9 Firefox Extensions I Actually Use
by Devanshu Mehta
Everybody’s doing it so now, I guess, so will I. Here are my favorite Firefox extensions, in no particular order.
PDF Download: This extension allows me to view PDFs within my browser as a pdf, convert it to html to view. A dialog box that gives you pdf options also shows you the size of the pdf so you can decide what to do with it before downloading. Highly customizable, lightweight and highly recommended! “Download PDF Download”:http://www.rabotat.org/firefox
del.icio.us: I use “del.icio.us”:http://del.icio.us like a maniac and cannot live without my Del.icio.us plugin. It allows you to add the link you are viewing to your del.icio.us with a button on your main toolbar. Clicking on it pops up a window that will ask you for tags and a description of the link. When you submit that form, it will automatically submit the link you were viewing to your account. Again, highly customizable and easy to use. “Download del.icio.us extension”:http://del.icio.us/help/firefox/extension
SessionSaver: This one is a life saver. Some times your computer freezes up, or Firefox hangs, or you just have to shutdown or restart your computer- and you have 17 tabs open that you cannot afford to loose. Well, all hail Session Saver, a Firefox extension that will keep track of all the tabs you have open and when you reopen Firefox it will reload all of them (either automatically or when you ask it to). Can’t live without it. “Download SessionSaver”:http://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=436
SearchPluginHack: This is a simple one- Firefox allows you to add search engines to the search in the upper right corner but there is no simple way to delete them! Enter SearchPluginHack- let’s you right-click and delete a search engine from the drop down. Hurray! “Download SearchPluginHack”:http://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&id=1563
Forecastfox: I live in New England- I need my weather fix every 3 minutes. So Forecastfox gives me the next three days of weather visually in the bottom right corner of my Firefox and along with the doppler radar, alerts and more stuff than I could possible need from “AccuWeather”:http://www.accuweather.com. One click and I’m on their site figuring out how bad my weekend will be. “Download ForecastFox”:http://forecastfox.mozdev.org
Tabbrowser Preferences: This plugin adds a lot of functionality to the simple Firefox tabbed browsing feature. Again, a must have. “Download Tabbrowser Preferences”:http://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=158
CustomizeGoogle: This one is for the Google addicts among us. Among other things, this one removes ads, adds movie reviews, news links, weather results, product results to search results, links directly to images in Google image search, anonymize Google’s intrusive cookies, removes click tracking from Google search results, defaults GMail to https (SSL), and a lot more. “Download CustomizeGoogle”:http://www.customizegoogle.com
User Agent Switcher: Don’t you hate those web sites that don’t let you in because you are not using IE? Well a lot of them are just checking something called the user agent string of your browser and block you based on that. The good news is that you can fake that and the User Agent Switcher can help you there. You can pretend to be IE, Netscape, Opera, or anything your heart desires. “Download User Agent Switcher”:http://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=59
FlashBlock: I do not block ads (except pop-ups); what with the fact that I recover costs for these web sites with ads and that I really want to support the other sites I read, I don’t think it is cool. Flash, on the other hand, kills my browser and causes epileptic fits every time they animate the corners of my field of vision. FlashBlock blocks all flash (no kidding) and replaces them with a big ‘F’ that changes into a ‘Play’ button when you mouse-over. If you want to see that piece of Flash, you click play and it plays; because let’s face it, there is some Flash that is useful. “Download FlashBlock”:http://flashblock.mozdev.org
Do let me know in the comments below if you have any favorites of your own that I have not mentioned!
Ya know, i have been using firefox for a couple years, and i have never had a use for any of those 9 extensions, save for the forecastFox. Do know that i am not tryin to bash, however, i feel that there are some better ones that you did not list, for whatever reason. Perhaps you just havent used them. For example, The StumbleUpon toolbar and SendmeFile torrent bar are ones i could not live without. i use them daily. Give em a try, see if they dont become ‘must use’ for you as well
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@Gary, I agree that my list is not definitive; part of my reason in posting this list is to solicit responses from people like you who would disagree or add more to the list. Thanks!
I haven’t even heard of some of these before, but I definately will check out the flash blocker! Thank you soooo much for posting that one!
The extensions I use:
Fasterfox – Dont notice if it really increases the speed, but I like the counter in the status bar telling me how many seconds the page took to load (I usually have 5 or more tabs going simultaneously) I also like to use this as a guage of my network connection speed, many times the slowdown is because of their server/isp, not mine.
IE Tab – Only because some people insist on IE only sites…
Tab Mix Plus – Neat tab options, like an X on each tab.
Adblock – I use it mostly for blocking those flashing banners and images that are NSFW…
Web Developer – I do some web dev on the side, and this is a very comprehensive tool with lots of useful options
ColorZilla – ever wonder what color that site is using? never wanted to start a separate program to find out? well here you go!
CSS Viewer – may duplicate some functionality of Web Developer, but I like the way you can hover your mouse over any part of a site and get the specific info on just that element
Download Manager Tweak – my favorite feature of this is allowing the download manager to open in a tab