Firefox is very addictive web browser specially when you are browsing video or news sites. There have been days when I have spent many hours on Youtube just watching informational videos on health or view of different people on a random topic. When you are using Firefox and want to make a nice cup of tea, usually you have to get up, go to the kitchen, start making the tea and wait for it to be ready. But thanks to the Tea Timer extension in Firefox, now you no longer have to wait in the kitchen. You can set the water filled kettle on the stove, put tea in it and come back to use your Firefox – Tea Timer would tell you when the tea is ready.
You can install the Tea Timer add-on from the Mozilla add-ons website. The installation of this add-on requires you to restart the web browser and it can be used immediately after the restart. After the restart, you will see a new icon in the add-ons bar at the bottom-right corner of the Firefox window. Clicking on this icon would show a menu which lets you select which type of tea you are going to make. All different types of tea take different amounts of time for proper brewing of the tea to bring the right color and taste. For example, the black tea, that I usually make, takes about 4 minutes to be made. The Tea Timer lets you choose from green tea, black tea, white tea, oolong tea, rooibos tea and more. You can choose a type of tea from this menu to start the Tea Timer.
When the timer is up, it would show a message that says “Your tea is ready!”. It also plays a beep sound which depends on your system. For example, in Windows XP it plays the tada sound by default. But if you change the sound scheme in Windows, then it would be playing a different sound. On other operating systems, their default alert sound is played. You can now close this message box and enjoy your tea.
In the options for Tea Timer, you can choose a custom sound to be played. A nice idea is to have your partner, husband or wife record saying, “Your tea is ready”, into an MP3 file and use this MP3 file as the sound in Tea Timer. You can record the sound using the freeware application Audacity easily. In other options for Tea Timer, you can choose the notification message box style – Firefox style or system notification. Although it comes with all the popular tea types, you can add or modify the tea types and the time taken for them.
This Tea Timer add-on is very useful if you prefer to make the tea using the tea bags. You can put the boiling water in a cup, dip the tea bag in it, cover the cup and start the Tea Timer for the appropriate type of tea. When the Tea Timer message pops up, you can take out the tea bag and enjoy your tea. You can also put in other ingredients like sugar, milk, lemon, honey etc., to your taste. Actually I made a cup of herbal tea when I started writing this article and it tastes really good.
You can download and install the Tea Timer add-on from https://addons.mozilla.org/.