Top 12 Firefox Add-Ons
Firefox is a robust browser with phenomenal flexibility. It has really come of age in the past couple of years and is now the major competitor to internet explorer, to the point that IE has adopted some of Firefox’s traits, the most notable being tabbed browsing and add-ons. I know a lot of people who use one or the other, but personally I use both. I try to encourage people to do the same. For general browsing, searching, watching, and 90% of use, I use Firefox. For security applications I use internet explorer, specifically online banking, checking internet usage, PayPal, and online purchases only. This minimizes the risk of rogue cookies, creating a backdoor so spyware that is attached to your browser can also get your banking details.
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Most spyware is designed to attack windows based computers, and Microsoft based applications - this has nothing to do with windows being less secure and everything to do with the shear dominance of Windows based personal computers. It’s kind of like when you are fishing and you know that in a certain spot there are a heap of flathead that are biting; you will use bait and lures to draw the flathead not use bait and lures for snapper. Internet Explorer has all the latest security updates built into it, and occasionally some security based web sites only allows you to use their page with Internet Explorer.
Now to the top 12 Firefox Add-ons. It was very hard to reduce the list to the original requested 10 as some of the add-ons run in the background and you don’t notice they are missing till there is a problem, so I decided to make it 12. The other hard thing was to order them, so here I go. For your information I am using Firefox 3.5.3, running Windows 7 RC 64bit (latest Operating System due to replace Windows Vista), 4GB RAM, Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.00 GHz.
- Tab Kit - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5447
Tab Kit is one of the first add-ons that to me is required for Firefox. A tab is a new page that opens in the current window, but next to it, so you can easily swap from one to the other. Tab Kit allows you to move tabs around, easily duplicate tabs, protect tabs so they will not moved even if you reset all your data and group related tabs. The other cool thing is that related tabs are colored, e.g. If you click on a link in one tab, it opens up in a new tab and both tabs become blue. The only suggestion I would make is as a default the later versions have put the tab bar on the side, in the options menu you can change this to put the toolbar on the top. The reason being is that web pages are usually designed from top to bottom not left to right.
- Autopager - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4925
This add-on is the king of add-ons, while I was working with James Crook from www.chocolatechipmm.com.au the other week I did a Google search, as we were looking at some images, I scrolled down and was able to look at page 2, 3, 4, without having to click anything and he stopped me and said “hang on, how did you do that?”. My secret is Autopager. It works with all the major sites like Google, Google images, Microsoft, Yahoo, Istock, Digg and a plethora of other sites. Quite simply put it preloads the next page into firefox, then attaches it to the bottom of the current page and does this till the pages run out. It is Brilliant.
- Google Preview - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/189
Google Preview quite simply adds a thumbnail image of the page in Google and Yahoo search results. This allows you to easily see what the site looks like before you go to it. So if you have forgotten what the site name is but you know what it looks like you can do a Google search and quickly find what you are looking for.
- Google Toolbar - http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/toolbar/FT3/intl/en
If Tab Kit is the king of Firefox add-ons then the Google toolbar is the prince. I have been a fan of Google Toolbar for years now, I was pleased to find that Google has jumped on board with Firefox. I recommend that you do not install any toolbars to your browser because these are a minefield of spyware that will invite viruses into your system, these include “my web search” “Gator” and “huntbar”. Google and Yahoo toolbars are safe and trusted and are the only ones you should need. Some of the top features of the Google toolbar include:
- Integration with the current Google search box in Firefox (available through the Google Toolbar options)
- Highlight button - type any words in the search box and click the yellow highlighter it will highlight all the words on the page. Click on any of the words and it will take you to that word on the page; very useful for pages with huge amounts of text
- Customization – The ability to add or remove common buttons like Wikipedia, Facebook, Youtube, ebay, to the little known buttons like Weather.
- A spell checker.
- Gmail integration
- Google Maps – just type the address e.g. 220 Moorabool Street, Geelong, Victoria, 3220. (include commas); highlight; press enter.
- Predictive searches i.e. when you start typing a search it will match other peoples search to suggest search parameters. Kind of like spell checking for Google.
