Windows Tools, Help & Guides

For several years now, I have been using Firefox.  It is, in my opinion, the best browser available – far superior to IE or Google Chrome.  This can be disputed, and often has, and I will be looking into all of these distinctions in my upcoming series of articles on the subject of browsers.  One of the most impressive thing about Firefox is the wide range of addons available that allow it to do just about everything.

I’ve often seen collections of ‘Top 10 Firefox Addons’, and so on, and I always think that they have left out the best addons.  So here is my interpretation of the whole genre.  I will be doing several collections of these addons, and my first one will be a collection of all the addons that I am running on my computer.  Please note:  I am running Minefield 3.7a2pre on Windows 7 and all of them work, though some of them have had compatibility overridden.  I am also running the apps, previously mentioned, that make Firefox look like Firefox 4.0.

Adblock Plus

utomatically blocks the majority of adds while leaving other flash animations alone.  It is very versatile and even blocks ads in flash videos, such as those on Youtube Shows, and so on. Currently, it is the most downloaded addon – with over 3/4 of a million downloads a week.

[Download]

Add-on Compatibility Reporter

Since I use a variety of addons with Minefield, I find this useful to report any addons as incompatible with the latest build.  For most people, this will not be very useful, however I feel it is very useful.  One of the main uses is that it allows the compatibility of addons to be overridden.

[Download]

British English Dictionary

For anybody who regularly writes on the internet, this is an invaluable tool. It underlines any words spelt incorrectly and makes sure that everything you write is spelt correctly – something I feel a lot more people should be using.  Please note that an American English Dictionary can also be found.

[Download]

ErrorZilla Plus

If ever you try to find a page, and it doesn’t load, this does a world of good.  It allows you to ping it, find the cached page on Google, try to find it on a proxy and much more.  It also shows you a nice image of the firefox logo – which is a nice touch, I suppose.

[Download]

Extended Statusbar

Borrowed from Opera, this lets you know how fast a page is loaded, and how much of it is loaded.  This is useful because it tells you whether a page is loading very slowly, or just not at all.

[Download]

Firebug

For developers, this lets you fiddle with a pages HTML to make it run just as you want it to.  It is useful for debugging, editing and monitoring CSS, HTML and Javascript.

[Download]

Greasemonkey

This is an addon that allows you to implement user-created scripts.  These scripts range from blocking certain ads to downloading youtube videos.  It has a lot of uses and is very versatile.

[Download]

Jetpack

An addon from Mozilla themselves.  This nifty addon allows a person to create an addon using a variety of programming techniques, such as HTML and javascript.  It was develloped to try and get more people creating addons for everybody.  In a year, this is going to be a very popular addon, and a lot of addons will be created using it.

[Download]

Nightly Tester Tools

For most people, this can be ignored.  But if you are using a nightly version of Firefox, then you will no doubt find it useful. It has several tools including one that allows you to change the title of the windows, such as Minefield and so on.

[Download]

Power Twitter

An addon any Twitter user will find useful.  It allows for automatic link shortening and it also automatically displays a preview of any linked page, or a picture if it is embedded.

[Download]

Test Pilot

This allows Firefox to conduct surveys into usage and so on and so forth.  One of the most recent one charts how long you spend in any of the menus, and what you eventually click on.  This is to try and find a more efficient way to order the menus.

[Download]

Ubiquity

This allows for dynamic commands to be used in Firefox, such as emailing a page to somebody, printing a page.

[Download]

Weave Sync

Much better than fox marks, this syncs everything across all of the computers you use – including the tabs you have open, passwords, bookmarks and history.  And, as it is a Mozilla Labs project, I trust it more with my data.

[Download]

Now, I’m not the definitive article on what everybody wants, so I want to hear from all of you!  There are two ways to make your voice heard.  The first way is to recommend them on the forums, you can visit the official thread here.  Alternatively, for people not involved in the forums, you can send them to FirefoxAddons@www.mintywhite.com.  I am also using this address to accept all addons that you, the reader, have made yourselves.  So if you have made an addon that you think could be the next big thing, then send it here and I will give it a special mention.

So get recommending.

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