Best Firefox Add-Ons?

F

Flippy the Squirrel

EGO Zealot
Joined
Mar 10, 2008
Messages
1,960
NOTE: If you only use Internet Explorer, feel the shame, then download Firefox and bask in the glory!

There are a few add-ons to Firefox that I consider essential, a couple that are shiny, and one or two that I hope get more use in the future. I want to know what add-ons you find useful, and why.

Here's a few of mine:

del.icio.us bookmarks extension
Used for making my del.icio.us bookmarks available in browser. (My bookmarks are at [link=http://del.icio.us/afroninja]del.icio.us/afroninja[/link] if you're curious.)

DOM Inspector (obtained by doing a "custom install" of Firefox)
A good tool for web nerds like myself, it lets you examine and manipulate the Document Object Model of web pages.

Forecastfox
This is a great way to have the weather (and severe weather alerts) available at all times in your browser. (It's currently Partly Sunny and 42 degrees Fahrenheit.)

PicLens
For sites with this enabled, PicLens lets you do full-screen image browsing. It's hard to describe. Just check out the goodness.

Sumbleupon
When someone asks "where did you find that?" it's frequently the result of stumbling through the web. If you use this, and want to connect with me, look me up.

Tails
If you're not familiar with Microformats, this one's even harder to describe, so ... just go check out Microformats.org, then install this extension, then go to my website and see how it works.

THE Web Developer Toolbar
How I ever got along without this beauty I'll never know. If you do ANY website coding, this is the toolbar for you. Trust me. It's just awesome. You have to see it to believe it. It will complete you like Rene Zellweger never could.
 
Oh the joys off bets versions of firefox. I'm running the newest beta and unfortunately the Web Developer Toolbar doesn't work in it. Sadness.
 
Wasn't there already a thread on this somewhere?

Oh well.

I'm not going to link these, you want them, you find them. I'm just that lazy.

FasterFox
Browser tweaks as well as accelerating general web browsing, can exceed RFC specs if you desire.

IE Tab
Runs a tab with the IE engine. For those stupid pages that simply will not work properly in Firefox.

Greasemonkey
Modifies the code of incoming web-pages based on address. Allows you to add custom code to sites client-side. Because I'm not going to let someone's piss poor web-coding ruin my enjoyment of a site.

Adblock Plus
There are times that I don't realize after weeks of use that a page even HAS ads. It's an unobtrusive and silent ad removal tool that is entirely customizable and works off of a master list of ad URLs.

Gmail Manager
Because I like Gmail's web client (the old one, not the new one, I actually use a GM script to revert it automatically) enough to not use POP. This tool lets me easily keep track of the half dozen email addresses I currently use.

MeasureIt
A neat little in-browser dimension measuring tool. More useful than you'd think.

Extended Statusbar
Because I like to know how fast a page loaded, how much it loaded, and the number of images on the page.

DownThemAll!
The single most useful download tool I've ever found. It was most likely developed for porn, as it allows you to download just what you want from a page by use of regular expressions. But beyond that, it's a download accelerator akin to GetRight or DAP, but being part of the browser itself integrates far smoother. And it's free. I can't say enough good things about this.

FireFTP
Though I tend to use FileZilla for my FTP needs, this little in-browser FTP client is fully functional and I still use it occasionally.

Tab Mix Plus
For all of your tabbed browsing needs. Closed tab recall, saved tabs, locked tabs, fully customizable tabs. And a vastly superior session manager than the default. Never again lose a page you were looking at.

Oh! And I use the [link=http://www.pimpzilla.nl/]Pimpzilla[/link] skin, which is the single most tacky decadent skin I have ever seen. My browser is fuzzy and you can't make me unhappy about that.
 
Aww, you beat me to it Lafin :(. I was going to post about Adblock Plus. Just make sure that you have the filter off on the eGO sites. :)
 
Yeah, didn't realize we ran ads at all till the first rollcall :P
 
You know that an ad blocker is good when the creators are trying to be sued by ad agencies :-)

The ads here are the only ones I ever see, much less click on!
 
Yeah, I'm really impressed by that piclens bit.

Wasn't sure how often I was going to use it, but between deviant ART and Google Images...

Nice fine Fippy.
 
Yeah man! Firefox all the way!

I use Delicious, Stumble Upon, and Firebug pretty regularly.

I deal with customers all day long who live on IE and have never been to the church of Our Lady of Mozilla Firefox. Don't let it happen to you...
 
