What are your favorite extensions in Firefox?

July 28, 2005 8:22 PM

What are your favorite extensions for Firefox?

I've got my favorites, but I'm always looking for more.
My list:
Aardvark Webdev tool, remove elements, view source of elements etc.
Adblock: Oh I forgot what this one does.
GreaseMonkey: Customize indivual pages (favorite: GMaps Extras, a latitude/longitude Calculator).
EditCSS Webdev tool: Live preview your edits to the stylesheet.
All-In-One Gestures Use simple mouse gestures to do things like back and forward, open in new tab, bookmark, etc.

posted by Edible Energy to Computers & Internet (31 answers total)

Media Player Connectivity is always nice. Takes embedded video out and plays it in a media player.

Oh, and Plain Text Links is useful for URLs that aren't linked.
posted by Dipsomaniac at 8:33 PM on July 28, 2005

Forecast Fox let's me strip Weather Bug off all of my family's computer.
posted by spartacusroosevelt at 8:37 PM on July 28, 2005

Flashgot, SessionSaver (A MUST), Resizable text box, Google Suggest.
posted by null terminated at 8:39 PM on July 28, 2005

Mycroft--seemingly inexhaustible list of custom search plugins
Sage--lightweight RSS reader
Tabbrowser Preferences--additional tab options
Add Bookmark Here--Opera-style addition to the bookmarks menu makes filing bookmarks easier
SessionSaver--reloads previous browser sessions
downTHEMall--downloads all files linked from a page, filtered by extension
posted by box at 8:42 PM on July 28, 2005

Butler from Dive Into Mark, makes it easy to switch between Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. When you search via google, and click on the 'Yahoo' link, it takes you to the same search on Yahoo.

SpellBound - Firefox spell checker. Allows you to spellcheck in forms on those sites that don't have built in spellcheck like Metafilter.

BetterSearch - adds site preview images to Google and other search engines and product images for Amazon results.

Web Developer Toolbar - Chris Pederick's web developer toolbar is simply the best web dev toolbar I've found. Everyone in the IT program at school relies on it for a wide range of tasks, from cutting off Javascript, validating CSS or HTML, or viewing the source of a website with the click of a single button.

And Just for fun...

Firesomething

Remember when what we now call Firefox had to change its name from Phoenix to Firebird and then to Firefox? Relive those days with Firesomething. It'll change the browser name everytime the browser is opened. Ice Weasel. Thunder Panda. Iron Horse.
posted by aristan at 8:45 PM on July 28, 2005

Two handy, unobtrusive extensions for browsing are:

IE View: sometimes, for whatever reason (maybe web development, or to use a certain ActiveX widget), you need to see a site in IE. This gives you that option conveniently in the right click menu. (note that IE View last time I checked was not compatible with the Deer Park release).

Linkification: If somebody just types out a URL without making at a link, this little extension automatically does it for you. It has made my life much, much more convenient, especially with friends who use text-only email and love to email me links.

They both work really well, and I use them more than any other extensions.
posted by tweak at 8:52 PM on July 28, 2005

Bugmenot - it automagically fills in a bugmenot username and password for all those dopey news sites that require free registration.
Couldn't possibly live without it.
posted by CunningLinguist at 8:54 PM on July 28, 2005

I've found Copy Plain Text to be really useful.
posted by Staggering Jack at 8:56 PM on July 28, 2005

Add bookmark here is really a godsend. It allows you to add a bookmark to a subfoldre directly. It's fantastic, really.
posted by apple scruff at 9:18 PM on July 28, 2005

FlashBlock is a nice complement to Adblock.
Download Statusbar provides an alternative to the lame-ass downloads window.
undoclosetab does exactly what you hope it does.
posted by Galvatron at 9:34 PM on July 28, 2005

Sage: RSS reader
BugMeNot: Fill in annoying registration forms
AdBlock: Block ads
StumbleUpon: Lets you discover similiar pages, and tag them with reviews
Web Developer: awesome for web development work, especially the outline and validation features.
greasemonkey: then find hundreds of user extensions here: http://dunck.us/collab/GreaseMonkeyUserScripts
CustomizeGoogle: which among other things lets you filter out results from Google searches.
posted by formless at 9:38 PM on July 28, 2005

Download Status Bar is great, adds a dynamic status bar to the bottom of windows to track your downloads.

