Firefox Users: What Downloads, Extensions, Ect.... Are Essential?

[matcom]

ok. i'm REALLY late to this table i know (as a web developer i'm even MORE embarassed) but i have HAD it with spyware, adware, etc... etc... etc... on IE.

so. JUST downloaded and installed Firefox. so far, about 1 hour, NO adware, popups, malware, etc...

so far i'm happy as a clam

being a newbie i see that there are extensions one can download that do certain things (haven't read closely yet) so I thought i would ask you seasoned vets.

btw, at this stage of the game i'm looking for protection, functionality, etc... NOT necessarily themes, cute shit (unless it serves a real purpose)

so.....

what MUST/SHOULD I have?

thanks in advance

[Wilber_Stool]

1. Image zoom

With the spin of the mouse wheel, you can enlarge any graphic on a page so that you can read it. It's great for political cartoons.

[Occulus]

2. get the bugmenot extension

right-click on a login box, and pick 'bugmenot' from the menu. Presto.

I looooove bugmenot.

[matcom]

10. can't seem to find bugmenot

do you have a link?

[ghostsofgiants]

13. Here

http://roachfiend.com/archives/2005/02/07/bugmenot/

[matcom]

16. THANKS!

[ghostsofgiants]

18. No problem

Great extension.

[BattyDem]

33. The BugMeNot extension rules!

I only discovered it a couple of weeks ago. It's sooooo convenient! :D

[Seneca]

3. Here's one pointer

Keep IE handy somewhere... do not delete it for good.

I use Firefux, and recently downloaded a new security patch for it when it prompted me to do so.

I found out a few days later, it did NOT take my bookmarks with it on the upgrade, so they were GONE, POOF!

Luckily I kept IE on my HD, and was able to import all of my old bookmarks again.

It was disconcerting, because I wondered what else could go? I have some published material on hard-to-find sites, and bookmark-importance may vary from person to person.

[ghostsofgiants]

15. Or just make a backup of the Firefox bookmark file

Or better yet your whole Firefox profile. Saves a lot of time and effort if you have to format your harddrive or anything as well.

[pnorman]

17. I haven't had that problem,

although I had recently upgraded to the 1.0.4. version. But there were a few ocasions where Firefox would NOT do the job. The first was when trying to log onto my online coffee ordering account, although all my other online accounts worked just fine with Firefox. The second was trying to download an ActiveX (or somrething) setup progrm for my wireless router. I spent quite a bit of time with the ESL help person, before I found out that I HAD to be using IE for it to load into my machine.

For "esthetic" reasons rather than lack of HD space, I was tempted to try to remove IE. I'm sure glad that I didn't.

pnorman

[matcom]

19. oh, i have kept IE

for example Mrs Matcom likes to play online MSN games and Firefox won't load them (big surprise there)

also, i'm a developer so "testing" is MANDATORY ;)

[billyskank]

22. I thought it was impossible to delete IE anyway

Didn't Microsoft build IE into the operating system to fuck Netscape^H^H better serve the customers?

[hlthe2b]

31. there is still multimedia I can't get to play on Firefox...

So, I keep IE and DO use it now and then..

[aePrime]

4. Mouse Gestures

http://optimoz.mozdev.org/gestures/

[matt819]

5. Must have

Ad block is a must have.

When downloaded, you can right click an ad and scroll down to Adblock image. click okay on the next message box that comes up, and the ad is gone. And that ad will remain gone whenver you load any page with that ad in the future. It takes a split second, and it works. Pages are cleaned up. It's a pain when some ads are composed of multiple images, but keep clicking away, and it'll be gone. Often you'll see an ad with a little Adblock tag added to it. Click on that tag, and follow the same process. The ad goes.

I've downloaded and played around with other extensions, but I found I didn't use any of them, except for this one. And the pop up feature is automatic, which is nice. Try the themes, if you like playing around the look of your browser. It's a time waster, but it beats drug use and hanging out with fast women.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

6. Googlebar is nice.

And do try the themes.

[Kelvin Mace]

7. bug-me-not

which will automatically pull logins for registration required sites

[LeftCoast]

8. I really like the following extensions:

ForecastFox - gives you a cool little weather forecast in the RH corner plus a radar image if you hold your mouse over the icon.

IEView - lets you right-click on a page and open it in IE (if you absoultely must)

Tabbrowser Preferences - makes tab-browsing work better.

Congrats on the switch!

[BattyDem]

34. ForecastFox is so handy, isn't it?

I didn't think I'd really use it that often, but once I installed it, I realized how useful it is. Before I leave the house, I put my mouse over the icon and I immediately know if I need a jacket or an umbrella, if I should wear shorts or pants, etc. It's great!

[HamstersFromHell]

9. Tabbrowser Preferences

is the only one I just gotta have. Making the tabs themselves hot on mouseover is the main reason I use it.

[auntAgonist]

24. I have that extension (found it)

tab browser preferences, how do I set it up so that tabs are hot with mouse over?

It figures, I look and look and then ask a question and THEN I find it .. thanks anyway :)

[cprise]

11. My essentials list

Flashblock

SessionSaver

Nuke Anything

Sage (RSS)

I also use miniT and AdBlock, and I'm playing around with Bookmark Synchronizer to see if I like it.


You can get them from http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/

[ghostsofgiants]

12. Adblock, Bugmenot and Downloadthemall are my favourites

[billyskank]

14. Mouse gestures

I find them very handy!

[matcom]

20. ONE MORE QUESTION

might be stupid. i notice that SOME of the links i have clicked are the "visited" color while some others i have clicked STAY blue

my options say that visited links should ALL be the same color

help?

