Been a while since I waffled on about Firefox, but with 2.0 in Alpha (no I’ve not tried it yet, and I’d suggest you leave it well alone too) I thought it might be a good time to look at the current extensions I’m using. I’ve tried many different extensions but have pared things down to what I actually USE, rather than things that might “just be useful” now and again.
Whilst it’s popularity is probably assured, Firefox is getting a little more heat from the competition these days, namely with the stream of news pouring from Redmond (Microsoft) about the version 7 of Internet Explorer. It looks like we’ll be back to some good old fashioned browser wars soon. Ohh and whilst I remember, and before certain people popup in the comments and remind me, there are other browsers available. Opera seems to have a good following but, for some reason, it’s never really broken through in the same way as Firefox. I’ve tried it a few times but never really felt at home using it.. not sure why, maybe it’s better aimed at the ‘more technical’? Dunno.
Tabbed browsing remains the core reason I stick with Firefox. It’s very easy to get used to, and once you learn some of the basic operations, and have tweaked the way tabs work to your requirements, it can be a real boon. To that end I’ll recommend Tab Mix Plus as my tab extension of choice, it includes a variety of useful options, including a session saver (remembers which sites you had open in which tabs when you close the browser), a loading status bar on the tab, rather than one common bar at the foot of your window (making it easy to see the sites that are taking an age to load), an “unread” indicator and a further swathe of options (you can download and import my options here to get you started – right-click, Save As…).
Onto the list then:
- Autofill – Automatically fill out HTML forms
- BugMeNot – Bypass compulsory web registration
- Copy URL + – Copies to clipboard the document’s URL along with the title or the selected text
- Download Statusbar – View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar
- DownThemAll! – The mass downloader for Firefox
- Enhanced History Manager – Search Google for Enhanced History Manager
- Ext2Abc – Alphabetizes your extension manager list
- IE View – Open pages in IE via Firefox menus
- ListZilla – Outputs an alphabetical list of extensions to a text, vB code, or HTML file (used to produce this list!)
- Paste and Go – Lets you paste an URL from the clipboard and directly load it
- Resize Search Box – Allows you to use a resize the search box
- Sage – A lightweight RSS and Atom feed aggregator
- Slim Extension List – Makes items in extension list shorter, so you can see more at once. Also, sorts them by name
- Statusbar Clock – Display the date and time in your browser’s status bar (links to an old extension, but you can find an update one for 1.5… somewhere… maybe…
- Stop-or-Reload Button – Turns the stop and reload buttons into a single button
- Tab Mix Plus – Tab browsing with an added boost
- View Rendered Source Chart – Creates a Colorful Chart of a Webpage’s Rendered Source
- Web Developer – Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools
So, there you have it. I’ve had many MANY more extensions installed, and looking back at my original post I’ve only got seven of that list still running which I’m sure tells you something… or not…
With 2.0 on the horizon I’m wondering if I’ll upgrade. At the moment I can’t think of anything that I’m missing, any one feature that would be a big enough draw. Security wise I’ve not had any problems, but I guess that’s only a matter of time (or usage) before I’m forced into an upgrade. Only time will tell I guess.