My Favorite Firefox Extensions

If granted a wish, I shall wish for more wishes...

The single best feature in Firefox has got to be the fact that you can add more features through extensions.

The ones I can't live without:

• Adblock


Removes ads from the page based on a blacklist of URLs (which can include wildcards). You can create your own rules as you go along (as I do), or you can use the Adblock Filterset.G Updater extension which updates from a list someone else maintains. I initially setup my own list with a bunch of wildcards and it seems to work very well for me. I rarely need to update it.



• Bookmarks Synchronizer 3


Synchronizes your bookmarks with any other instance of Firefox that you run anywhere else, on any platform. I used to use it with my own HTTP server, but now use it via with my .Mac account via WebDAV. The extension supports FTP, HTTP, HTTPS and WebDAV.



• Download Statusbar


Mozilla's download manager leaves a lot to be desired. This little extension shows downloads in your status bar at the bottom of the browser window. Much cleaner and simpler.



• Forecastfox


Displays a graphical weather forecast in the statusbar (other locations configurable), very simple, cute, clean and quite useful.



• PDF Download


I was forever annoyed when I forgot to right click and a PDF file openned in Firefox using the Adobe Acrobat Plugin (which I even removed for a while). This simple extension presents you with a pop-up asking if you'd like to save it, open it with the external Acrobat Reader, or translate it to HTML. I love it!



• URL Link


Highlight any URL that appears as text, right click to get the context menu and open, open in new window, or open in a new tab.

And a few other useful ones:

• Customize Google


Lets you customize the behavior of Google. Mainly, eliminate the ads and click tracking.



• Google Browser Sync


Google is working on a Firefox synchronization function, which is supposed to synchronize your bookmarks, stored passwords, history, etc. I loved the idea of synchrnoized passwords and bookmarks. However, in practice it constantly screwed up both and had a very annoying startup popup and delay. I ended up abandoning my Firefox profile and creating a new one from scratch without this extension. Perhaps if they work out the bugs this will be worthwhile trying again. In the mean time I don't use it. I should also mention that there is a separate Google Toolbar, but I didn't find much use for it.



• IE View Lite (Windows only)


If you're running Firefox on Microsoft Windows and you come across a page that you want to view in Internet Explorer (i.e. it has something that needs ActiveX), you can right click and select the "View in IE" option in the context menu, and that's exactly what it does. You can also specify that this page should always load in IE.



• Netcraft Anti-Phishing Toolbar


Toolbar from the Netcraft site which among other things, tells you where the site is located, its risk ranking, and some other information that is normally available through their web site.



• NoScript


Disables JavaScript by default and then lets you specify which sites get to run JavaScript. I ran this for over a year. The problem is that most sites just don't work without JavaScript and so you end up having to put a ton of sites on your white list. It's a pain. Better to just turn off JavaScript in the browser if you're going somewhere where you know you don't want to allow it.



• Nuke Anything Enhanced


Lets you temporarily remove any item from a page while it displays in your browser as if it were never there. Can be quite useful for printing a page that otherwise has a lot of garbage on it.



• Open Long URL


Useful for highlighting URLs that are broken across more than one line. Otherwise URL Link is much more useful. I find that broken URLs occurr in email much more than on web pages and thus I use this extension in Thunderbird more often than Firefox.



• Yahoo! Toolbar


If you use Yahoo! you may find this useful. Especially the new mail notification and the bookmarks manager which stores your bookmarks on Yahoo! However, in practice I didn't use it much and removed it. Had it actually integrated with the Firefox bookmarks manager, it would have been more useful to me. Otherwise it just takes up too much space.



• Skype Web Toolbar (Windows 2000/XP only)


This toolbar can sit in Firefox hiden from view (which is the way I like it) and just do its work in the background. It will highlight any telephone numbers on the page you're viewing and create a link to dial it via Skype. Especially useful when looking places up in Google, a white or yellow pages, or if you use an on-line address book. One issue I've come across is that it appears to be implemented using some JavaScript, and if you load a very large page, you'll occasionally get a warning that there's a runaway JavaScript and asking if you'd like to continue running or stop it.

For more fun visit the Firefox extensions home page.