Mini Map Sidebar - Online mapping tools for FireFox

Posted on September 19, 2007 at 8:20 am

Make sure to read other posts from the Firefox Addons series!

The reason I love using FireFox is because there are always a crazy number of extensions and add-ons that are being created for it everyday which are just very useful and just plain cool. Take for instance Mini Map Sidebar, a fabulous FireFox add-on that has tons and tons of great features and will have map lovers jumping for joy!

After I installed this nifty little application, I don’t even bother going directly to Google Maps anymore, I can get Google, Yahoo, Live local directions and maps by simply dragging and dropping addresses into my sidebar, without having to leave the current page I’m on! Once installed, you can use the program in two ways: either via a toolbar button or via the sidebar by going to View -> Sidebar -> Minimap. You can also quickly bring it up with the Shift+ Cntrl + E key sequence.

One of the best features of Mini Map Sidebar is the ability to simply drag and drop an address from a webpage onto the sidebar and automatically pull up the map. All you have to do is highlight the address and drag it over to the bottom portion of the sidebar and you’ll instantly get a Google map. You can also change your default mapping provider to Yahoo Maps or Windows Live Maps.

Even better, you can store all of your address into Mini Map Sidebar and then easily get directions with a single click. Once you drag an address to the sidebar, you can right-click on it and choose “To Default Address” to instantly get directions to your default location, such as home or work.

And that’s just the beginning of MMS! You can easily switch to Satellite view or Hybrid view for any map. You can even toggle Traffic info from directly within MMS. MMS gives you the longitude/latitude for each location and can even generate code for a map so that you can embed it onto a site or email it to someone.

Other cool features that MMS has includes the ability to get more information about your location by searching at upcoming.org, search Amazon for books, search eBay for any items in that location, or search Maps.com. It even has the ability to view KML files without having to open them in Google Earth! If that’s not enough, MMS can also find places that are reviewed at Tagzania and Platial.

Finally, one of the last features, but also very cool, is the geodiscovery feature that can automatically detect if a web page has geo tags on it and will pull up the map of the location when you open MMS. The address will show up in the area below the map and clicking on the link will pan over to the geo-tagged area. Of course, there are not tons of pages that have geo tags, but if you like browsing through Flickr photos, you might want to keep MMS open since most photos on Flickr have tags.

Overall a very nice extension for the average user and for advanced users also. Again, the best thing about this that I really have come to enjoy is that you can map an address without having to leave the page you’re on or open a new tab, etc. The newest version supports Firefox 1.5 all the way up to FireFox 3 Alpha.

via Wired