Firefox

Rediscover The Web

Customise

Firefox is unique in that it allows you to add special extentions to cater to your specific needs... here are a few:

General Extensions

Google Toolbar

An unofficial extension bringing the official Google Toolbar plugin used in Internet Explorer. Although Firefox comes with a Google search box, this tool adds a lot more to the browser. You can easily do tabbed searching of the web, image, groups, definitions, and spellings.

Image Toolbar

If you're familiar to Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, then you'll probably be familiar it's nifty toolbar that appears over images. Well this extension mimiks this behaviour for the convenience of saving images which appears when you mouseover images.

All-In-One Mouse Gestures

This extension adds increased functionality to the mouse within the browser. By holding the right mouse button down, combinations of up, down, left & right activate different behaviours such as simple back and forward in history, to opening new windows, new tabs and bookmarking the page. A great tool for the basics, but remembering longer combinations can become difficult!

Download Manager

This extensions give more control over the download manager. You can set it to open in a new window or tab. It has a nice simple menu to clear the history and open the containing folders

ChromEdit

This adds a link on the options menu to easily edit the user files associated with Firefox. You can change the look of the browser but I use it to tweak CSS rendering on the page, such as removing blinking items and hiding marquees. Jon Hicks has written an article on tweaking Firefox using the user content files. Also check out the user comments at the bottom of this post.

Bookmark Backup

A great solution to my worst internet fear, losing all my bookmarks! I have a lot of resources and I want to keep them, this extension sets my mind at ease by backing them up everyday for a week at a time. You can also save other information such as passwords and history.

Ook

Ook is a really simple extension that adds your bookmarks to the context menu.

Cute Menus

Simply pretties up the menus with small icons found throughout the current skin. This is purely asthetics!

Google Images Re-linker

An extension which simply redirects you straight to the full-sized requested image when using Google Images, instead of the thumbnail and framed-page.

MiniT

This allows you to move the position of tabs. It also features a little arrow icon to confirm where the tab will be moved too. Extremely easy to use and is good to organise and priortise links.

Stop or Reload Button

This simply combines the stop and reload button into one. When the page is loaded it displays as the reload button and when the page is loading the stop icon is displayed. Good if the menu bar space is sacred to you.

Email Extensions

Webmail Compose

An extremely useful extension. Opens commonly used mailto links in a specified webmail compose box. It has presets for Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and many more. In Firefox 1.0 Preview Release, the Check Mail & New Mail menu links work with your favourite webmail service aswell.

Gmail Notifier

Adds a little icon to the browsers status bar, and notifies when new messages arrive. Clicking the icon logs you into your Gmail account. It can be configured to open a new window or a new focused tab.

Special Feature Extensions

Weather Fox

Neatly display current weather information and forecasts in the browser. It intergrates very neatly into the status bar, but can also be placed elsewhere. It is highly configurable such as hiding/showing of days and images also how far ahead the forecast goes.

Statusbar Clock

A little extension which adds date and time information to the status bar. This is fairly customisable with different settings for the time and date.

Bookmarks Synchronizer

A great extension that can be used to backup all of your bookmarks, or a selected folders-worth to an a file on a webserver. It can also download the webserver version each time you open Firefox, so it's always in sync.

Security & Blocking Extensions

Adblock

Even though Firefox comes with a built in popup stopper, this extension blocks obvious adverts on websites. You can go to your favourite ad-ridden site and simply right-click and add them to AdBlock. This works with anything you don't like, such as annoying animations on forums which I've come across a lot lately.

Nuke Anything

Don't like something on a page, simply right click and nuke it. Unfortunately the nuked items reappear when the page is revisited. Useful if you're reading a page and there are annoying banners, with two clicks they're gone. To get rid of them permantly use the AdBlock extension.

Fun Extensions

Card Games

A total over 24 different card games you can play while browsing. Including the classics Solitare, FreeCell and my favourite Tripeaks. The extensions is really simple, but has hints, different size cards and animation.

Blockfall

Just like Tetris incase you get bored while browsing! There are two other distint variations on the original game. Using triangles and octogons instead of the squares. This is very interesting!

Minesweeper

Click the blocks, if you dare, to reveal numbers which corrospond to adjacent mines. Clear the minefield without hitting a bomb in the quickest time possible!

Web Development Extensions

Web Developer

A "must have" extension if you're a web developer (the clues in the name!) It has a lot of features such as validation of HTML, CSS and accessibility, easily turning off images, CSS and javascript and outlining of elements, all great tools in web development.

IE View

A really simple extension that adds a menu item to the right-click menu. Simply opens the current page in Internet Explorer. This is extremely handy for quick cross-browser web development, or if the evil web developer has block all browsers except IE!

HTML Validator (based on Tidy)

This extension adds validation checking when viewing the source of a page. Information about errors and warnings are nicely displayed at the bottom.

Themes

Themes are extensions that change the look of the whole browser by altering colour scehemes and replacing icons.

Phoenity

A very clean, bright and usable theme with a minimalist design.

Qute

The default style of Mozilla Firefox pre v0.9 release for Windows XP.

Plastikfox Crystal SVG

Simple, like the original Firefox 1.0 design, with a clear set of icons.

Grey Modern

Style Firefox to look identical to Netscape Navigator.

Noia 2.0 eXtreme

A complex theme with attention to details that looks bright and shiny.