6 Must-Have Firefox Extensions

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?