Best Firefox Extensions

There are hundreds of firefox extensions on the web. Which ones do you use? Here is my attempt to collect the most popular and best firefox extensions which make your browsing, downloading and navigation in Firefox as easy as possible, while harnessing the full power and features of Firefox.

Extensions are small add-ons that add new functionality to Firefox. The list has been classified on the basis of some broad categories.

Please Note -
- Most of these extensions work on the latest version of the Firefox Web Browser 1.5. When a new firefox version is released, it allows easy update of these extensions whenever a new update for your version is available.
- You need to check that similar functioning extensions may not work with each other.
- Use extensions which work best for *your* needs. You can always uninstall extensions easily if you do not like them.
- Some say installing too many extensions may slow the startup time for firefox.
- Fastest way to install these extensions from developer sites is to drag them to the url bar.
- Look at these top extensions to manage firefox extensions.
- You probably already use many of them, and may find some new good extensions here…

Control Firefox Tabs

• All-in-One Gestures - merges the popular following extensions for management of mouse gestures, scrolling and power navigation. (Mix of Mouse Gestures, Rocker navigation, Tab scroller, History scroller, Link tooltip and Autoscrolling extensions)
• Tabbrowser Preferences - a comprehensive UI for changing a number of the hidden tabbed browsing preferences in Firefox. It also provides the ability to control how internal and external links are opened in the browser and how the browser will react when links are sent to it.
• Tab Mix Plus - More tweaks added to tabs. Ability to select and open muliple links in tabs, open link in a duplicated tab, merge tabs and close tabs from similar domain…
• Undoclosetab - Allows accidently closed recent tabs to be reopened.
• Tab X - Adds a small close button to each of the browser tabs, and removes the close button from the end of the tab bar. (May not work with TabMix Plus)
• Restart Firefox - Adds “Restart Firefox” menuitem to “File”, and a toolbar button for easy restarting. Great for when you install themes or extensions and need to restart Firefox.
• Sessionsaver - restores the pages you had open the last time you used Firefox - even if it crashes or there is a powerout.
• Duplicate Tab - allows you to clone a tab with its history and place the duplicate tab in a new window or in the current window.
• Colorful Tabs - Colors every tab in a different color and makes them easy to distinguish while beautifying the overall appeal of the interface.
• Viamatic foXpose - Click on the icon in the status bar to view all the browser windows with a single click.
• Firefox Showcase - easily locate and select any open browser window in Firefox.
• Separe - Helps you keeping tabs tidy by introducing a new kind of tab.
• Permatabs - turn tabs of your choice into permanent tabs that can’t be closed, and stick around between sessions.

Control Website Links

• Linky - Lets you open or download all or selected links, image links and even web addresses found in the text in separate or different tabs or windows.
• WebMailCompose - Makes mailto: links load your webmail’s compose page and adds a Compose link to the context menu.
• Linkification - Allows Firefox (0.9+) to view plain-text URLs and e-mail addresses as actual links
• IE Tab - can open the current page or a selected link embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox. Very useful for those IE only pages.
• FirefoxView - Open Firefox with the current page or a selected link displayed in Internet Explorer. Adds “View in Firefox” menu items to the content and link context menus.
• Paste and Go - lets you paste an URL from the clipboard into the address bar and load it as a single step, either via the adress bar’s context menu or by pressing Ctrl-Shift-V

Control File Downloads

• FlashGot - handles single and massive downloads with several external Download Managers.
• PDF Download - Every time you click on a link, checks if the target is a pdf file and in this case let you choose what you want to do (open pdf file inside a new tab, download it to the filesystem or view it as HTML).
• ScrapBook - helps you to save Web pages and easily manage collections.
• DownThemAll! - adds new advanced downloading capabilities to your browser. It lets you download in just one click all the links or images contained in a webpage or refine your preferences using fully customizable filters.
• TargetAlert - provides visual cues for the destinations of hyperlinks. If a hyperlink points to a something that is not a web page (in cases of pdf, doc, zip files etc.), then TargetAlert will try to append an icon to the hyperlink that represents its destination
• Download Manager Tweak - modifies the default appearance of the firefox download manager and allows it to be opened in a separate window, the sidebar, or a tab.
• Download Statusbar - is a browser extension that allows you to keep track of ongoing and completed downloads in a hide-away statusbar
• Disable Targets For Downloads - Prevents sites spawning blank windows when clicking binary downloads.
• FireFTP - is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers.