Many that were already mentioned, and some that weren't, alphabetically:
AdBlock Plus - duh.
Add Bookmark Here - Allows you to add your bookmarks to particular folders without a dialog box popping up
Bookmark Duplicate Detector - speaks for itself
BugMeNot - Automatically requests usernames/passwords from BugMeNot for free sites like the New York Times where you need an account to see anything.
Colorzilla - Allows you to pick colors out of webpages/images (good for developers)
CookieCuller - You can choose which cookies you want to keep, and have it throw away ALL others every time you restart your browser.
Download Statusbar - Puts your downloads in the statusbar instead of the gigantic download window
Fasterfox - already mentioned
Firebug - Web developer tool. Allows you to see and edit the webpage in real time, including things that were added by script, iframe, etc. Priceless extension.
Fission - Just a useful took for being able to visually identify when a webpage has completed loading (changes the background of the location bar into a progress bar)
Flashblock - Blocks flash until you click on it. No more surprising flash games, ads, etc.
Foxmarks - Bookmark Synchronization if you have multiple machines, and allows you to access your bookmarks online remotely
FoxyProxy - Configure/use multiple web proxies by address pattern or specific selection
Greasemonkey - !! Write your own scripts to mangle webpages to add/modify/delete info from pages. Another priceless extension.
IE Tab - already mentioned
Linkification - Turn text links into clickable links
Live HTTP Headers - View the headers being sent between your browser and the server. Useful for developers/debugging.
Modify Headers - Modify the headers being sent to the server
Remember Mismatched Domains - Remembers SSL certificates that have mismatched domains - useful if you hit a lot of sites using personal certificates and hate the 'are you sure' dialog.
Save Image In Folder - Configure folders that you want to save images to (cats, guns, porn, etc.), right click, and save... no more having to search paths
Save Link In Folder - Same as above, but for links
Session Fix - Optionally restore the tabs you were viewing when starting Firefox if it were to crash on you, or you had to exit without closing them all.
StumbleUpon - already mentioned
Tabbrowser Preferences - Preferences for tabs
twinturbo.org Unlinker - Take a directory of images links into actual images. Useful if you run across "Index of..." pages while browsing. You just activate this and they all show up.
User Agent Switcher - Change your useragent. Useful for testing.
Web Developer Toolbar - already mentioned
 
Adding to my list...

Stylish
Makes for very easy by URL or by Domain custom CSS definition. Just started using this recently when a few pages I like changed stuff for the worse and I wanted to change it back.
 
If adblock hasn't been mentioned yet, I'm gonna start crying. This thing has completely saved my sanity.
 
Somewhere I have instructions on how to allow extensions on new versions of Firefox, I'll go dig that up. Also, here's mine.

GREASEMONKEY:
Allows external modification of websites. I have a custom GreaseMonkey script for GameFAQs hosted here.

FASTERFOX:
Speeds up loading time. Nothing wrong with that.

WEB DEVELOPER:
The uses for all the information it provides are endless. So much <div> info.

HTML VALIDATOR:
If my websites weren't valid I'd be so unhappy. It's just a feed off W3C validator but it works great.

DOWNLOAD STATUSBAR:
Right now I'm stuck with DownThemAll! but I really preferred the old statusbar. Sadly, it's actually incompatible with 3 Beta 3 (my update trick won't work with it).

FIREBUG:
I can attribute about 80% of my CSS knowledge to stuff I spied on using Firebug's CSS inspector feature. Unfortunately, it doesn't work on 3 Beta 3 AND it crashes Gmail 11 times out of 10.

And here's some that I've tried and never cared for.

CLIPMARKS:
Kind of boring. I'm not into bookmarking every website I ever visit like most people, and I never really cleared up on what Clipmarks does.

FANCY NUMBERED TABS:
I haven't uninstalled it or anything because it makes so little an impact (changes the x graphic on your tabs to a number), but it doesn't really do much.




EDIT I found my instructions for installing old add-ons to 3 Beta 3.

1. Go to the download page for your extension of choice.
2. Right click on the download link and save as to a location of your choice. It should be a .xpi file.
3. Open the .xpi file (with WinRAR preferably).
4. Locate the file "install.rdf". It is not inside any sub folders and should be alongside a .xul file.
5. Inside install.rdf, look for a tag that says "<!-- Firefox -->". Just a note for those of you who use SciTE, it will be in green.
6. Under the Firefox comment, look for a tag called "<maxVersion>".
7. The number next to <maxVersion> will likely be 2.0.0.*. Change this number to 3.0.0.*. (those last periods are the ends of sentences--do not include them)
8. Save "install.rdf". You can close WinRAR now.
9. Find the file where you saved it and drag it into your Firefox icon. This will cause it to install.

NOTE: This does not work with all extensions, as some of them are physically incompatible with Firefox 3 Beta 3. Notable extensions I've tried that do not work are Download Statusbar and Firebug. Some Greasemonkey extensions will not work properly (the Homestar Runner All-in-One will not work correctly, though I wrote a script for GameFAQs that works correctly still). Extensions like Web Developer, Fasterfox, and Javascript Debugger still work.
 
McAfee SiteAdvisor is a pretty useful one. If you're feeling unsure about the safeness of a website, theres a little box at the bottom right that will tell you if the website is safe or not.
 
[quote1205434926=RedFlag]
McAfee SiteAdvisor is a pretty useful one. If you're feeling unsure about the safeness of a website, theres a little box at the bottom right that will tell you if the website is safe or not.
[/quote1205434926]
QFT.
 
Most of mine have already been listed, but I'll add a few I didn't see:

FEBE - a backup utility for Firefox, includes the ability to backup all your extensions (including FEBE) for an easy reinstall
PDF Download - allows you to either open a PDF, convert it to HTML, or download.

On a side note, for people who view PDF's fairly often, I found that FoxIt Reader (http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php) is much faster and cleaner than Adobe
 
From what I've read in their forums, FEBE is pretty hit or miss if it works or not.

Just manually backup. Backup the profile folder, then on the new install, create a profile of the same name, run that profile, close the browser, then overwrite the profile folder it created with the old one.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top