Nuke Anything is nice to cleanup pages before printing, but I'll have to try Aardvark - thanks for that one.

LiveLines is nice to redirect the RSS subscription icon to Bloglines (or other RSS readers)

MiniT, to drag-n-drop your tabs.

TargetAlert, so you know if the link you're about to click is a zip,pdf,doc, etc...

And of course, Slim Extension List to keep the extension list tiny after adding all my essential cruft!

On preview, Galvatron and formless got the ones that I missed.
posted by sysinfo at 9:41 PM on July 28, 2005

Bookmark Backup--though, curiously, I've never had that somewhat common problem of having my profile nuked and all cookies, prefs, and bookmarks lost. Still, it's great to have automatic backups on close.
posted by Tuwa at 10:21 PM on July 28, 2005

Beyond many already mentioned, I like "HashColouredTabs." For sites without a favicon, it gives a colored square on the tab based on the url (viz., multiple tabs of the same site will have the same color). Good for people who have so many tabs open that the titles on them become too truncated to be particularly useful.

"Popups Must Die!" is good as well. I haven't gotten a single unwanted pop-up since I installed that, although on occasion I have to tell it to allow pop-ups from a site. That only takes two quick clicks though.
posted by aiko at 11:14 PM on July 28, 2005

A set of good lists of firefox extensions
1. Essential Firefox Extensions
2. Almost Necessary Firefox Extensions
3. Essential Firefox extensions you should download today (Parts 1-4)
posted by webmeta at 11:54 PM on July 28, 2005

Google images Re-Linker -- click on thumb, skips framed page and goes direct to full size image.
ConQuery -- Puts search list in rightclick context menu.
Super Drag-n-Drop: drag a link and it will open in a same or new tab or drag any word for a search in a new tab.
Paste & Go: Paste URL into address bar and load it as a single step.
Disable Targets for Download: Stops new window opening when opening binary file.
PDF Download: Allows you to choose each time whether PDF's load in new tab or downloads.
Metafilthy: Of course - brilliant extension for MeFi.
posted by peacay at 11:57 PM on July 28, 2005

I love Foxy Tunes. It lets you control your music player from your browser toolbar and saves having another open window on the desktop.
posted by bendy at 2:51 AM on July 29, 2005

So are customizegoogle & bettersearch compatible and/or which is better and/or are both better??
posted by peacay at 4:01 AM on July 29, 2005

Resizeable Textarea is great. I may have even convinced an inveterate IE user to switch to Firefox because of this extension - it allows you to make textareas larger (or smaller) when viewing them in your browser. Just drag the corner of the textarea to resize it.

I found it because someone else mentioned it on AskMe!
posted by amtho at 4:21 AM on July 29, 2005

Scrapbook saves web pages into a scrapbook section of the sidebar. The pages can be saved into different categories.

I used to email pages to myself to save them, but this works better-- it's faster, and the pages can be organized and have comments added. I use it to collect shopping carts when I'm researching purchases, and save order confirmations instead of printing them.
posted by jjj606 at 4:37 AM on July 29, 2005

I like to keep the number of extensions I have as small as possible, so here are the essentials I have installed:

Web Developer: I don't know how I ever did my job without it. Includes the functionality of EditCSS, plus much much more.

UndoCloseTab: Does just what it says. Invaluable for when you accidentally close a tab.

TabX: Adds an "X" graphic to each tab that works like the Windows "X" buttons (closes the tab).

Tabbrowser Preferences - Additional tab preference settings

And of course Forcast Fox.
posted by geeky at 5:57 AM on July 29, 2005

I think everything was mentioned above except one extention I cannot live without:

Tabbrowser Extentions - Vastly more expansive than "Tabbrowser Preferences". Move tabs around, gestures, color groups of links, adblocking, auto-save sessions in case of emergency close - and much more - a dizzying array of options all in a single extention.
posted by parma at 9:12 AM on July 29, 2005

I prefer Tab Mix to TabBrowser Extensions and TabBrowser Preferences. After FlashBlock this tends to be the 2d extension I install.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 9:45 AM on July 29, 2005

Most of my favorites have been mentioned, but one that I love is NextPlease: "Does it frustrate you having to scroll to the bottom of a search results page to hit that link for the next results? What about using your notebook's touchpad to navigate to that tiny number link to get to page 27 of 42?" NextPlease figures out what links on a page are "Next" and "Prev" links and gives you keyboard shortcuts for them.

