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Top Firefox Extensions

Tue 16 Oct 2007

I've been meaning to document the set of firefox extensions I'm currently using, partly to share with others, partly so they're easy to find and install when I start using a new machine, and partly to track the way my usage changes over time. Here's the current list:

Obligatory Extensions

  • Greasemonkey - the fantastic firefox user script manager, allowing client-side javascript scripts to totally transform any web page before it gets to you. For me, this is firefox's "killer feature" (and see below for the user scripts I recommend).

  • Flash Block - disable flash and shockwave content from running automatically, adding placeholders to allow running manually if desired (plus per-site whitelists, etc.)

  • AdBlock Plus - block ad images via a right-click menu option

  • Chris Pederick's Web Developer Toolbar - a fantastic collection of tools for web developers

  • Joe Hewitt's Firebug - the premiere firefox web debugging tool - its html and css inspection features are especially cool

  • Daniel Lindkvist's Add Bookmark Here extension, adding a menu item to bookmark toolbar dropdowns to add the current page directly in the right location

Optional Extensions

  • Michael Kaply's Operator - a very nice microformats toolbar, for discovering the shiny new microformats embedded in web pages, and providing operations you can perform on them

  • Zotero - a very interesting extension to help capture and organise research information, including webpages, notes, citations, and bibliographic information

  • Colorful Tabs - tabs + eye candy - mmmmm!

  • Chris Pederick's User Agent Switcher - for braindead websites that only think they need IE

  • ForecastFox - nice weather forecast widgets in your firefox status bar (and not just US-centric)

Greasemonkey User Scripts

So what am I missing here?

Updates:

Since this post, I've added the following to my must-have list:

  • Tony Murray's Print Hint - helps you find print stylesheets and/or printer-friendly versions of pages

  • the Style Sheet Chooser II extension, which extends firefox's standard alternate stylesheet selection functionality

  • Ron Beck's JSView extension, allowing you to view external javascript and css styles used by a page

  • The It's All Text extension, allowing textareas to be editing using the external editor of your choice.

  • The Live HTTP Headers plugin - invaluable for times when you need to see exactly what is going on between your browser and the server

  • Gareth Hunt's Modify Headers plugin, for setting arbitrary HTTP headers for web development

  • Sebastian Tschan's Autofill Forms extension - amazingly useful for autofilling forms quickly and efficiently

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