an important milestone

Where to begin. It's been a heck of a week for me with several projects at work reaching critical mass. Under immense pressure to build no fewer than three custom solutions with buggy software nonetheless. But that's not what this post is about. This post is about something much more important.

Today I reached a new plateau in my quest to move from the desktop to the browser. Allow me explain - our company just rolled out Exchange 2003 and the associated Outlook Web Access (OWA) client - you know the browser-based version of the Outlook client (which I deplore, hate, and have wanted to ditch for many years). I've been looking to move to a 100% browser based email client for Exchange for some time and while OWA tends to be an IE-centric interface, I've got a quick and dirty solution that allows me to open OWA in a Firefox tab. Here's what you need to do:

1. Install the IE Tab firefox add-on
   
2. Restart FF and fire up a new tab in Firefox.
   
3. Use the IE tab context switch (click the FF icon in the browser status bar - bottom of browser).
4. Enter URL to OWA webmail client.
   
5. Tag it with the brand spankin new del.icio.us keyword feature "owa" and now any time you type owa into your browser url bar, OWA will open. (you'll need the full blown Firefox del.icio.us extension to do this step). [SEE UPDATE BELOW]
   
6. You're done. That's it. No more need for outlook application.

Here's what mine looks like:
Do you realize what this means for me? I've finally rid myself of my dependence on Microsoft Office as a desktop platform for personal productivity. Here's my list of Office replacements (all of which are tagged in my del.icio.us bookmarks with "start" tag - I use this to rapid fire open all in new tabs for super productivity when I need to start my day.

MSWord > Google Docs
Excel > Google Sheets
PPT > Thumbstacks
Outlook > OWA

Other MS Replacements that are part of my arsenal of tools:

Outlook Express News Reader > Google Reader
MSN / Windows Messenger > Meebo
Windows Search > Google Desktop
MS Paint > Irfanview
Windows start menu > Launchy

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DEL.ICIO.US KEYWORD FEATURE UPDATE: this feature has magically disappeared. I snapped a screenshot of it. I wonder if the del.icio.us guys are rolling out a new feature? For some strange reason, I don't see this new keywords field anymore. But I do have proof that it was there at one point. See:

Technorati tags: microsoft office, replacement, firefox, IE tab, browser, outlook, outlook web access, owa, hack, tips, howto