Slogger lets you keep a log of every page you visit, optionally saving an html-only version or a full version of every page. It's often handy for answering the question "How did I find end up at that page?" And keeping a record of what pages looked like in the past often comes in handy when things change later.

Aristan mentioned Butler, but I think maybe Mark isn't actively developing that anymore. I believe CustomizeGoogle is the current version of that effort (though I can't tell if Mark is involved in it or not.)

And I just wanted to second Tab Mix. I was a TBE user (and apologist for its bloat and bugs) for a long time, but I love Tab Mix now and it does everything that I loved about TBE, with less bloat and fewer bugs.
posted by llamateur at 10:11 AM on July 29, 2005

Re: StumbleUpon

They sell pageviews, so I stay away. For a similar extension, try OutFoxed. They even have a comparison of StumbleUpon on the OutFoxed site.
posted by blendor at 12:01 PM on July 29, 2005

Oops, forgot to link "sell pageviews."
posted by blendor at 12:02 PM on July 29, 2005

Re: StumbleUpon

Sponsored sites are clearly marked, "When a user stumbles upon your website, a green button will appear that says "sponsor" and it links to a description of sponsored stumbles located here." Furthermore, there's no need for you to rate sponsored stumbles - if you want you can even rate them thumbs down to prevent them from propagating to your friends. I don't see it as any worse than AdWords. And if you make a $5 donation and become a sponsor you'll never see them again.

Why isn't "Social Networking" checked for StumbleUpon on the comparison page? It's the only social networking I ever do online, and it provides more useful information than anything else I've used. Oh, and they forgot the "Includes blogging capabilities" column, but I guess there wouldn't be across-the-board checks for OutFoxed then. You can also get information on pages, and the source of the info, provided someone's taken the initiative to comment on the page, but there's no function specifically for it. If you can't tell, I'm hopelessly enamoured with StumbleUpon... The two programs don't really serve the same puposes in my mind anyway. Outfoxed seems to be more of a "useful tool" whereas StumblUpon is more of a "giant - though highly entertaining - time-sink" (which is recognized on the comparison page).

The only extension I use that hasn't been mentioned is Slogger. It stores all viewed webpages with timestamps and xml indices (and other formats). There is, however, a maddening problem where it doesn't save things loaded in background tabs (AKA 90% of my stuff), so keep that in mind or you'll realize suddenly that the usefulness of your archive intended to keep you from ever losing anything you find online is missing large portions of content. There's a fix for it, too, but it doesn't work with 0.5.11 and the js file (which was on someone's blog) isn't online anymore so I can't patch it to the new version.
posted by nTeleKy at 2:30 PM on July 29, 2005

MozEX -- lets you use any external program for news, mail, view source or textarea editing. A godsend if you every need to edit a wiki page. See Wikipedia's page on Text editor support for more details and a convenient Emacs wikipedia mode.

Others: Adblock Plus and Adblock Filterset.G Updater, even better than plain Adblock. TinyURL Creator, instantly creates a tinyurl address. Fetch Text URL, lets you mark a URL in text and load it in a new window/tab, very handy for unformatted pages.
posted by Araucaria at 2:45 PM on July 29, 2005

Thanks to Zed_Lopez for pointing out Tab Mix, it (or rather Tab Mix Plus) has now replaced three extensions for me- UndoCloseTab, MiniT, and Tab Clicking Options.

Also, one that I left out earlier is OpenBook, which lets you customize the bookmark dialog.

I hope that Edible Energy is getting as much use out of this thread as I am.
posted by sysinfo at 7:04 PM on July 29, 2005

Response by poster: Damn right! My firefox client is pimped out now ;)
posted by Edible Energy at 1:15 PM on July 30, 2005

People maybe ought to read the disadvantages of TabBrowserExtension. Huge, overabundance of features and consequent hyper-bugginess.
posted by peacay at 10:04 PM on July 30, 2005