Mozilla Firefox and top five Add-on
May 11, 2009 – 5:15 pmThe browser war got heated up when Google launched Chrome, the light weight browser. The available browsers at that time, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Safari, were already fighting for a piece of the pie. While all the browsers have their own pros and cons, Firefox has developed a special niche because of its great fan-following, which has also extended the browser a lot.
There are extensions that can be downloaded and installed in Firefox, which extend the capability of the browser beyond only web browsing. These extensions are small chunks of software by Firefox or Firefox enthusiasts, designed to make browsing easier for the user. Some of these extensions are so designed, that they help the user accomplish other smaller tasks by automating them or creating a script for them, making the process fast. Here is a list of the extensions that we use:
Adblock Plus: While advertisements are an most important source of revenue for a website, sometimes they are intrusive and may pose a threat to your privacy. Wladimir Palant has written this extension for Firefox, which is meant to block scripts and with a subscription to a list of ad servers, you may also block ads, for Free!
Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks): We bookmark pages to come back to them when we have more time, or because we visit them very often. When changing computers or between home and office computers, these bookmarks get lost, or you need a public bookmark service. A simpler way to manage your bookmarks is Xmarks. Designed by Xmarks Inc., it silently synchronizes your bookmarks across computers (on Firefox installations). This makes it easy for you to stay on any computer and still get to your favourite sites.
FireGestures: Those who have used Opera or Maxthon, understand the increase in speed with the use of Mouse Gestures. Pressing the right mouse button and dragging the pointer in various directions to perform tasks like open in a new tab or close a tab, makes browsing very fast in a multi-tabbed environment. FireGesture by Gomita is what we use. There are also others but we find it easy to use and closer to the standard that we are used to, with Opera and Maxthon.
LastPass Password Manager: With hundreds of websites asking us for a login and password, and OpenID still not used everywhere, it is troublesome to remember all the login information. LastPass, from LastPass, says that it will be the last password that you will ever need. It automatically fills your data in web-forms and also logs you inside the websites that require login account information. It claims to keep your passwords safe on its servers and can synchronize across Firefox installations without any trouble.
DownThemAll!: If you need to download a lot of material from the internet, this is what we use as our Internet Download Manager. Designed by Federico Parodi, Nils Maier & Stefano Verna, dTa integrates very well with Firefox and can assist you in downloading and managing your software, applications, games, videos and music etc. It can also download all the links and images from a page with a single click.
