Firefox extensions / Add-Ons

[Harrison]

I just remembered about this thread so thought I would finally post my selection of must have Firefox extensions (Add-ons).

FEBE - This is an essential extension for all Firefox users. It backs up all of your extensions so you don't need to add them all back again if you install Firefox on another PC, or need to reinstall Windows on your current system. It can also backup everything else to do with firefox, including bookmarks, passwords, auto complete, phishing rules, and cookies. This is very useful.

Adblock Plus - This is a very good web advert blocker which you can quickly configure to specify sites you wish it not to block adverts for, and it can quickly be switched on and off if needed.

Customize Google - If you use Google to search the web then this is very useful. You can configure many aspects such as how Google handles search results, as well as remove adverts and spam.

DOM Inspector - This opens up a new window that allows you to examine the webpage code. Very useful for web developers.

DownThemAll! - This is a very useful download utility. It gives you a list of all downloadable content on a webpage. You can then just select what you want and it will get to work in the background downloading it all for you.

Enhanced Bookmark Search - This adds a search facility to the bookmarks menu and the organise bookmarks page. Very useful if you have a lot of bookmarked sites.

Fasterfox - Lots of features to optimise and customise how Firefox runs.

FlashGot - This useful extension works with the download manager FlashGet so that you can directly pass downloads to the manager from webpages.

IE View - Alex already mentioned IETab. This instead allows you to send a webpage to IE. Useful if a site isn't fully compatible with FF.

Image Zoom - Not that useful but it allows you to zoom into images.

Linkification - This is very useful and is one of the main extensions I miss if it's not installed. It automatically creates hyper links for any URLs within a webpage that are just text and not actually linked on the site. Very useful when using forums as many people post links in their posts, but that are not actually hyperlinked.

NoScript - This adds a little icon to the bottom right of the browser and allows you to quickly control the scripts you want to allow a site to run. You can block all scripts from running, stop javascript, or set rules on a site by site basis.

Smoothwheel - Seems an odd extension until you install it. It basically smooths out the vertical scrolling pf a page when using the mouse wheel.

Stop-or-reload Button - Another extension which you might not instantly think of needing. By default Firefox shows both the Stop and Reload buttons in its icon menu. But you can only actually use one of these at a time, so this extension merges them into a single button that switches between the two depending on what is currently happening in the browser.

Tab Mix Plus - This a very nice extension which enhances the Firefox tabbed browsing and adds a lot of useful extra features. The best is a loading bar within each of the tabs so you can instantly see how much of each tab has loaded. Also having a close icon to the right of each tab is useful.

Web Developer - If you do any form of web developing, even just making your own web pages, then this is essential. It lets you examine the contents of any webpage from a large number of tools provided within its tool bar that is loading along with the others in firefox. I find this invaluable. Especially the ability to click on any page content to instantly see all of the CSS controlling that element, the ability to see the order of nested DIV tags, the sizes of areas within a page, and much more. You can also examine cookies, images, clear caches etc...

[Submeg]

I have running:

del.icio.us bookmarks
dog ears
download statusbar
fisheye tabs
googlepreview
internote
its all text!
photo 2 text
resurrect pages
save complete
save image in folder
save link in folder
save session
separate tabs
stop autoplay
tab in textarea
tab renamizer
timestamp
unplug
update notifier
usage counter
vertigo

And will be adding more!

[Harrison]

There are also a number of treaks you can make to the main Firefox config file to make it run smoother, or to change how things work. Some good quick guides to many of these small changes can be found at this nice site:

http://www.howtogeek.com/tag/internet/

Some useful ones include turning off prepetching to save ram, open search in new tab, change download locations, and many more.

[Harrison]

Now the Firefox 3 has been out as a final release for a couple of months now I thought I would finally upgrade from 2 to 3. The upgrade went smoothly, retaining the bookmarks and other settings from the older version. However it couldn't connect to the add-ons server to check for any updates to the old plug-ins I had installed, so none of them were functioning when I first launched version 3.