Control Webpage Behaviour & Navigation

• GreaseMonkey - Install user scripts and change the behavior of any web page
• Image Zoom - Right click on an image and select a zoom option from the popup menu, or, hold down the right mouse button in combination with the mouse wheel to zoom in or out on an image.
• Fasterfox - Speed up Firefox. Dynamic speed increases can be obtained with Fasterfox’s unique prefetching mechanism, which recycles idle bandwidth by silently loading and caching all of the links on the page you are browsing. Also tweaks many network and rendering settings. (Some readers said it actually slowed down their firefox - verify yourself)
• SpellBound - enables spell checking in web forms such as html textarea / input elements (html input password elements are not checked by SpellBound) and rich text form elements. This allows you to spell check forms before submitting them.
• BugMeNot - Bypasses compulsory web registration using the BugMeNot without the hassle of surfing to it and querying its database everytime.
• AutoCopy - Select text on any web page and it will be automatically copied to the clipboard. Middle click to Paste.
• Copy Plain Text - Copies text without formatting. Have you ever copied something and been annoyed that the text formatting (bold, font size, etc) came with it? Don’t you wish you could just copy the text itself, without having to copy it, paste it into notepad, then copy it again?
• QuickNote - A note taking extension with advanced features. Save snippets of information whilst browsing for later use in your work, with no more switching to word processors.
• Google Images Re-Linker - This will let you click the thumbnail images on images.google.com, skip the referred framed page, and jump straight to the full-size image.
• Stop-or-Reload Button - Makes the Stop and Reload button behave like a single one (as in Safari).
• Extended Statusbar - adds an Opera-like statusbar for Firefox that shows number of loaded images, bytes downloaded, average download speed, load time and percentage of the page loaded.
• Resizeable Textarea - Resize small textareas in forums to your needed size avoiding scrolling.
• Adblock - allows the user to specify filters, which remove unwanted content based on the source-address. Block ads, applets, flash, embedded-media etc. Adblock Filterset.G Updater is a companion to Adblock that automatically downloads the latest version of Filterset.G set of filters every 4-7 days that blocks most ads on the internet. Some users recommend Adblock Plus which is an enhanced version of Adblock.
• Flashblock - blocks all Flash content from loading on a webpage.
• Sage - add a lightweight RSS and Atom feed aggregator which integrates with Firefox’s bookmark storage and Live Bookmarks.
• Cacheout!- lets you try to access articles on servers affected by the Digg Effect /Slashdot Effect through Google’s caching service and CoralCDN.org.
• Pearl Crescent Page Saver is - capture screenshots and save full webpages as images easily.
• Reload Every - adds an option to the context menu to reload the web page you are viewing every so many seconds or minutes. Useful if you keep refreshing some pages often.
• Copy URL+ - copy to the clipboard the current document’s address along with additional information such as the document’s title, the current selection or both. Customize it to add your own menu entries.
• InFormEnter - adds a small, clickable icon next to every input field in a web form, from where you can select the item to be inserted with your frequently used information such as name, email, address and whatever else you want to be available from the form menu.
• All-in-One Sidebar - is a sidebar control, inspired by Opera that lets you quickly switch between sidebars, view dialog windows such as downloads, extensions, and more in the sidebar, or view source code or websites in the sidebar. Can be extensively customized.
• Text size toolbar - Adds buttons to increase or decrease text size or restore default size easily. Useful for those small unreadable font sizes.
• Reveal - allows you to see thumbnails of pages in your session history and quickly find the page you want.
• Mystickies - allows you to place sticky notes all over the web and organize them with tags.
• Clear Cache Button - Adds a clear cache toolbar button that cleans the cache in one click. Very handy for those who have use for it.
• gTranslate - translate any text in a webpage just by selecting and right-clicking over it. Uses the Google translation services.
• Xinha Here! - is a wrapper for the Xinha HTML editor that enables WYSIWYG editing in any textarea and text box on any website.

