My favorite Firefox Extensions

After having this as a blog entry for a while now, I decided to convert this to a ‘page’ so that I would have the handy little link on the right side of my website. So, here it is:

So, as the “Firefox Guru” around the office, I’m often asked to show off my favorite Firefox Extensions. So, I’m sent scrambling for my laptop to open up Firefox and find which extensions I have installed. So, instead of that method, I’ve decided to blog my favorites. I will try to keep this list updated as I find new favorites.

  • CookieSafe - Keep yourself safe from nasty third-party cookies.  This will increase your online safety and security by limiting the number of non-necessary tracking cookies.  Definitely recommended.  (Added 12-11-06)
  • Digg Thumbs – Fans of the Digg Website will absolutely love this add-on. It basically shows a thumbnail from every single page that Digg has on their pages. It makes the Digg page a little more interesting. (Added 09-22-06)
  • Customize Google – This allows you to customize the output and functionality of google. I like it because I can force gmail and gcalendar to use https — secure is better! It has many more features than that however, so check it out.
  • Google Preview – Adds a thumbnail to google searches. Handy for when you know what a page looked like, but not the URL
  • Google Bookmarks Button – Fans (like me) of the suite of Google tools will find this one indispensable! It allows you to view your Google bookmarks right along side your normal bookmarks. It sounds rather simple, but in practice it is excellent! (Added 09-22-06)
  • All-In-One Gestures – Allows you to browse by using only your mouse (open tabs, go back and forth, etc)
  • AdBlock Plus and the Filterset.G Updater – Automatically blocks ads — I rarely see ads any more on any site — and when I do, I block them!
  • DownTHEMall! – will let you download all of any type of file on a page — handy for grabbing pictures or movies or whatever else you may want to grab in bulk
  • IETab – Allows you to open those pesky IE-Only pages within an embedded version of Internet Explorer inside one of your tabs
  • Nightly Tester Tools – With this, you can install older extensions among other things — It comes in handy when you use firefox betas
  • ForecastFox Enhanced – Shows the forecast and a nice map with the current weather — great when it gets closer to the weekend and you want to know how nice it’s going to be!
  • Greased Lightbox – This is not an extension per se, but it’s a Greasemonkey script that completely rocks! It allows you to open image links in a preview window so you don’t have to actually navigate away from a page to see an image.

Web Development Specific:

  • ColorZilla – Eyedropper that allows you to choose colors from another website
  • MeasureIt – Measures elements on a page
  • IETab – Allows you to open those pesky IE-Only pages within an embedded version of Internet Explorer inside one of your tabs
  • EditCSS – Edit CSS for any website in a handy little sidebar — Allows you to mock up changes to your website without actually needing to publish the css pages. (Added 09-22-06)
  • HTML Validator – Validate your HTML pages (or see if other’s pages validate) right from within Firefox! Based on Tidy, this project is a must-have for web developers concerned about keeping their pages clean and valid. (Added 09-22-06)

Those are many of my favorite extensions.

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