QuickNote allows you to take quick notes within the Firefox window as you browse the web.

Quite often we take notes of what we come across when we browse the web. If you are an organized note-taker, using Evernote or OneNote or any of the leading note-taking solutions, by all means go for it. I don’t want to interrupt the workflow that you are very used to with those tools. But if you are not a heavy note-taker but instead would love a simple solution to take notes while you browse then I would like to introduce you to QuickNote.

QuickNote is a Firefox extension that allows you to take notes as you browse through the web pages. It is a simple text-only window that can either be docked as a floating window, or a sidebar window in your browser or a tab within the browser. Once docked it sits there quietly waiting for you to scribble it with notes. The notes can be saved to plain simple text files which gives you flexibility over what you do with those files.

If you are convinced that QuickNote might be something you wanted to give it a try, head over to the Firefox Add-ons website, download and install the add-on. Once installed you might want to tweak some simple settings to make sure it meet your needs.

Go into “Tools” > “QuickNote” > “Settings“.

On the “Main” settings tab, you can customize where you want QuickNote to send the selected text to, Number of note tabs and when you invoke QuickNote how do you want it to load, either as a Sidebar, Floating Window or a Tab.

On the “User Files” tab, you can specify the text file where you want the notes to be saved to. Think about the flexibility this would give you if you are to take the text file and do something with it.

As its name implies the “Customization” tab allows you to customize the look and feel of the QuickNote window itself. You can even define custom CSS styles for the window.

On the “Advanced” tab, you can set the file encoding option and the auto-save settings.

You don’t have to set all these settings but you might surely want to specify the text file where you want to save the notes to, over at the “User Files” tab.

Once done, invoke QuickNote either as a sidebar, tab or a floating window and you should be able to scribble notes on to it as you come across interesting information while to browse the web.

I hope you find QuickNote an useful extension to your Firefox browser. I’ve already started to use this extension quite extensively. I do use Evernote big time but I felt QuickNote is a bit handier as it sits closer to the browser and I don’t have to switch to another application to save my notes. But I do reconcile the notes with Evernote for the notes that are going to live for a while. So even if you use Evernote or OneNote you might still find QuickNote useful. Give it a try.