because you can simply search for your bookmarks in the address bar, also called the Awesome Bar.

That’s it!

If you need a bookmark or a Web history entry, start typing it into the Awesome Bar and let Firefox find it for you. If you need the menu bar, just press Alt.

Clean and uncluttered.

In a nutshell, WSJ.com has some articles where you can only read the first few paragraphs for free before being prompted to subscribe.

However, you can read these same articles for free by coming to them via Google or Google News. I’ve made a Web browser bookmarklet that speeds up the process a bit.

The normal process without the bookmarklet involves a few steps:

• Go to the article and see that it’s restricted to subscribers
• Copy the headline
• Go to Google.com
• Enter the headline (and a site:wsj.com for good measure)
• Search
• Click the resulting link

Firefox users can simplify it somewhat:

• Go to the article
• Highlight the headline
• Right-click the headline and choose “Search Google for…”
• Click the resulting link

However, when you do this, WSJ.com isn’t always the first result (I keep getting Yahoo! News results), hence the benefit of a WSJ.com-specific search.

In the spirit of being really lazy efficiency, I have made a Javascript bookmarklet that shaves a few steps off.

It’s not perfect though. Ideally, you could go to the WSJ article, click the bookmarklet and go straight to the full version.

This bookmarklet is a step removed:

• Go to the article
• Click the bookmarklet, which pulls up a WSJ.com-specific Google search for the headline
• Click the resulting link

It works by using Javascript to extract the article’s headline from its h1 tag and perform a WSJ.com-specific Google search for that headline.

This should ensure that the first search result is the article in question, although it might not be perfect.

(In fact, if the article is not yet indexed in Google, it won’t work at all. So there’s that.)

If anyone knows how to make it go that final step of essentially clicking through to the Google search result using Javascript, please let me know. I am not sure it’s possible, however; I think WSJ.com might check the HTTP referrer to see if you are coming from Google, and I don’t think you can spoof that with Javascript (though you can get Firefox add-ons that do it).

So what’s the point of all this? It was mainly a Javascript bookmarklet exercise for me, and if it does save someone a little bit of hassle by removing a few steps from the process of reading WSJ, that’s very good. It’s not stealing from the WSJ; after all, the paper’s Web site allows readers coming from Google to read for free. This just expedites the process.

Anyway, here is the bookmarklet.

Firefox users, drag the button below to your browser’s Bookmarks toolbar. Internet Explorer users, right-click it and choose “Add to Favorites.”

Then go to a Wall Street Journal article and click the button.

[WSJ->Google]

Questions? Comments? Leave me a comment!

You give it a set of Web pages to watch and tell it how often to check them, and it notifies you when they change.

It’s ideal for keeping up with Web sites that don’t offer RSS feeds, or checking changes on just a single page of a large Web site (for example, a company’s listing of open jobs).

You can also use it to see exactly how a news story changes as it evolves online.

Here’s an example: I set Update Scanner to watch a page that showed an Associated Press story about President Barack Obama planning to call for tighter restrictions on banks.

Update Scanner has options, as you can see in the screen shot below, including setting how often it checks the page (as often as every five minutes, though it gives you a warning if you choose this).

Another option is to highlight changes to the text.

If Update Scanner checks a page and sees a change, it alerts you with a small box in the lower right corner of your Firefox window.

Clicking on the link in the alert takes you to the page. Update Scanner highlights the changes (if you’ve chosen that option) and offers you a chance to see both the old version of the page before the change and the new version.

As you can see, this is useful for learning which parts of a news story change from one update to the next.

The changes to the news story above are relatively minor, but on fast-paced breaking news stories you may get frequent updates bathed in yellow highlighting. Such is the nature of online news!

Update Scanner only uses highlighting for changes, not strike-through text, so it appears it won’t show you when text is eliminated.

However, you can see for yourself where text has been eliminated by looking at the older version of the page (via the “Old Page” link) and comparing it to the newer version.

Do you find this useful? Do you know another good use for Update Scanner? Leave a comment below!

Don’t have administrator rights on your computer to install software?

Grab a copy of Firefox Portable and run it off a USB drive.

Here are five great add-ons for journalists, in no particular order:

Juice

Select text, like a name or a term. Drag it out of position (into empty space somewhere in the browser window). Juice will launch a sidebar with Wikipedia, Google and video search results.

Thanks go to Mashable for turning me on to Juice.

Get Juice

Update Scanner

This Firefox add-on will check Web sites for you periodically and tell you if they’ve changed. You can set how often it should check your list of sites and how big of a change is needed for it to alert you. It’s great for keeping up with sites that don’t offer RSS feeds.

Update scanner will tell you when a Web site has changed. No more wasting time checking a huge list of sites.

Get Update Scanner

ScrapBook

ScrapBook lets you save pieces of Web pages, highlight them and make notes. It’s very handy for general research or for collecting information for a news story.

It can also follow links and capture the pages behind them. If you see a page with 10 links, and you want to save not only the page you’re on but every page it links to, you can do that.

Get ScrapBook

Split Browser

This add-on lets you split your Firefox browser window into multiple panes so you can compare two things side-by-side or just read numerous sites at once.

Get Split Browser

TwitterFox

If you can’t or don’t want to use Tweetdeck, the next best thing might be TwitterFox.

It’s not a big full-featured app for monitoring multiple Twitter searches and groups.

It’s a small, unobtrusive icon in Firefox’s status bar that you can click to quickly bring up the latest Tweets, replies and direct messages.

Plus, you can quickly switch among multiple accounts, which makes it a snap to update both your own personal Twitter account and any newsroom accounts you might be responsible for.

Get TwitterFox

What other Firefox add-ons are useful for journalists? Leave a comment!

But how do you stay on top of Web site changes when the site doesn’t use RSS?

Or what if you want to keep track of something that wouldn’t typically be published in an RSS feed – for example, a published government policy or a list of company executives?

There are several services you can use that will periodically check a Web page you have specified and notify you when it changes.

For those using the Firefox Web browser, I highly recommend Update Scanner.

It is very simple to manage the list of Web sites you are watching, and you have numerous options for how often a page is checked.

Also, because it uses your browser to check the page, rather than a third-party service, such as the e-mail-based services covered next, it is (in theory) more reliable. Your receipt of the updates is not subject to any downtime that befalls a third-party service’s servers.

There are also services that will e-mail you when a Web page changes.

The advantages of an e-mail-based service are that you do not have to use Firefox (for those who prefer another browser, or do not have a choice) and some people may like receiving the updates in their e-mail.

The biggest disadvantage is that you may not receive notification of a change as immediately as you do using Update Scanner.

I have used Change Detection and it is pretty good. It is free to use.

Here are two similar services. I have not tried them, so I can’t vouch for them. It appears they are free, but the free accounts are limited.

• WatchThatPage
• Detect Change

If you have a recommendation for a similar service, please let me know!

Now you can install a search plugin in your browser that will search the AP Stylebook’s online edition from your search box.

This requires an AP Stylebook account.

If you search, and you have not already logged in, you will be taken to the login page. After you log in, you will be taken to your search results.

Once you’re logged in, you can search from the search box to your heart’s content.

Click here to go to the download page.

Click “AP Stylebook” on that page to install it.

It works with Internet Explorer and Firefox. It may work with other browsers but I haven’t tested it.