Geek and you shall find…

Your Must-Have Firefox Extensions?

By Deane Barker | December 9, 2005 | 10 Comments

I’m setting up a new machine, and tonight I was getting Firefox all pimped out with extensions. I’ve installed five of them, which are — without a doubt — crucial to me (even though two of them are new for 1.5). Here are my top five:

  1. Web Developer
    Once you use it to develop a Web site, you’ll never go back.
  2. ColorZilla
    A great little color picker that gives me the code in RGB, which I’m snobbish about.
  3. MeasureIt
    A ruler that tells you how far it is from here to there.
  4. Tab Preview
    Mouseover a tab, and it will show you what’s underneath.
  5. Aardvark
    I just used this for the first time just a few days ago, and now I use it over and over again every day. This is as important as Web Developer to me when building sites.

Some honorable mentions: TabInTa, CopyURLPlus, and Greasemonkey. I don’t use any of these enough to consider them “crucial,” but when I do use them, they’re huge to me. (Sadly, there’s no 1.5-compatible version of Tabinta, so that’s just a pleasant memory for now.)

What are your must-have extensions?

By Deane Barker | December 9, 2005

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Comments

  1. Comment by Sauron, December 9, 2005 2:21 am

    Hmmm..

    StumbleUpon is must for any computer I’ll be using for recreation. I haven’t hit the Stumble button in about a month, but I’ve used the site plenty enough. I think it’s become part of my identity, in fact.

    Paste and Go makes life a whole lot easier. As does JumpLink. And PDF download.

    SessionSaver is also Grade-A important, letting me recover crashed sessions.

    Tab Mix Plus is necessary. I’ve come to start screwing up my browsing without it.

    Tab Preview is also very nice to have when navigating many tabs.

    The Download Statusbar is handy, but not must-have. Same for resizable text area and foXpose.

    Well, there’s about half the extensions I currently have installed, but they are important for me. They have almost come to identify Firefox for me, in some ways. Sometimes Firefox is unusable without them!

  2. Comment by Dev T, December 9, 2005 6:20 am

    Resize Search Box : (http://dragtotab.mozdev.org/resizesearchbox/) Allows you to use a resize thumb to resize the search box

    OpenDownload (http://www.mozmonkey.com/) Allows you to open ANY file (executables, etc.) from the internet into the default program assigned by your operating system, without needing to save it first.

  3. Comment by aadil, December 9, 2005 6:36 am

    As for me, I don’t go out (on the Web that is) without LinkPreview, which creats a small thumbnail of the website when you move your cursor on a link, and FoxyTunes. Alas, it’s sad to note that Adblock does not work on Version 1.5, yet. Else I also use CustomizeGoogle and Foxpose.

  4. Comment by drmthtr, December 9, 2005 8:54 am

    Sage – Good RSS reader. Adblock – Easy ad removal. Gmail Notifier

  5. Comment by Sauron, December 9, 2005 9:55 am

    drmthtr, I use Sage, too, but I often find that, by the time I open Firefox, I might as well go to the website.

  6. Comment by Brian, December 9, 2005 1:01 pm

    That Aardvark plugin looks very cool, but it will not download and install.

  7. Comment by Guy, December 9, 2005 8:50 pm

    As cheesy as it sounds I like the Google Toolbar. Specifically, the AutoLink and AutoFill tools.

  8. Comment by Balint, January 3, 2006 9:02 am

    I updated tabinta for Firefox 1.5 compatibility so you do not have to miss it any longer.

  9. Comment by Deane, January 3, 2006 9:10 am

    I updated tabinta for Firefox 1.5 compatibility so you do not have to miss it any longer.

    Dude, I think I love you.

  10. Comment by Amanda, February 16, 2006 11:32 am

    uh.. weird question how do i get stumble button, and were might it be??