Firefox's many new extensions can make a good browser into a great browser. We show you how.
Jeremy Roche
Hi, I look after product development for CBS Interactive in Sydney - which lets me develop a range of websites including CNET Australia, TV.com and ZDNet Australia.
Firefox's extensions can make a good browser into a great browser. We show you how.
While Microsoft's Internet Explorer still rules the roost in terms of sheer numbers, there's a growing crowd of Net users flocking to the open source free alternative offered by Mozilla.org, namely Firefox. The little browser that could scores over the established Internet Explorer in a host of areas -- better pop-up blocking, better security, tabbed browsing, and, above all, a host of customisation options that make IE look like it's stuck in the mud.
There are two routes you can go down to make your copy of Firefox your very own. If you're a dab hand at programming, then the interfaces are all available to you to modify just about every element of the browser's appearance and performance. That's fine if you're a programming type, but what if you're not?
Well, there's no need to despair, as Firefox has robust support for what it calls Extensions -- little snippets of pre-written code that can radically alter the way that Firefox handles its many tasks -- and even a few it wasn't designed to do in the first place!
Installing and checking your extensions within Firefox is as simple as clicking Tools>Extensions. A little pop-up window will emerge, letting you know which extensions you've got installed. From here you can configure them, uninstall them, and check for updates, as well as visit the main Firefox extensions page at Mozilla Update to find new extensions. Here are a few extensions that every Firefox user should check out.
What do you think? Which extensions make Firefox truly compelling? Let us know your thoughts below!
This handy
add-on is the most popular at the Mozilla extension site, and
for good reason. In concert with your download manager, you
can right-click a link and use FlashGot to download the
content from an entire page of links.
Most people
tend to repeatedly visit the same Web sites, whether for
news, sports, or shopping. StumbleUpon offers a new (and
great!) way of browsing the Web by randomly picking
high-rated sites from categories you select. If you like
surprises, this extension delivers.
GooglePreview
is an interesting extension that allows you to see thumbnail
images of search results from Google and Yahoo. When a search
is performed either from Firefox's built-in Googlebar or
directly from the Web site, this extension retrieves
thumbnails of all resulting Web sites from Thumbshots.org and
Alexa.com and displays them to the left of each entry in the
results. It also returns stock charts and preview images for
items sold on Amazon.com.
Google's
email service Gmail
upped the ante for webmail with more than 2GB of storage for
most users. Use your Gmail account to easily store files with
this useful extension. An FTP-style interface lets you
transfer local files directly to your Gmail
account.
Instead of searching
for stories, do you want the news delivered to you? Sage
turns Firefox into an RSS feed aggregator that makes getting
the latest news easy. Using the left sidebar, Sage displays
your available feeds, lists your feed history, and then shows
stories with summaries and images in the main
window.
With the
threat of spam, spyware, and pop-ups lurking around the Web
these days, it's tough to know which sites have them and
which don't. The folks from SiteAdvisor run tests regularly
so you can see which sites to avoid before you go to them.
You can even get a full security analysis of particular sites
with a click of your mouse.
Do you have a
favourite Web site that takes a long time to load because of
certain ads or images? With the Adblock extension, you can
pick and choose which content elements of the page will load
so your favourite site comes up quickly every
time.
Do you have a
favourite site that only shows up correctly when you use
Internet Explorer? Great for both users and Web developers
who want to see how their pages look in Microsoft's browser,
this plug-in lets you open a link in a new tab that uses IE
Web standards and architecture.
Mouse
Gestures
What has long been a built-in function of the Opera Web browser has been
implemented in Firefox thanks to Extensions. Mouse gestures are a quick way to execute common
functions such as Back, Forward, New Tab, Close Tab/Window,
Home and so on. Rather than using the keyboard, menu or
toolbar to perform these actions, you hold down the right
mouse button and flick the mouse cursor left (to go back) or
right (to go forward), for example. While it can take a
little time to learn the correct mouse movements, it soon
becomes second nature and speeds up browsing
immensely.
Are you a
weather nut? Even if you're not, this add-on comes in handy,
letting you see the weekly forecast in Firefox's menu bar. If
the sunny, cloudy, and rainy icons aren't enough, simply
mouse over them for a more complete forecast.
FoxyTunes is
an essential add-on if you're in the mood for music while you
browse the Web. It integrates a simple set of player controls
into the toolbar (which can be dragged anywhere you choose),
and integrates with just about every music player known to
man, letting you skip and sort songs without ever having to
leave your browser.
When surfing
the Web, sometimes you'll come across words you don't know
the meaning of. Instead of reaching for a dictionary or
heading to its online equivalent, use Dictionary Tooltip.
