Patrick Micka

Which Firefox Extensions Can’t You Live Without?

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One of the biggest selling points that makes Firefox the browser of choice for me are the extensions. I’ve been using Firefox for roughly 4 years now and during that time I’ve gone through my fair share of third-party extensions/plugins. The most important ones, to me, make my browsing happier and easier by streamlining my surfing or making it more safe.

I would like to publicly profess my love for the following plugins:

• Greasmonkey – This is an especially useful extension for me. If you haven’t given it a shot before install it and head over to the userscript repository. There you can find plenty of scripts to enhance your browsing such as Textarea Backup, or this script, which disables custom myspace layouts.
• Del.icio.us – As a del.icio.us user I find it hard to post bookmarks unless I’ve got this extension, or one of its relatives active.
• McAfee Site Advisor – This is a really important extension for me. Behind this add-on is a system of automated testing originally developed at MIT that helps me avoid sites that may lead to pop-ups/spam/malware. It also places a handy icon next to links on your search results that work like the color-coded Homeland Security rainbow sans the fear mongering.
• Adblock Plus and Adblock Filterset.G Updater – These two extensions work in conjunction to eliminate most advertisements you’re liable to run across.
• Google Preview – I really just like seeing thumbnails of my Google searches in a way that won’t obscure whatever else I’ve got on the screen (yes, that means you Snap.com). This add-on also works with Yahoo! searches.
• Ctrl-Tab – Adding Ctrl-Tab support to Firefox isn’t really a necessity, but another usefull feature of this extension is that it adds a useful grid/thumbnail function via the F4 key.
• FaviconizeTab – This extension removes the title and close button from selected (or all, in my case) tabs leaving only the favicon. At this point I’ve got 24 30 tabs open in my browser. Yes, when I browse I tend to open a lot of tabs. With this extension enabled I can easily and efficiently reduce clutter, without it I may as well be using IE 6.
• Better Gmail 2 – Out of all the extensions created/compiled by Lifehacker editor Gina Trapani this one is the absolute best. It is essentially a compilation of a the best Gmail related Greasemonkey scripts which makes keeping them updated much easier and gives Gmail many additional features that make my life easier.

That said, if I’ve left out any extensions which you find especially useful, leave a comment and share your experiences with other extensions.