- Download Accelerator Plus (DAP) - http://www.speedbit.com
For the first few years of the internet we struggled without download managers. This meant that with any download (especially big ones), you would click the download button and cease all internet activity and watch in angst hoping that Windows did not crash. DAP eases all this tension, I have been using it for years. What it does is locate the 5 main sources of the download and download your file from these sources simultaneously. It also allows you to pause, stop or cancel the download and come back to it at a later date. DAP works with Internet Explorer and Firefox. One small tip. Create a short cut to DAP in its program files location, (right click DAP.exe, create shortcut). Right click on the shortcut, copy, and paste it into Startup. ( Left Click on start, move down to programs, move to startup, right click, open.) This can be done with any program you want to start when windows starts.
- Boost For Facebook - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3120
I am a HUGE facebook addict, and I am also dyslexic so the blue white and black was kind of annoying and I thought surely someone made an add-on that allows you to change the skin of facebook and I was right. I now view facebook in red black and white with red links. “Is that all!!” I hear you say; there IS more:
- Autopoke and EZPoke options
- Auto-Refresh Home (beta)
- Rollover image for each view in full size
- Hundreds of Skins
- Selectable Features - Use only what you want!
- Quick Access icon in the status bar
- Skins for school, sports and many others built in
- Rollover all profile pic thumbnails
- Auto-login and password is stored
- One-click pokes
- Download FB Videos
- Move birthdays, pokes and events to top of homepage
- Shorten FB window titles
- Force https (beta)
- Skin Banner
- Cooliris - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5579
Once in a while you come across an internet gadget that screams cool on major levels. Cooliris is one of those gadgets. Completely unnecessary but really great to impress your friends with. It took Cooliris a while to get this right with Firefox but now they have its really impressive. What it does (really hard to describe because it’s so revolutionary), it takes all the photos on a specific major site (e.g. google images), takes your search results and displays them on a HUGE wall. You can then move the slider across to view the images. It is very sleek and has a Windows Media Center feel about it. You can search within the window, zoom images and quickly move though images. The results are displayed three images down by however images are in the result (could be thousands) and there is no pages just a slider. The other thing with cooliris is it works on facebook. You can isolate a group and see their images or you can do it from you home page and see all your friends images in a montage of random pics. As I say REALLY COOL.
- All-In-One Sidebar - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1027
With almost 7 million downloads I am not the only fan of this simple but essential add-on. What it does is take the five major bits of Firefox and put them into a side bar. You can then auto-hide the bar to view it when you need to. The components are bookmarks, history, downloads, add-ons, display (page source, about, tools) and extensive information like meta tags.
- Cool Previews - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2207
Made by the same people who brought you Cooliris, this neat little add-on allows you to preview any link with a little magnifying glass. If you hover over a link with your mouse a little magnifying glass comes up you can then move over to the magnifying glass and a preview window will pop up. Within this mini browser you can go back and forward, temporarily bookmark the window, open the window in a new tab, email the link or turn a lock on or off – this allows you to close the window when you move your mouse away or not. Another neat feature is that it adds a different color to the links that you have visited.
- Realplayer - http://real.com.au
I can hear a collective sigh of “why?” I only use realplayer for one feature and that is for it’s movie downloading feature. Years ago it was full of annoying features which led to the virtual abandonment of the .rm extension. Now though, I think they have learned their lesson and have come up with a player that has a movie downloader attached without the annoying features that were associated with their virtual extinction. When you view movies online a little box comes up with “download this movie with realplayer”. This includes Youtube and all the Youtube variants that are on the internet. Also works with Internet Explorer.
- Tiny Menu - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1455
A Very small and simple Firefox add-on that moves the file menu (file, edit, view ... ) from across the top of the browser to a column very similar to the start menu in Windows.
- Download Helper - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006
44 Million people can’t be wrong can they? I have included this tool for you to be able to download any assets like pictures, movies, and sounds. The only thing that I have noticed with this add-on is that it will not work if there are other options like realplayer running. I use it more as a failsafe rather than a default downloader.
After installing all these add-ons I recommend putting all the google features into one toolbar, putting all the add-ons in the top toolbar. Have a navigation toolbar with your back, forward, reload, ... buttons that should also include your google search box. So you only need 3 toolbars. All this can be done by right clicking on the navigation toolbar and click “customize”. Then just move things to where you want them.
That’s it for my blog, I hope you found it helpful and useful.
Mike Smith
any comments questions or suggestions please do not hesitate to drop us an email. helpdesk@seecureit.com
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