Control Privacy / Security

• SwitchProxy - lets you manage and switch between multiple proxy configurations quickly and easily. You can also use it as an anonymizer to protect your computer from prying eyes.
• NoScript - allows JavaScript, Java (and other plugins) only for trusted domains of your choice. This whitelist based pre-emptive blocking approach prevents exploitation of security vulnerabilities with no loss of functionality
• Always Remember Password - Instructs web sites to always remember your password. Some sites like Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and banking sites instruct the browser to never allow your password manager to retain your information.
• CookieCuller - Extended Cookie Manager to protect/unprotect selected cookies.
• Stealther - surf the web without leaving a trace in your local computer by *temporarily disabling history (and address bar), cookies, formFill, disk cache and sending of ReferrerHeader. Verify details of what exactly it can work for you.

Control Web Searches

• Google Toolbar for Firefox - Lets you search google and all its services easily. Also powered by Google Suggest (Get query suggestions as you type in the search box), SpellCheck, AutoFill, Pagerank of webpage, access to gmail, WordTranslator etc.
• CustomizeGoogle - enhances Google search results by adding extra information (like links to Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, MSN etc) and removing unwanted information (like ads and spam).
• NextPlease! - allows you to assign keyboard shortcuts to jump to next and previous links on search results pages, like Google, Yahoo, Ebay, Amazon, and many other sites.
• BetterSearch - enhances Google, MSN Search, Yahoo Search, A9, Answers.com, AllTheWeb, Dogpile.com, del.icio.us and Simpy.com bookmarks by adding previews (thumbnails) and Amazon product images and info etc.

Control Your Music / Video

• FoxyTunes - Listen to music while surfing the Web, and control your favorite media player without ever leaving the browser.
• MediaPlayerConnectivity - Allow you to launch embed video of website in an external application with a simple click

Control Your Email

• Gmail Manager - Allows you to manage multiple Gmail accounts and receive new mail notifications. Displays your account details including unread messages, saved drafts, spam messages, labels with new mail, space used, and new mail snippets.
• Gmail Notifier - checks and notifies your email in Gmail accounts.
• AJAX Yahoo! Mail - Preview your messages with a single click. Adds AJAX support to the Yahoo! mail.

Control Your Bookmarks

• Bookmark with Del.icio.us - Integrate del.icio.us right into Firefox. Easily access your bookmarks and post new bookmarks. Post a bookmark without leaving the page you are on.
• Bookmarks Synchronizer - lets you connect to an FTP server and synchronize your bookmarks that are stored in an XML file. Set if to automatically download the file on startup or upload it when you close your browser.
• StumbleUpon - is an intelligent browsing tool for sharing and discovering great websites.
• Reliby - provides you with Reload all Live Bookmarks functionality.

Control Other Popular Services

• Adsense Notifier - Displays your Adsense earnings on the statusbar.
• Forecastfox Enhanced - Get international weather forecasts and display it in any toolbar or statusbar. Now with improved radar images and allows for pausing, restarting and setting the frequency of automatic updates.
• StockTicker - Shows your favorite stocks in a customizable ticker.
• DictionarySearch - Looks up a user selected word in an online dictionary you selected.
• Web Developer - Adds a menu and a toolbar with various essential web developer tools.
• Performancing for Firefox - A full featured blog editor that sits right within Firefox and lets you easily post to your Wordpress, MovableType or Blogger blogs.
• TimeTracker - Keeps track of how much time you browse.

This list is by no means complete and you may not agree with my choice, but this is merely an attempt to find the top and best firefox extensions. This post is regularly updated. If there is some favourite firefox extension you use which deserves a mention here, post it in comments…