As I alluded to in my initial Firefox post, one of the coolest things about Firefox is all of the extensions that have been created for it. The Mozilla foundations defines extensions thusly:
Extensions are small add-ons that add new functionality to Firefox. They can add anything from a toolbar button to a completely new feature. They allow the application to be customized to fit the personal needs of each user if they need additional features, while keeping Firefox small to download .
I don’t even remember how we ever created web sites before the Chris Pederick created the Web Developer extension. The extension is easy to configure and includes a butload of useful features including CSS manipulation, a tool to display information about the current page, form features, and the ability to disable things like cache, cookies, javascript, and images. Don’t forget to right click on this tool bar and customize it to your liking.
Chris also wrote the User Agent Switcher that adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser.
MeasureIt is another extension that is useful for web developers. Written by Kevin Freitas MeasureIT draws out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage.
Now, don’t think that you have to be a web developer to get anything out of Firefox extensions – If you are a stock market junkie be sure to check out the AlphaTicker. Want to have icons included in your menus and pop ups. If so CuteMenus is for you.
If you do have a web site, but are not really a developer there are some cool tools that you might be interested in such as SearchStatus by Craig Raw – it display the Google PageRank and Alexa popularity anywhere in your browser. Very nice, no more checking page rank in IE!
Jeremy Gillick has created the TinyUrl Creator which works with Gilby’s Tiny URL service which takes a long URL as input, and gives you a short URL to use in it’s place. Sounds simple, but is very useful on occasion.
And finally, my favorite non-work extension FoxyTunes. Created by Alex Sirota FoxyTunes allows one to control their favorite music player without leaving Firefox. I love it because I can leave iTunes minimized and keep working and still have the ability to skip songs, turn it up, etc. It supports all of the popular media players as well as a good number of obscure ones.
Some others that I find helpful:
ColorZilla – an color picker
Foxylicious – imports your del.icio.us entries into organized bookmarks
FoxyTunes – to control your mp3 player within the browser
Live HTTP Headers – to debug web apps that use cookies, redirects, and other behaviors that depend on HTTP headers
View Cookie – adds a cookie tab to the ‘Page Info’ panel, so you don’t have to wade through the default cookie browser
Preferential – tweak FF settings quickly
If you really want to do nutty stuff with pages, Greasemonkey is a must have. See the unofficial script repository to see how Greasemonkey can do things with websites beyond the author’s intent or imagination.
Last but not least, my all-time favorite extension is Tabbrowser Extensions. I have a love-hate relationship with it because of the frequent releases, it can be sometimes buggy. It’s also a bitch to get configured to your liking, but once you do, it’s sweet, sweet browsing bliss. TBE lets you hack all kinds of tab behaviors. You can reorder tabs, change how the browser reacts to links (I open all remote links in new background tabs), and my favorite, ‘Undo Close Tab,’ has saved my butt on several occasions.
April 21st, 2005 at 12:44 pm
Man, I wish the Tabbrowser Extensions worked! The idea is awesome, but I get frustrated when it horks itself….
April 21st, 2005 at 1:26 pm
I use MANY extensions, in addition to the ones mentioned before. Some of them are:
advanced highlighter button (highlights words like on google’s cached pages)
Google PageRank Status (shows google PR in the statusbar)
GooglePreview (Shows thumbnail of the page on google’s search results)
ForecastFox (Weather Forecasts)
ieview (view page or link in IE)
Paste Lorem Ipsum (pastes typesetting text into a box)
Session Saver (restores last browsing session)
miniT (rearrange tabs)
undoclosetab (whoops, didn’t mean to close that page)
FireFoxView (Launch current page in firefox [from ie])
Image Toolbar (save, view)
Image Zoom (make images bigger or smaller)
Copy Plain Text (copy text without crappy formatting)
Bandwidth Tester (test speed)
Tweak Network (fiddle with firefox’s rendering options and more)
Furl Tools (one click furl options)
Numbered Tabs (hit ctrl-# to go to a tab)
These are just the ones not mentioned above that i use on a weekly, if not daily basis.
April 21st, 2005 at 1:28 pm
Google Pagerank Status
Adblock
Tabbrowser Preferences
“Search Dictionary for” thing (cant find the name)
And I use the Abstract PC theme…
May 16th, 2005 at 10:55 am
and some more but that are small ones like ieview etc.
May 16th, 2005 at 10:57 am