With this extension you only need to double-click a word to
bring up a window with pronunciations, definitions, and
thesaurus entries.
More a standalone
application that lives inside Firefox, this full-featured
extension lets you add recipes and ingredients to a
customisable database, then create grocery lists based on
what's next for dinner. Save lists as Web pages, or print
them out for your next shopping trip.
Bandwidth Tester
Bandwidth Tester's own interface warns that it might not be
reliable outside the US, but in our experience it's a solid
little utility to check your current connection speed --
especially to sites in the States. It's also great for
comparative testing of your connection. With the option to
pick your download files for testing, it also works well in a
local Australian context.
DictionarySearch
With this add-on, all you need to do is select a word,
right-click and choose "Dictionary Search for … " and a
new tab opens up with the Dictionary.com definition. This
extension is especially useful when researching unfamiliar
topics online or simply to help brush up on your vocabulary
as you surf.
Translate
A useful extension that translates entire Web pages (by
clicking a button on the toolbar) or highlighted text (by
right-clicking and selecting "Translate from … ") to
English from different languages including French, German,
Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Portugese and Russian. Translate
uses AltaVista's BabelFish Translator for context
translations and Google's translation engine for Web
pages.
Tabbed
browsing is quickly becoming the standard for most power
users. If you want more control over your tabs and how they
behave, this extension offers several options designed with
you in mind.
When you're
doing research for work or planning a trip, you'll often have
several Web sites open at once with all of the information
you need. With SessionSaver, you can save the whole group of
tabs so you can easily come back and open them all at
once.
This handy
little extension adds the kind of functionality that you
don't know you need until you have it. With Duplicate Tab,
you can duplicate your currently tabbed site with all of the
same history so you can use the Back or Forward buttons on
the new tab -- very useful when doing research.
There are a
lot of Firefox extensions that customise tabs and a few good
session savers, but none does both as well as this handy
add-on. Edit everything possible about tab appearance and
behaviour, and also save Firefox sessions in case of a
browser crash or unexpected shutdown.
Taking a page
from the excellent browser Opera,
this extension makes your bookmarks, extensions, themes,
downloads, and Web history all available from one handy
sidebar. You can even view HTML source, a second Web page, or
a built-in newsreader like Sage.
Firefox Showcase is a
strong competitor, but Reveal narrowly beat it out with its
polished look and additional features. Simply hit F2 or Alt+~
to see thumbnail images for all open tabs for a window.
Hitting the Insert key brings up thumbnails of the history
for any tab or all of them, and the Back and Forward buttons
also provide small thumbnails of each link.
Those who use
a lot of tabs when they browse the Web will love Separe. This
simple add-on lets you keep tabs tidy by adding a separator
to the tab bar. In addition to being able to divide up your
sites into groups, you can click on the separator to get a
thumbnail of the pages in each tab so you can find what you
need quickly.
If you
ever get annoyed when the Download Manager pops up during a
download, Download Statusbar is for you. With this handy
add-on, once you initiate a download, a small window opens up
on the lower left of your status bar showing the progress of
your download -- without interrupting your browsing. Mousing
over the window lets you see all the information about the
file.
Down Them
All 0.9.4
Down Them All is an extension for the downloader in us all.
It launches an external window that strips down any Web page
to its component elements, letting you download discrete
elements by extension type -- invaluable if you're
downloading a lot of picture or audio files, for example,
especially as it'll filter for any given file
type.
Tabbrowser Extensions
While the official Firefox
extensions page promotes Tabbrowser Preferences -- which in itself is
a solid little extension, and has its blessing in terms of
bug fixes -- it can't compare to the flexibility and sheer
scope of the excellent Tabbrowser Extensions package. You've got to
go a little further to find it, but with inbuilt support for
different tab profiles, and absolute and total control over
every single window that Firefox launches, this is a great
extension. Care should be taken, however, as it's not unknown
for Tabbrowser Extensions to cause a few bug issues here and
there
Adobe Acrobat files (PDFs) can be a major source of Firefox sluggishness. When a plug-in like Acrobat Reader is loaded in Firefox, it isn't unloaded until you quit the browser. This helpful extension will ask whether you want to open a PDF file in Firefox, translate it to HTML (via Google), download it locally, or cancel the link.
One of the biggest complaints against Firefox is how it handles JavaScript. This invaluable extension blocks all Java and JavaScript by default, then lets you add sites to your whitelist as you surf. If you're the micromanaging type, this one's for you.
On the opposite pole from NoScript is the simple, yet beautiful, FlashBlock. It replaces all Flash movies with play buttons that give you control over when or whether the movie plays. Even if you don't care about enhancing browser performance, it's a great tool for saner surfing. However, it doesn't function with NoScript enabled, and I suspect that many of my recent browser crashes may be related to FlashBlock.
