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My List of Favorite Firefox Add-ons

Between many machines at home, Virtual Machines, a work laptop, etc, I always seem to manage installing Firefox from scratch at least once a month. There are several add-ons that I pretty much require for Firefox to work for me, and I thought I should post them somewhere. I know that there have been at least 9342 billion Firefox add-on posts over the years, but this is more of a page for me to easily pull-up each time I install Firefox so I can quickly get all of the add-ons installed. However, maybe someone else will find this list useful or will run across an add-on which makes their interwebs experience even moar bettar.

  1. Adblock Plus
  2. Ever been to a Sys-Con site unprotected by this add-on? Bad idea. Personally I do white list some of the ad networks like Google Ads because I don’t mind them, but this add-on does help a lot with the really annoying and hijacking type ads.

  3. Adblock Filterset.G Updater
  4. Keeps Adblock Plus up to date with fresh blocked URL’s.

  5. Add Bookmark Here
  6. Makes bookmarking in folders and sub-folders much easier.

  7. Allow Right Click
  8. Not sure how effective this is, but what the heck.

  9. BugMeNot
  10. Fills in pre-registered account information at “registration required” sites.

  11. ColorZilla
  12. Allows you to get the RGB and Hex value of any color via a eye dropper.

  13. del.icio.us “Classic”
  14. I use del.icio.us as a huge but filtered bookmark repository, and this helps me with that.

  15. DownloadThemAll!
  16. Used to download files without having to click on each link.

  17. FasterFox
  18. Moar faster == moar bettar.

  19. ForecastFox
  20. A look at what’s going on outside.

  21. GMail Manager
  22. Makes it easy to manage multiple GMail accounts, and also forces all GMail activity to happen over https.

  23. Greasemonkey
  24. Magic custom scripty goodness.

  25. IE Tab
  26. Allows you to load pages using IE within a Firefox Tab. Only works on Windows?

  27. Image Zoom
  28. A fun hack that allows you to enlarge and shrink images on the fly.

  29. me.dium
  30. - What I spend a large amount of time working on, and interesting way to connect with others and discover new sites on the interwebs to boot.

  31. MeasureIt
  32. Get pixel measurements of things on screen.

  33. PDF Download
  34. Ever click on a PDF and had your computer explode? This helps fix that.

  35. TargetAlert
  36. Displays a tiny icon representing content type for non-HTML links.

  37. TwitterFox
  38. I’m not completely sold on this plug-in yet because I’ve had issues with it, but Twitter hasn’t been the most stable either.

  39. VideoDownloader
  40. Allows you to download videos from several popular sites including YouTube.

  41. View formatted source
  42. Good for web types.

  43. View Source Chart
  44. See above.

  45. Web Developer
  46. I’m sure you’ve already heard of this one too.

I think that’s pretty much it. Let me know if you have any other Firefox add-ons I should look at or substitute. This will be a living list, so don’t be let down if it changes over time.

Posted in Culture, Firefox, Tips, Hacks, & Tricks, Tools. Tagged with , , , , , , , .

8 Responses

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  1. Hi,

    If you are a web developer, I recommend you FireBug, must have. You can edit and debug javascript, html, css live in a web page.

    I also use HTML Validator to validate HTML and CSS.

    Bye!

  2. Tab Mix Plus - allows you to ‘lock’ tabs and prevent them from accidently closing

    Firebug - javascript debugging, HTML inspection

    Coldfire - Ray’s Firebug plugin-plugin :) allows you to see ColdFusion debugging information within Firebug

    Google Notebook
    Selenium IDE - testing
    LoremIpsum Generator (mozmonkey.com)

  3. Jake said

    Second Tab Mix Plus (at least it’s the “tabbed browsing improver” I’m using these days.

    I also *strongly* second Firebug. Troubleshooting CSS or AJAX has never been easier. http://www.getfirebug.com/

  4. peter said

    Thanks for the list! I’d like to suggest one possible addition:

    NoScript gives me a level of control that I find useful and reassuring. It also tends to speed up a lot of browsing. :-)

    -peter

  5. @nye

    Yeah, I’ve heard a lot about Firebug but rarely do any web UI work other than on my own sites. I work with web technologies, but have typically been the person working on the “back-end stuff” for the last 6 years or so. If/when I get around to doing a new layout for this site, I’ll have to finally get around to checking it out.

    @Jim

    Google Notebook– I mostly use del.icio.us, but that is a add-on I should probably add since I do have a few things on my Google Bookmark account.

    @Jake

    See my comments to nye. :)

    @Peter

    I remember coming across that one before but haven’t used it myself– I’ll certainly have to check it out if it makes the intertrons faster.

  6. Seth said

    I use & recommend the following Firefox add-ons:

    Ad Muncher
    ColorfulTabs
    Context Search
    DownloadThemAll!
    Greasemonkey
    New Tab Button on Tab Bar
    Personal Menu (my favorite)
    Tab Catalog
    Tab Control (my 2nd favorite)
    Tab Counter

  7. John said

    Great list, Brandon! I would add FingerAuth to it. It’s great for not having to remember my passwords. :)

Continuing the Discussion

  1. Corcoran Brothers » Blog Archive » Firefox Add-ons linked to this post on June 8, 2007

    [...] Firefox Add-ons Brandon has gone cliche posted about the Firefox add-ons he uses. While I do not install from scratch so often, I do need certain add-ons. This list is a good way opf keeping them all in one spot for new installs. [...]

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