Favorite Firefox Extensions

The best thing about Firefox are the extensions and there are thousands of them available for it. You can easily spend hours and hours and hours browsing through the Firefox webpage, seeing what is available. I know, I’ve done it! Now, you can either do the same (you don’t have anything better to do, right?) or you can save some time by taking a look at the list I’ve put together of some of the extensions that I found to be the most useful for me. This is, by far, not the definitive list of extensions available. You will likely still find many more that are useful for you, but at least this way, some of the work has already been done for you. Pick the ones you like and search through the Firefox site for any others that work for you. (For a explanation of what extensions are, see the PC explainer article on Firefox Extensions).

Broadband Speed Test and Diagnostics – Easily find out the true download & upload speed of your connection, your IP address and your domain name along with several other good network diagnostic tools right from your menu bar.

Dictionary Tooltip – Find out the definition of any word on a web-page by simply by highlighting it, then right-clicking. EXTREMELY useful when reading technical pages!

FasterFox – Tweaks that can be done to Firefox to speed it up are not new. But for those of you who want the increased performance without the hassle of messing around with any technical changes in the about:config menu, you can let FasterFox do it for you.

Favicon Picker 2 – Favicons are those little pictures that show up next to a website name in you Favorites/Bookmarks menu. Most websites now have them automatically, but for those that don’t, Favicon Picker 2 allows you to add one.

FoxyTunes – FoxyTunes was one the first extensions I installed and is still one of my favorites. It puts a small set of audio controls into the bottom-right of the web-browser, allowing you to control any audio player without having to leave the window. Fast-forward, rewind, stop, play and mute are able to be controlled without changing screens, allowing you to surf more easily. There are also a ton of other great features.

Google Toolbar – Firefox comes pre-installed with a Google search box in it, but I prefer to use this extension from Google instead. It gives you other features that are not in the standard toolbar such as search history, spell-check and autofill for web-forms.

IE Tab – Websites that cannot be viewed in Firefox are becoming less and less common. But, there are still a few out there, like the Microsoft Windows Update Page (big surprise, huh?). Instead of opening up an Internet Explorer window to view the page, just use IE tab. It will open up Internet Explorer inside a Firefox tab so you still only have one window to deal with. And for those frequently visited pages that don’t open in Firefox, set IE tab to always open those pages in an Internet Explorer tab so you don’t have to manually switch it every time. You’ll never have to open Internet Explorer again!

Image Zoom – Sometimes websites have images that are, unfourtunately, too small too see. Image Zoom can fix that problem by allowing you to easily zoom in on any image to as large as you want with the scroll wheel on your mouse. You can also zoom out or quickly fit-to-screen any image that is too large to be displayed on a page.

Nuke Anything Enhanced – This extension allows you to quickly hide any part of a website. It is quite useful when you want to print something off a page, but don’t want to print the 3,000 advertisements that go along with it. With a right-click of the mouse, you can go through and quickly remove all those annoying advertisements and anything else you don’t want to show up when printing.

PDF Download – Viewing PDF files in Firefox is nto always the best experience in the world. When you do click a PDF link, this wonderful extension solves the problem by giving you the option to download the file, view it in a Firefox window as a PDF or view it as a HTML file. A must have for Firefox users!

Print Preview – Quickly fixes one the most missed features in Firefox; a Print-Preview button on the toolbar.

Screengrab!- Screengrab saves entire webpages as images. It will save just what you can see in the window, the entire page or just a selected area. I never would have thought I would have needed this, but since installing it, I don’t think I could live without it! It is especially great when you want to print something out or save a web page to view offline later.

Skype Extension – For users of Skype, this extension will find any phone numbers in a page and allow you to easily call them with the click of the mouse. It can quickly be turned off/on to prevent you from accidentally making unwanted phone calls. A well thought out extension!

UPDATE – I just discovered that the Skype extension is no longer available as a stand-alone install. It is now included when you install Skype and is automatically installed in Firefox. While I still love the extension, I am VERY disappointed in Skype for taking this auto-install approach to it. I don’t think it should be installed as default. You should have the choice.

Smart Bookmarks Bar- Allows you to clean up and add more room to your bookmarks toolbar by removing the name of bookmarks that are next to the icon and only showing the icons for the web page. It also allows you to move the bookmarks toolbar to anywhere on Firefox toolbar you want.

Snap Links – Allows you to open multiple links all at once. I find it useful to use in Google when I want to open multiple pages all at once or when I want to view multiple pictures that are set as thumbnails on a page. Instead of clicking on each link or thumbnail individually, I can use Snap Links to select the area around the links I want to view and it opens each of them up in a new tab.

Tab Mix Plus – Tab Mix Plus is the one must-have for Firefox. It enhances Firefox’s tab browsing capabilities, including features like the ability to duplicate tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager with crash recovery that can save and restore combinations of opened tabs and windows. It can take a little while to get it configured just the way you want, but, be patient because once you get it set, you will never be able to go without it. Absolutely one of the best extensions written for Firefox.

Yahoo! Mail Notifier – This extension sits in the bottom-corner of the Firefox window and constantly checks your Yahoo! mail account for any new messages. When you have any new mail, it alerts you with a customizable sound and displays the number of new messages next to it. It also provides a shortcut to your mail account by double-clicking on the envelope. For users of other mail services, you can try the Gmail Notifier for Gmail or the Webmail Notifier which supports several different web-based email services. I have tried both of these and they work great as well.

Customize Google – Customize Google is a great add-on that lets you control and enhances how Google is displayed in Firefox. You can set the options to remove all ads from the search results, change the links in an image search so when you click on a picture it takes you directly to the full size image instead of a thumbnail and MUCH more! All the changes are configurable, so it only changes what you want it to change. I really love this extension!

FEBE – When you have as many extensions running in Firefox as I do, you need a way to save them in case you ever have to reinstall the software (like when you have to delete Windows and reinstall). FEBE (Firefox Extension Backup Extension) creates and backs up of all your installed extensions as well as your Firefox profile. This way, if you ever lose your data, you can take the FEBE backup off a disk somewhere and quickly have Firefox running exactly the way it was before without having to go through all the settings and trying to remember how they were before.

PicLens – This is one of my favorite new (to me) extensions. Basically, it loads a new 3D enviorment in your browser for veiwing pictures on websites. This is escpecially useful when viewing large photo albums on places like Flickr. Flat out, this is an extremely cool little program that runs incredibly well, even on lower-end computers. If you view a lot of photos online, you have to check this out!

For more extensions, visit the Firefox page at Mozzila.com