Firefox Extensions Best Of

[TadW]

Reticent attempts to list the best extensions for the Mozilla Firefox web browser. Most of the listed extensions are available from update.mozilla.org.

Here is a list of the extensions I personally use:
Adblock 0.5.2.039 - Filters ads from web-pages
BugMeNot 0.6.1 - Bypass compulsory web registration with the context menu via www.bugmenot.com.
Feed Your Reader 0.8.1 - Lets external applications and web based aggregators use RSS autodiscovery
FlashGot 0.5.3 - Enables Mozilla and Firefox to handle single and massive ("all" and "selection") downloads using the most popular external download managers for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD (15 currently supported, see Extension's Home Page for details)
Flat Bookmark Editing 0.6 - Edit bookmarks in the bookmark manager, without opening the properties window.
ListZilla 0.5.1 - Outputs an alphabetical list of either extensions or themes to a text, vB code, or HTML file.
Live HTTP Headers 0.10 - View HTTP headers of a page and while browsing.
miniT (drag+indicator) 0.4.1 - Adds tab dragging with drop place indicator.
OpenBook 1.2.0 - Allows for customization of the Add Bookmark dialog
SessionSaver 0.2.1 - Magically restores your last browser session
Sort Bookmarks 0.5.1 - This extension sorts your bookmarks alphabetically.
Super DragAndGo 0.2.4 - Drag a link or anything like a uri (e.g. "abc.com" ), and throw it to anywhere blank on the webpage to open the it in a new tab.
Tab Clicking Options 0.2.1 - Select actions for clicking events on a tab or the tabbar
Tabbrowser Preferences 1.0.0 - Enhances control over some aspects of tabbed browsing.
undoclosetab 20041125.2 - Adds Undo Close Tab.
User Agent Switcher 0.6 - Adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser.
View Cookies 1.2 - View cookies of the current web page.

Am I missing an important one?

[cbarnett]

Sorry, no links to these, but I find them useful as well:

Googlebar!
Copy URL+ (adds extra functionailty when right-clicking on a URL)
Gmail notifier (popup when you get new mail in your gmail inbox)
ieview (loads current page in IE, good util while waiting for isilox plugin for firefox)

Craig.

[hacker]

My normal "work" browser is configured with the following:

AdBlock
Checky
Extension Uninstaller
Extension Uninstaller API
Linky
Live HTTP Headers
Lorem|Ipsum Content Generator
Mouse Gestures
Preferences Toolbar
Preferential
Tabbrowser Extensions
Tabbrowser Extensions Tab Session Management Module
Themer
User Agent Switcher
Web Developer Toolbar

The combination of all of them makes for a nice shiny useful tool for daily work.

Here's what the top of my browser looks like on a light day:

[TadW]

Hacker: Great looking browser of yours! This is gnome, right?

You might want to try Tabbrowser Preferences instead of Tabbrowsesr Extensions. "Extensions" is very powerful; unfortunately, it is also known to cause all kind of problems including memory leaks and javascript incompatibilties. Just a hint, if you are happy with "Extensions", go for it.

Slightly off-topic, but still related to Firefox: http://windowssecrets.com/041202/#top1 lists severeal Firefox secrets that I am sure even you didn't know about

[hacker]

Originally Posted by TadW

Hacker: Great looking browser of yours! This is gnome, right?

Not GNOME, no. Just gtk2 + antialiasing and some personal hacks for menu and font usability.

I don't use GNOME, just plain 'ol Sawfish + some highly optimized fonting and desktop components. No icons, toolbars, wharfs, docks, titlebars, frames or borders.

Slightly off-topic, but still related to Firefox: http://windowssecrets.com/041202/#top1 lists severeal Firefox secrets that I am sure even you didn't know about

I wonder if these are specific to FireFox. I don't use FireFox because it lacks quite a lot of features that I require in a browser component... which Mozilla has. I'll take a look, might be useful for my colleagues that use Windows and FireFox.

[Gnam]

Do Firefox Extensions pose security threats?

I mean, could there be a way for some hacker to install a key-logging spyware program along with an apparently innocent Extension?

Maybe I'm just paranoid but in this day and techno-age I guess anything is possbile...


Gnam

[doctorow]

Originally Posted by Gnam

I mean, could there be a way for some hacker to install a key-logging spyware program along with an apparently innocent Extension?
Gnam

That is absolutely possible. Extensions can work in two ways... either by adding mere Javascript code to the browser, or by adding and calling an external routine in a DLL/EXE. So virtually anything is possible for the coder of an extension.

For this reason, beside performance reasons, I suggest you install only as many extensions as you really need, and only from sources that look reliable to you (like the official Firefox extension site).

[Zire]

Hey,

Do these work with osx?

[TadW]

I think all extensions that are using javascript code are platform-independent. Only those that use helper code stored in external DLL files, such as FlashGot, are bound to MS Windows systems.

[Zire]

Thanks for the info.