If you haven’t upgraded your Firefox with extensions yet – you don’t know what you’re missing. Extensions are vital free addons for Firefox that will make your work (and fun) on the Internet easier, more production, and fun!! You’ll definitely do more in less time and wonder how you ever did without them. At any time you can go to “Tools” -> “Extensions” in your firefox browser to see what you have installed, and click on the “Get Extensions” link to get more (for free!).
These are my favorite firefox extensions of all time:
Colorful Tabs: I don’t know how I ever did without this one. It makes all the tabs you have open a different color, and the one you are on at any given time has bold red text in the title. This is a very helpful extension.
Googlebar: The google toolbar for firefox. I use it all the time for quick searches, pagerank, and more. If you use google – get this extension now.
AdBlock: Just right click, and block the ad. That simple, that easy, that good.
Session Saver: Session Saver has saved my ass more than once. If you ever had the browser crash and lost your open tabs – you need this extension now. It preserves your browsers tabs and pages exactly as you left them. Next time you open firefox – voila, everything is as it was! You go get a burrito, and wife says from your computer chair “can I close this?”, and you just say “sure, why not”. Session Saver’s got your back.
Copy All URL’s: How many times did you have many tabs open and just wanted to copy down the URL’s or send them to someone in email? Problem solved.
del.icio.us: If you use del.icio.us, you must have this extention.
DownThemAll!: Down them all is a nice little utility that lets you download all of just about anything (pictures, audio) from a web page, all at once. No right clicking, no fooling around – it just does it. I tried Flashgot, and Downthem all was definitely better for me.
One thing that I should tell you is something that I’ve not read on the web anywhere regarding extensions – use them in moderation. I have read dozens of “best” and “top” extensions articles, and not a single one lists extensions that they had problems with over time, or how many extensions are safe to install total. Remember – your mileage may vary!! Depending on how much memory your pc has and how many tabs you have open at once in firefox – you may not want more than 10-12 extensions installed at any given time! I installed 20 and found that firefox greatly slowed down and surfing the web took more time that it was worth. It even crashed from time to time, so I pared down to the list above.
The two extensions that I had the most problems with were IE Tab and All in One Sidebar. The all in one sidebar just was too cumbersome for me. It took up browser real estate and had too many options in one place. I hated it, and it seemed to take too much memory for my liking. I have no test to prove this, it just seemed to slow the browser down. IE Tab was a great idea for an extension, and it worked for me about 6 out of 10 times, but ultimately would crash my browser 4 out of those 10. I don’t use IE often, and then idea of opening a page rendered in IE through firefox with one browser open was noble. But, I used it on 3 different computers in Windows and Linux with the same (crashing results). Try extensions yourself, remove the ones you don’t use or like, and try to keep the installations to a minimum unless you have GB’s of ram handy.
I have installed and used XUL applications as well from the mozilla update site, but they sucked quite a bit of memory for my liking. I used FireFTP and CodeTech editor for a bit, but ending up going back the standard tools to do these things.
Last but not least, while you are enhancing your Firefox, be sure to update your search engines by adding ones you will use. You get a few by default, but add the ones for wikipedia, webmd, amazon, free dictionary, IMDB, gracenote, and more. Better search, better use of your time!
Please, post a comment listing your favorite extensions (and why) for firefox.
originally posted: 2006-01-19 02:06:48 -0400
