By now, I have made my feelings regarding Firefox quite obvious. I consider it to be the best choice for web browsing, and it has been on my sidebar Recommendations since forever.
One of the main reasons for my preference over other web browsers is the amazing collection of freely available Extensions. These Extensions provide Firefox with an array of valuable (or simply fun) functions, aimed at enhancing your web browsing experience. By using them, Firefox really becomes the ultimate information control center for anything you do on the web.
In this article I present some of the best extensions, I think no Firefox user should be without.
Answers
This Extension allows users to click on any word (while holding down the Alt key) at a web page and look it up instantly at Answers.com, an immensely useful repository of information on just about anything.
Read more or download here
Forecastfox
Forecastfox places weather icons and information on the status bar. It can give you forecasts, current weather conditions and severe weather alarms at just about anywhere in the world you want. You can set how you want the information to display, and pick virtually any location where weather data is available. You can use it to know how the weather is predicted to be where you’re at, where you may be planning to go, or where your loved ones are. Hover the mouse over the sidebar information and a weather satellite image of the broader region appears.
Read more or download here
FlashGot
Imagine not having to launch your favorite download manager application every time you come across something to download while you surf the web. FlashGot will allow you to integrate almost any popular download manager you may have into Firefox. Managing your downloads becomes a breeze and the extra functionality will put a smile on your face.
Read more or download here
JustBlogIt
If you keep a blog, this Extension will save you a lot of time, and will make posting to your blog a much quicker decision. Say you venture out on the web and stumble upon a news story or other content you just have to blog about. JustBlogIt will allow you to go to directly to your blog editing application, carrying the link information of the web page you want to blog about.
Read more or download here
Copy Plain Text
Have you ever tried to copy text off a website and paste it into a word editor? Text on websites carries special formating such as color, font, size, etc. All this information goes into your computer’s clipboard when you highlight and copy the text. When you try to transfer it to your sophisticated word editor, it will most likely be transferred photographically.
If you simply want the text without any special formating, or if you want to later apply a formating of your choice to it, you can use this handy Extension to copy plain text. Simply right clicking on highlighted text within Firefox will present a new option on the pop-up menu, “Copy as Plain Text”. And that is exactly what it will do for you.
Read more or download here
FoxyTunes
Do you enjoy listening to your music while your surf the web? FoxyTunes appears on the Firefox status bar. It blends in beautifully, and is no distraction at all. It does however allow you great control over your music by the seamless integration of your preferred media player into Firefox.
Read more or download here
Text Marker!
Chances are, you have at some point in life used a text marker. Highlighting text on a college textbook, magazine article, newspaper clipping etc. Now you can do the same on web pages, without ruining your screen with ink. All you need to do is install Text Marker! and whenever you use your mouse to highlight any lines of text displayed through Firefox, a right click option will allow you to color highlight that text. You can differentiate between alternate marker colors, and select to copy the highlighted text alone in your computer’s clipboard for later pasting elsewhere.
That is especially helpful if you are looking for particular information on a very lengthy web document, and if you’re a student.
Read more or download here
Sage
Sage is a news feed (RSS, Atom) aggregator. It allows you to easily subscribe to the news feeds of your choice and then monitor them for new content from within Firefox. Other features such as saving and exporting OPML lists with your feed addresses and searching for feeds make it a truly valuable and time saving tool.
Read more or download here
StumbleUpon
With StumbleUpon, Firefox users discovered a way to ultimately dispose of boredom. With this intuitive Extension, users can discover content on the web they otherwise might never have stumbled upon. It is described as a “collaborative surfing tool” and will allow you to see what websites are highly rated by o ther people, discover websites based on your interests, cool stuff out there, or even let you suggest websites to others.
Read more or download here
Most of these extensions are actively updated to work on any new release of Firefox. After you click on their links to visit their download pages make sure they are compatible with your version of Firefox. I hope you find them useful, and in case you don’t have a copy of Firefox yet, what are you waiting for?
September 7th, 2006 at 4:39 pm
Wow what a great list of extensions. I’ve bookmarked this page and already grabbed some of these to use with Firefox.
September 8th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
I’m glad you’ve found these useful.