Firefox is one sleek browser and comes with features like Tabbed Browsing, Pop-up Blocking and integrated search. But most of us like browsers with <insert your favourite feature> feature. We also like bloatware. Firefox lets you decide how obese you want your browser to be through extensions. By installing extensions, you can choose those features without which your life would be meaningless.
Here is the list of extensions from my Firefox with some explanation.
Firefox extensions
- Talkback: I think this was installed by default. It sends Firefox crash information back to the developers so that the next version becomes even better
- A9 Toolbar:The only reason I use it is for making my bookmarks portable. The bookmarks are stored at a9.com and is accessed via the toolbar. Yahoo toolbar provides the same feature, but only a9 allows you to open the bookmarks in tabs, the way God intended.
- Greasemonkey: Ever felt frustrated that GMail does not provide a delete button or that Times of India displays a three para article in three pages? You can fix all that using various Greasemonkey scripts (GMail Delete, Times Paging Remover), but for all that to work, you need the Monkey.
- PadmaTranslates Telugu, Malayalam, Tamil and Devanagari encoded in proprietary formats to unicode. Once Padma is installed, you can read Deepika in Malayalam and know if there is a hartal.
- del.icio.us: Integrates del.icio.us with Firefox which makes tagging a page very easy.
- Foxylicious: Synchronizes your del.icio.us bookmarks with the Firefox bookmarks.
- SwiftTabs:If you hate using the mouse, then this extension will allow you to move across tabs using a configured key.
- BugMeNotIf you feel frustrated by the compulsary registration at various newspaper sites, BugMeNot can help you.
- Google Safe BrowsingWarns you against phishing (quite different from fishing) or spoofing attacks.
- BookBurro:If you are shopping at amazon.com for a book and want to know the price of the book at Barnes and Noble or Half.com, this extension can do all that without leaving the page. It can also check if the book is present in certain libraries
- Bloglines toolkit: Adds various context menus making it easier to manage your bloglines.com account.
If there are some extensions not listed here, but you use, please drop a comment.
My Firefox extensions,
Adblock with Filterset.G – Removes Ads.
Webdeveloper – Ultimate tool for webdevelopment.
Greasemonkey – Removes web page annoyances.
Padma – Indic Text transformer. My own dog food.
ForecastFox – Weather forecast comes to your browser.
IEView – Still some sites need IE.
Session saver – Remebers the last opened sites in the browser. very helpful incase of firefox crash.
View Rendered Source Chart – To view html used for rendering. Useful tool for web developers.
Installed but not used much.
Venkman – Javascript debugger.
LiveHttpHeaders – View http requests/response.
Foxytunes – Control your audio player from browser.
Bloglines Toolkit – Bloglines extension.
DownloadThemAll – Mass downloader extension.
Platypus – Modify a web page in the browser. Runs on top of greasemonkey.
Some extra stuff I have installed:
All-in-one-gestures
Fasterfox
Forecastfox
Flashblock
Web Developer
AJAX Yahoo!Mail
SpellBound
Resizeable Textarea
SessionSaver
Hyperwords (private beta?)