Firefox Plugins
I’ve been using Firefox for a few years now since it reached version 1.5 while I was at Muskingum College. At first, I didn’t really like it that much, but as the college web manager I had to test all my page content in multiple browsers to make sure things looked right for everyone. In fact, it wasn’t until 2.0 was released that I finally made the switch to Firefox full-time from Internet Explorer.
For me, the biggest reason to switch is all the add-in extensions and themes you can get to make it look and work the way you do. Here’s a list of extensions that I use every day…
AdBlock Plus – AdBlock is my favorite tool, because as its name suggests, it blocks out all the advertising on web sites. When I go to a web site, I see it very clean without all the clutter of flashing ads demanding I click the monkey and whatever else is out there today. You can use their own suggested filter sets, or you can customize your own like I do. I also have sites that are excluded from my filtering, because I like the web site enough to allow the ads to make the site some money (Hooray jkOnTheRun and GottaBeMobile!).
Here’s a comparison shot with and without ads:
Feed Sidebar – Feed Sidebar is a convenient way of reading RSS News Feeds. I have 26 tech-oriented web sites that I depend on for news happening in the tech world and a handful of personal blogs that I read as well. Visiting each site on a daily basis takes forever, so RSS feeds allow me to get the headlines very quickly and then allow me to choose which articles/posts I want to read. Feed Sidebar allows me to bookmark the RSS feeds right inside the browser and then just click on the headline to open the page, and I don’t need 2-3 windows open to do it.
Foxmarks – Foxmarks is my second favorite tool, because it keeps my bookmarks and passwords synchronized across multiple computers. I have my server, laptop, tablet, and work laptop that I use all the time, so this allows all of my information to follow me around without any effort. The best part is being able to setup profiles so that my work laptop (for example) doesn’t get cluttered up with my personal stuff, but I still have access to the work bookmarks from home.
IETab – IETab is another personal favorite, because as a web guy, there are some sites that still behave better in Internet Explorer. Unfortunately, it’s a hassle to have to switch browsers all the time, so I depend on IETab to make it easier. Here’s how it works… I’m in Firefox and browse to a web site that depends on IE—let’s say the Windows Live Mesh web site, because it uses ActiveX controls. So I get there, and I right click on the page and say, “View in IETab” which makes the page reload itself (in Firefox) using the IE engine. I haven’t left Firefox, but I see it as it’s designed to look. Best of all, I can configure IETab to ALWAYS open certain pages in IETab mode, and I can even bookmark them in Firefox so that they sync to my other PCs.
Web Developer Toolbar – This is the only extension I use that isn’t used every day… at least, not any more, since I’m not actively doing a lot of web design work these days. This is a collection of tools and links that assist greatly in developing web pages. As the Muskingum web manager, I used it to examine all my CSS files to make sure my stylesheets were setup properly and also used the code markup validation tools to make sure the code I was writing was standards compliant and not just some mishmash of nonsense.
Office 2007 Black – This is the theme style that I use, because it matches the Windows XP Zune theme, Vista Aero Black, and Windows 7 Slate, and Office 2007 Black themes really well. It’s dark, but it has easy-on-the-eyes contrasts to make it so it’s not blinding you while you surf the web.
There are literally 100’s of themes and add-ons available for Firefox, some of them more useful than others. I prefer a minimalist approach and only install and use the ones that are truly useful to me. Internet Explorer has always had a lot of similar plugins, but they’ve never made it this easy to find them or manage them. One of the great things about Firefox is that if I don’t want an add-on anymore, I right click it in the list of add-ons and choose uninstall. Also, when there is a new version available, it prompts me to install it or not at my own convenience rather than just doing it behind the scenes.
If you’re not using Firefox, you should at least check it out and see if it fits your web surfing habits. If you do, check out these extensions or others while you’re at it.