Firefox and Chrome are pretty awesome internet browsers. They're both pretty snappy, and they're very good at supporting web standards. But what really increases their functionality is the add-ons that are available for them. Here are the add-ons that I use with Firefox.
Add-ons I currently have enabled
Anyone who buys or sells advertising may want to look away and scroll down a bit.
Adblock Plus
Adblock Plus is an add-on that blocks ads. But it doesn't just block ads from appearing, it fully blocks them from downloading, altogether (it fully blocks them from downloading*). It also allows you to easily add websites or single web pages to a white-list accessed via the icon on the toolbar or status bar, depending on where you put it.
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| Adblock Plus menu |
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| Adblock Plus off |
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| Adblock Plus on |
* That was an intentional joke.
Okay, you can come back now.
Canadian English Dictionary - It's the Canadian English Dictionary. What more can I say? There aren't even any preferences for it.
DownThemAll! - DownThemAll! is a download manager for Firefox. It uses multiple connections which allows it to speed up the download. It also lets you easily queue up a whole bunch of downloads that are on the same page.
Flashblock - Flashblock blocks flash applets from automatically loading. The applets are replaced by a placeholder that runs the applet when you click it. Flash is well known for being a horrible resource hog. I use it for dealing with that, in addition to choosing on my own when I want to watch a video.
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| Flashblock in action |
HTTPS Everywhere - HTTPS Everywhere forces HTTPS on certain sites. Using HTTPS or SSL protects you from having your data sniffed by someone on your local network. This would be especially useful at public places such as an internet cafe or library. While it does work well, there are some side effects with certain cites. For example, Google redirects to their encrypted search page. While that part is normal, the page doesn't have links to other Google services, like Google Images or Google Maps. You'll need to manually go to maps.google.com for example. Also, most of the Google services don't use HTTPS, mainly just the regular search, and Gmail.
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| HTTPS Everywhere preferences |
User Agent Switcher - This is a little bit more of a geeky add-on in that most people won't need or want to use it. It lets you change your browser's user agent. The user agent is what identifies what browser and operating system you use. You're able to check your user agent string at ..... useragentstring.com
Addons I currently have disabled
FDislike/Facebook Dislike - Facebook Dislike adds that desperately needed dislike feature to Facebook. It has some annoying quirks, like automatically posting a comment that says "Dislike" (the good part) and a link to get the add-on (the bad part). I think other people who use the add-on might be able to see the dislikes as intended. It also adds more advertisements to Facebook, although you can get rid of them by using Adblock Plus. But it doesn't currently work when using HTTPS on Facebook.
Firefox PDF Plugin for Mac OS X - It's... a plugin to view PDF files directly in Firefox on Mac OS X. It's currently incompatible with Firefox 4.0 beta 12 .
Long URL Please - This add-on shows the original link for URLs that have been shortened using a URL shortener like Tinyurl. I have it enabled just because I don't use it. I only used it once. It also happens that it's not compatible with Firefox 4.0 beta 12 .
Modify Headers - This add-on lets you mess around with HTTP headers. I'm not really sure how to use it. I just used it once and followed a tutorial for it.
Phoenix - Phoenix lets you mess with the HTML, JavaScript, or CSS on a page and re-render it with those changes. It won't change the page on the server, just on your computer and only temporarily. It's pretty technical.
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