In a photo tour I posted a few days ago, I provided some handy Firefox tips that can save you time if you spend a lot of time in almost everyone's favorite open source browser. There were also some efficiency boosts, and time-saving tips there. To get the most out of Firefox, though, I recommend using the best extensions. In this post, I'll round up six of my favorites.
Nuke Anything Enhanced is one of the most useful of all Firefox extensions. It allows you to use context menus (right-click menus) to hide almost anything on screen, including objects and things you've selected. In the screen seen here, selecting Remove everything else will allow me to leave only the area seen selected viewable and printable on the web page shown. This extension is especially useful for print jobs.
Reload Every is a good extension that adds an option to your context menus to reload the web page you are viewing every few seconds or minutes. This can be handy for news that you're watching, stocks, and much more.
Are you a web developer? If so, the Web Developer extension is a must have. It gives you instantly available control over Forms, CSS, images, and much more, as seen here. If you use a lot of separate web development tools, you'll find this handy for instant access to a whole lot of the tasks you perform all the time.
FireFTP is a full-featured, secure, cross-platform FTP client that runs in a tab of Firefox.
Tab Mix Plus , seen here, is an extension that enhances Firefox's tabbed browsing. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undoing closed tabs and windows, and more. Tabs are, without a doubt, one of the best tools in Firefox to master if you want to work faster and better. This extension will make it easy to do so without studying all the under-the-hood tabbed browsing features.
Finally, Firefox has a built-in ad blocker, but Adblock is a must-have extension that does a better job. It lets you add filters for all sorts of unwanted pop-up content, so that you have much more control over what you don't want. For even more useful Firefox extensions, see Mike Gunderloy's list, and the more than 75 reader comments and extension nominations that his post drew.
What are some of your favorite Firefox extensions?
Comments
Add CommentBy wmcjak on Apr. 16, 2008
Every web developer HAS to have Firebug.
By Alec McNayr on Apr. 16, 2008
Window Resizer and ColorZilla are great tools for me as a designer, while PDF Download, Download Statusbar, Fission, and Foxmarks make browsing nicer.
By Zach Brend on Apr. 16, 2008
Windoze has SnagIt as a cool tool for the desktop. A Firefox plugin that I like is ScreenGrab.
By an anonymous user on Apr. 16, 2008
Better than screengrab is clipmarks
By Cyril OnSoftware on Apr. 16, 2008
I personally can't live without Flashblock and All-In-One Gestures.
By lextm on Apr. 16, 2008
One vote for PicLens, the best image navigator for Google Images, Yahoo! Images and more.
By an anonymous user on Apr. 16, 2008
Oh yeah...piclens rocks! Cant live without SPEED DIAL either, although I think its an add-on.
By an anonymous user on Apr. 16, 2008
a few I can't live without...
noscript informenter download statusbar customize google (which is unfortunately incompatible with piclens)
By Shaik on Apr. 16, 2008
FullerScreen: I love the extra real estate I get in the form of screen space.
By Shaik on Apr. 16, 2008
Oh, I missed AdBlock plus. Another great plugin for nuking the ads and their placeholders.
By an anonymous user on Apr. 16, 2008
I have used the Web Developer toolbar for sometime now, and love it. Especially, when trying to debug response headers and all the meta info that surrounds web communication.
By an anonymous user on Apr. 16, 2008
Here's a vote against FireFTP. While it looks great, it has one big fatal flaw: it doesn't work through proxy servers, which almost all of us with corporate jobs must suffer with. If I can't FTP at work with it, it's not much good to me.
None of the other FTP extensions in Firefox work with proxies, either.
By JimP on Apr. 16, 2008
Remove It Permanently is a good complement to Nuke Anything Enhanced. I also use Tiny Menu on small screens, and I can't believe no-one has mentioned DownThemAll. Googles bookmark sync is useful if you use more than one PC too. I also prefer Adblock Plus. On slow PCs, NoScript is essential - sometimes on fast PCs too. The useful features of TabMixPlus were integrated into firefox ages ago, so I don't find it necessary any more. What I would like is an extension to give me more control over what mouseclicks do what, but not enough to go looking for one right now.
By Brian Donohue on Apr. 16, 2008
For folks who use multiple machines and multiple operating systems (I have Mac, XP, and Linux), Foxmarks, the bookmark synchronizer, is very useful. Not perfect, mind you, but damned handy when it works right. And if you travel a fair bit, it's always nice to have ready access to weather -- forecastfox is configurable by zip code and always on in the status bar. I also recently discovered Zotero -- if you do a lot of online research, this thing is a gem.
By Peter on Apr. 16, 2008
@Sam This is a great list of FF add-ons, narrowing it down to only five is no easy task. I must say though, you might have missed one. Me.dium, a social browsing add-on, is pretty rockinβ and I think you would really like it. Weβd love for you to check it out and give us your thoughts.
http://www.me.dium.com/promo/firefox/
me.dium username: pjn
By Peter on Apr. 16, 2008
narrowing it down to only *six
sorry :)
By bernstein on Apr. 16, 2008
Here is my must have list : - Adblock Plus (better than Adblock!) - GMarks (THE web based bookmarks extension) - ScrapBook - Session Manager (albeit ffx3 has session restore) - Firebug (Only for Developers)
and here is my nice to have list : - All-in-One Sidebar - Download Statusbar - Fission - Web Developer (Only for Developers)
By warner on Apr. 17, 2008
noscript forecastfox enhanced scrapbook cookie safe sage (rss) downthemall download helper (embedded video) flashblock febe & cleo tabmix plus
By Alistair on Apr. 17, 2008
Foxmarks is brilliant, on windows No-Script is also essential.
By an anonymous user on Apr. 17, 2008
i can't live without Open Source Software. there. its said.
By Jennifer Cato on Apr. 17, 2008
My 3 must have add ons are AdBlock Plus, Flashblock & user agent switcher. User agent switcher is handy on IE only pages where the server doesn't allow Firefox under Linux to render the page or play multi media.
AlertSite (http://www.alertsite.com)is offering DΓ©jΓ Click (http://www.alertsite.com/dejaclick.shtml), a free web recorder and Super Bookmark utility designed exclusively for Firefox. You can record and bookmark your browser activities, then with a single click, replay the entire sequence all over again. It even comes with DejaNotes, a handy, efficient tool for adding comments, instructions, and detailed messages to DΓ©jΓ Click scripts. The "notes" appear as an overlay on the screen, popping up at user-specified times during script replays.
By Leslie Satenstein on Apr. 21, 2008
My favorites are the dictionaries. I rely heavily on the English and French ones.
Unfortunately, they are not yet available in the new release (version 3)and so I stay with version 2.14
By Tim on Apr. 25, 2008
My top 3 Firefox Add-ons are 1. Delicious Bookmarks (boring, but I need it) 2. iMacros (Very cool - Macro tool for Firefox!!!!!) 3. PDF Download
By an anonymous user on Apr. 28, 2008
DTA (DownThemAll) has been a lifesaver for me, on those occasions when I need to download every link on a page. For example, when somebody separately scans every page of a manual, and just dumps them all in the same directory for people to download.
I haven't seen anything like DTA in/ for any other browser.
By CyberNirvana on Jun. 03, 2008
My Critical List
http://zia.blogspot.com/2007/11/my-3-most-critical-firefox-extensions.ht...
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