Firefox extensions

  |   Source

Out of the thinning mists and the cloud of strange incenses filed twin columns of giant black slaves with loin-cloths of iridescent silk. Upon their heads were strapped vast helmet-like torches of glittering metal, from which the fragrance of obscure balsams spread in fumous spirals. In their right hands were crystal wands whose tips were carven into leering chimaeras, while their left hands grasped long thin silver trumpets which they blew in turn. Armlets and anklets of gold they had, and between each pair of anklets stretched a golden chain that held its wearer to a sober gait. That they were true black men of earth's dreamland was at once apparent, but it seemed less likely that their rites and costumes were wholly things of our earth.

— H P Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

I use a variety of Firefox (Iceweasel, actually; thanks MozCo) extensions, and I thought I'd make a list for my benefit as well as everyone else's. I'll divide them into two categories; the "must-have" ones that are critical to my browsing experience, and then the less important ones.

First up, the "must-haves":

  • Adblock Plus: Not much to say about this one; it's the best out of a handful of advert blocking extensions, and is pretty much essential to keep all of that cruft away from your eyeballs. It automatically updates the block list via subscriptions of your choosing, which is pretty handy
  • Delicious Bookmarks: The official Delicious extension. Delicious is how I keep URLs for later reference; I don't care too much about the social aspect, just about being able to find things later when I want them.
  • Feedly: Feedly is a Google Reader frontend, but so much more. It integrates with FriendFeed, Twitter, and other sites, and has its own completely separate UI.
  • Firebug: This one is essential for doing any kind of web development. HTML / CSS exploring, JavaScript debugging, and more.
  • FoxyProxy: Advanced proxy management tool. You can select different proxies for different sites based on pattern matching. For various reasons, I need to be able to do this to access certain sites, so this is a must.
  • Greasemonkey: This one obviously has no value on its own, but there are a handful of extremely useful scripts I use, like Password Composer.
  • NoScript: This one is fairly self-explanatory; it includes protection against XSS and ClickJacking, and allows you to "opt-in" to JavaScript, Flash, etc.
  • Session Manager: This extension extends the built-in session management functionality in Firefox; you don't have to worry about losing your session every now and then, and lets you load older sessions, omit that page that keeps causing the crash when you load a session, manually save / load sessions, unclose closed tabs and windows, and more.
  • Ubiquity: A command-line for your web browser; I use dozens of Ubiquity commands every day.

And now, the rest:

  • bit.ly preview: This extension gives you rollover preview for URLs using various shortening services (like tinyurl, bit.ly, etc.) as well as some other things like Twitter tweets.
  • DownThemAll!: A greatly enhanced download manager. Allows you to do thinks like snarfing a whole image gallery, and otherwise just giving you better functionality for managing active downloads, if you download in your browser a lot.
  • Elasticfox: One of the best Amazon EC2 management interfaces.
  • Firecookie: Extends Firebug with cookie management functionality.
  • FireScope: Extends Firebug with linkage to reference material like the HTML and CSS specifications.
  • Jiffy: JavaScript profiling for Firebug.
  • Stylish: Like Greasemonkey, but for CSS.
  • Tree Style Tab: Arrange your Firefox tabs in a collapsible tree, instead of a flat list.
Comments powered by Disqus