ON EDIT: i see they turn if i manually refresh the page. is there a way around this? its kind of annoying

[billyskank]

21. Hmmm. Dunno.

If you follow a link and then press the back button, it seems to display the page exactly as it was before you followed the link. As you say, if you then refresh the page, the link you just followed changes colour accordingly. I think it's Firefox trying to be "efficient;" not reloading a page it thinks it knows about already.

Could always disable the cache...although that would undoubtedly make your browsing experience more sluggish. :(

[Codeine]

23. Careful!

I broke Firefox loading what must've been an unstable extension onto my computer. Even after taking off all the extensions and themes and uninstalling/reinstalling Firefox it's still broken. I have to use it in safe mode, which works fine. :argh:

Still beats the hell outta IE! :)

[Uroboros]

25. There are a lot of good ones..

...but I would suggest a few right away.

Bookmark Backup.

Will backup important data connected to Firefox everytime you close the program. Will backup anywhere on your drive and sort the back-ups into the days of the week. So you'll always have 7 sets of back-ups..just in case.

And if you're using Windows..I'd suggest

Windows Update

Will place a menu item in your toolbar so that you can open IE and go the Update Wndows site in one step. Handy if you don't have automatic backups turned on.

Finally

IE View

In case you ever come across a web site that for some reason does not open up right in Firefox; you can always try opening it in IE.

[fleabert]

26. awesome question...thanks for posting it, and thanks to all the responders

I've had it for a few months, but wondered the same thing.

[Omphaloskepsis]

27. What I use..

Adblock

Colorzilla -- You can hover over a color on a site and it gives the color in hex and RBG.

Platypus -- Lets you use greasemonkey if you are not down with javascript and the DOM.

EditCSS -- this is my fav... It lets you edit a sites CSS in real time.

DictionarySearch -- highlight a word and right click to load the dictionary.com page in a new tab.

Aardvark -- lets you know what element you hover.

Greasemonkey -- It just fucking rules if you know how to use it..
http://diveintogreasemonkey.org/
http://dunck.us/collab/GreaseMonkeyUserScripts#head-8365decd714f9162e9db9eb6e33c7e1f666cfb6b

[Mojambo]

28. Stumbleupon is a lot of fun

StumbleUpon lets you "channelsurf" the best-reviewed sites on the web. It is a collaborative surfing tool for browsing, reviewing and sharing great sites with like-minded people. This helps you find interesting webpages you wouldn't think to search for.

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=138

[mr blur]

29. Flashblock and Adblock and Aardvark

Flashblock lets you chhose whether or not to sit through crappy flash stuff and Adblock does exactly what it says. Aardvark lets you see how pages are constructed and lets you remove elements for display or printing.

[CatholicEdHead]

30. Farkit

http://www.fark.com/firefox

and
TinyURL Creator

and
BugMeNot

[Kellanved]

32. I'd say nothing

Extensions just clutter up the application.

In any case:
The "live http headers" are useful for debugging web-applications; that's it for me.

Well Java, if you can count that as an extension; maybe flash ( I skipped that one).

[BattyDem]

35. CountdownClock

This is REALLY handy if you're like me and lose track of time while at the computer.

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=468

It displays a clock that counts down to a target date or time. So if you need to be off the computer and out of the house an hour from now, just set the clock for one hour and when the hour's up, a popup message will alert you.

I use it to remind myself of an appointment or that a TV program is about to start. It's great!



Several of my favorites have already been posted by other people, but here are a few more I love:


FoxyTunes
If you listen to music while your surfing the Internet, this extension is very convenient. It adds the controls of your favorite media player to the status bar of your browser, so you can control the music without ever leaving Firefox.

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=219


Translate
Translates web pages (via toolbar button) or selected text (via context menu) from several foreign languages into English, as well as 12 other languages.

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=181


Gcache
Allows you to check the page you are browsing in the Google cache. Can be handy if the server is down or the page is changed.

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=301


OpenBook
Allows you to customize the "Add Bookmark" dialog. The bookmarks tree can be automatically opened and elements can be hidden. It makes it much easier to manage bookmarks while saving them, instead of using the "manage bookmarks" feature after they've been saved.

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=42



And finally, two extensions I CAN NOT LIVE WITHOUT!

ScrapBook
It allows you to save web pages. I know you can do that in any browser, but this is so much better! You can organize and manage your saved pages. Save full web pages; "snippets" of a web page; capture the page as an image; save the linked audio and video files with the web page ... it's AWESOME! If you're looking for something within your saved pages, you can do a full text search and a filtered search of the collection. All of this is done from within Firefox (ScrapBook is viewed in a sidebar).

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=427


QuickNote
The editor's Review describes it best:
"If like me you often need to take snippets of information whilst browsing for later use in your work, QuickNote is here to help. It provides a means of copying and pasting passages of text from webpages and saving it on a post-it note-style window. There you are able to make additions as thoughts occur to you, all without having to leave Firefox."

"You are able to view your QuickNotes in a separate window, a new tab, or the sidebar, making it easy to control your notetaking to suit your needs. By default, QuickNote will autosave your notes at regular intervals so you need not worry that a browser restart to install a new extension or theme or closing your browser will delete all your work. When your notes are finished, it is a simple matter of copying and pasting your work into your word processor."

Note from BattyDem: If you copy some text and dump it into QuickNote, the web page's URL is automatically included with the copied text, so you'll know exactly where you got it from if you need to find the page again later!

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&id=46&page=staffreview#more


:-)