After some googling I found that many others also have this problem, with the security certificate for the add-ons server causing an error. But manually going to the add-ons site and then adding an exception for the certificate seems to fix this problem. Quite a bad flaw though.

Once the add-ons server was working I then discovered that many of the old add-ons no longer have compatible versions. But for most, this is actually just another flaw that the automated "find updates" feature doesn't seem to find them. But going to the Add-Ons site and searching for them manually finds them and you can the install to update them. There are some you do still just have to accept don't work any more, but for me they were all minor add-ons I can live without.

There are however two current issues. There are currently no British English dictionaries compatible with Firefox 3. So for the moment we have to live with using the US version until someone updates and fixes the older version 2 UK dictionary.

The other issue is that the realplayer plugin no longer works. This means that you can no longer use realplayer to download any youtube videos. For me the only reason I still had realplayer installed! Hopefully someone will fix that and release one for FF3. Again we just need to wait. We can however still use the same feature via IE *spit*.

So for the moment here is the list of Firefix 3 Add-Ons I have installed.

Adblock Plus - Same as it was for version 2. Adds advanced adblocking abilities.

ColorZilla - This adds the ability to select colours from a webpage and paste them into your code. Very useful for web developers.

Console^2 - This adds a lot of additional features to the Firefox error console. You can now inspect a lot more languages and errors created.

DownThemAll! - Same as it was for FF2. You can easily select any content from the current webpage via a list of content and links and download them all with one click.

ErrorZilla Mod - When a webpage causes an error, instead of getting the usual cryptic error message this add-on replaces it with a much more useful page giving you options to do much more, including looking up why the server is causing the error, looking up alternatives in google, or looking up the cache for the page.

FEBE - This is the updated version from FF2. It is currently in beta so not available from the main FF Add-Ons site. Just google it and you will find the page with the beta download. This useful utility will backup all of your installed add-ons, bookmarks and FF settings for quick and easy reinstall on the same or another PC later. Very useful.

Firebug - A web development tool to examine webpages and speed up error fixing when developing web sites.

Firecookie - This add-on to Firebug adds a cookies manager to Firebug.

FireFTP - This is a simple FTP client that loads into a tab within firefox. Justful for quick file transfers.

FlashGot - This links to external file downloaders for quick and easy mass file downloading.

IE Tab - FF3 version of IE View. Lets you view a webpage using the IE render engine for sites that don't work correctly with FF.

Linkification - Turns urls in text into clickable links

NoScript - Use to disable scripts from being run on specific websites.

PageZoom - Zoom into webpages in the same way Opera does.

RankQuest SEO Toolbar - Useful for quickly collecting information for SEO work. Collect common keywords on pages etc...

Smoothwheel - Smooths page scrolling.

Tab Mix Plus - Same as FF2 version. Adds advanced tab features. Still in beta so you need to do a google search to find the download.

Tamper Data - You can use this to capture inbound and outbound data transfers between the server and your browser. You can then pause the transfer, alter the data being transferred and then continue the transfer. Useful for testing site security and also for other purposes.

TinyURL Creator - Quickly create tinyURLs for use online.

United States English Dictionary - Adds the ability for FF to spellcheck all text fields and input boxes on websites. Currently a British dictionary isn't available for FF3 so we have to use this one.

Web Developer - A must have add-on for web developers. Adds a web developer toolbar to FF with a ton of features to look through and analyse all aspects of websites.

[Demon Cleaner]

FFBE - This is the updated version from FF2. It is currently in beta so not available from the main FF Add-Ons site. Just google it and you will find the page with the beta download. This useful utility will backup all of your installed add-ons, bookmarks and FF settings for quick and easy reinstall on the same or another PC later. Very useful.

Do you mean FEBE, or has that changed now?

[Harrison]

Yep I did. Typo. Sorry about that.

The beta of FEBE can be downloaded from the developers page here.

[vorlon31]

Great thread. I have installed fireFTP already and will check out the others you guys recommended.