This executable is not an extension, but rather a collection of optimisation settings that can be automatically configured with Firefox. Simply input your computer and connection speeds, and FireTune does the rest. It won't likely reduce memory usage, but it should speed up your browsing, especially on lower-end systems.
Control animations with about:config
If you've never used about:config, you're missing out. Type about:config into your Firefox address bar and hit Enter. One easy configuration change is limiting animated images. Double-click image.animation_mode and change it to none to stop all animated images, or once to let them run through once. You can revert to the default behaviour with normal.
Clean up downloads
Does Firefox ever stall slightly when you begin to download a file? One possible problem could be that you've got more completed downloads than the Firefox Download Manager can handle. Hit Ctrl+J to bring up your recent downloads, and if you've got more than 20, clean them out.
Back-Forward cache
Back to the about:config screen: Firefox has a special "Back-Forward cache" for recently visited pages that works differently than the regular browser cache. The default setting for browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers, "-1," will save up to 8 pages if you have more than 512MB RAM on your PC. Reduce the number to zero for maximum memory savings.
Zap and other bookmarklets
It's not an extension, but one of my favourite ways of disabling annoying scripts, plug-ins, and event handlers to improve performance is the Zap bookmarklet, which I found via the excellent Jesse's Bookmarklets site. Bookmarklets are small JavaScript programs that can be saved as bookmarks. Simply drag the Zap link into your Bookmarks Toolbar and hit it whenever you want to kill annoyances on Web pages.
(Note that the "Zap" links above don't take you anywhere; they simply remove background images, scripts, etc.)
Disable/uninstall extensions Yes, Greasemonkey and Platypus are extremely cool to play around with, but how much do you actually use them? Are you OK with restarting Firefox every time you want to use Gmail Space? For faster performance, disable extensions you don't use often, and uninstall those you never use. Don't be this guy.
Start in Safe Mode
For Firefox and Thunderbird, Mozilla enables a Safe Mode that loads the application without themes or extensions. If you've lost the included shortcut, you can start in Safe Mode by clicking the Windows Start button, then selecting Run, and entering "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -safe-mode. If you notice a dramatic improvement, it's likely an extension or theme that's slowing you down. Disable them one by one until you find the culprit.
User favourites
Over the past year, we've offered our favourite Firefox extensions to you in four different categories. From the simple genius of PDF Download to the more advanced tools, we think we've done a good job of collecting the cream of the existing Firefox add-ons. However, when we asked for your own favourite extensions, you responded heartily with excellent choices. We narrowed all of your suggestions down to a list of 10. As always, it's never too late to chime in with your own favourites.
Once you find it, you won't know how you ever lived without it. A godsend for anyone who publishes Web pages, this Extend Firefox winner makes validation, design, and CSS work much more efficient.
This add-on from the search engine leader allows users to sync all of their Firefox browser settings, such as bookmarks, passwords, and persistent cookies, across multiple computers.
If you're the type who stays on top of your browser cookies, this simple and effective extension might be up your alley. It adds a small icon to your status bar that lets you allow and deny cookies globally or for specific sites.
Another fabulous tool for Web designers and graphic artists, this helpful extension offers colour readings for items within your browser. You can also measure distances between two points or get information about DOM elements quickly and easily.
For those of us who use multiple Firefox extensions, it's easy to be deluged by the wealth of new icons, sidebars, and taskbars. Mark Bokil's nifty add-on helps save valuable browser space with a library of small icons that control numerous browser and extension functions.
Similar to our Volume III pick Video Downloader, this add-on lets you capture various forms of content embedded in Web pages. Movies, MP3 files, and Flash games are only a few of the possible files types that can be downloaded.
Bloggers using a variety of platforms like the ease of use and speed of this publishing tool. Drag and drop notes from existing Web pages, take notes for later use, or post directly to your blog.
We like NoScript, too. That's why we included it in our Optimising Firefox downloads. Like many of the best Firefox extensions, this add-on does one thing very well: specify which sites can use JavaScript, Java, and other executable code, and shut down the rest.
Included in our Firefox fixes extensions, this outstanding add-on also makes the grade with our users. Add close buttons to individual tabs or define keystrokes for navigating through and manipulating tabs.
Another classic extension, FoxyTunes was good enough to make our collection of Information and Entertainment Firefox extensions back in December 2005, and it's the most popular add-on after SiteAdvisor. Control your favourite media player with controls built right into the browser interface.
Yes, Greasemonkey and Platypus are extremely cool to play around with, but how much do you actually use them? Are you OK with restarting Firefox every time you want to use Gmail Space? For faster performance, disable extensions you don't use often, and uninstall those you never use. Don't be this guy.
