Hyperwords

The Firefox Internet browser is famous for being the most malleable program of its kind. As soon as Firefox 3, its most recent build, was released, hundreds –and now thousands — of plug-ins were created for it.

Most are silly tools you would do better without: pointless additions that are just going to make your computer move slower. Hyperwords, however, is an application you may very well find yourself using so much that you can’t do without it.

Hyberwords is free a plug-in created for Firefox 3 that puts many features of an advanced Internet user at the fingertips of any beginner. Go find a word you don’t know, highlight it, right-click and suddenly you’ve got any information about that word available to you. Link straight to Wikipedia, a thesaurus, hear your word spoken aloud, translate it to Japanese, and then shop for it on craigslist — all from your first right-click.

For the advanced user who can already do anything Hyperwords can, this is a tool of convenience. Say you want to translate a word into Greek. Normally, you’d have to copy the word, open up a new tab, type in freetranslation.com, paste the word, find English-to-Greek, and then finally translate. With Hyperwords, simply highlight, right-click and hit T, E, G. The word translates directly onto the page, and you’re done that much quicker.

Is Hyperwords necessary? Not at all. Anyone who spends any substantial amount of time online will learn how to find anything they want without the aid of plug-ins. However, with so many resources condensed into your right-click and the company’s imminent crossover from Firefox to all of Windows, Hyperwords is a must-try.

If you do end up downloading it, make sure you play around with the user settings. Customize the program to your liking and your visits to the Web will be that much more fluid and enjoyable.