The Best Firefox Extensions You Probably Didn’t Know About (and Some You Did)…

Writer’s note: One of the advantages of running your own blog is that you get to write about whatever you wish.  There are a lot of things in the world that really interest me, computers and technology being one of them.  I considered making this a Soapbox feature, but it just didn’t feel opinionated enough; there wasn’t enough of a polemic, so it’s just going to be a large featured post.  That being said, without further adieu, I present for your review:

The Best Firefox Extensions You Probably Didn’t Know About (and Some You Did)…

Firefox is my browser of choice.  I know there are many people out there who don’t even think about the browser they use; they simply stick with whatever was installed by the factory technicians on their computer.  An Internet browser can make or break your Internet experience, and I’d argue that Firefox is the best solution for nearly everyone.  It’s clean, intuitive, secure, has a large support base, and is exponentially expandable.  In fact, you don’t know how useful some extensions are until you’ve tried them, and soon you find out that you can’t live without them.  That’s why I’ve compiled a list of some of my favorite extensions that haven’t gotten the attention they probably deserve!

Mozilla Weave

A pretty new entry for most, you might not have heard of this one yet.  Mozilla Weave is a project from Mozilla Labs that aims to help users sync their browsers wherever they are, as well as backup and share their data wherever they are.  In this early version (currently 0.1.3), the program is able to sync bookmarks, history, cookies, form data, saved passwords, allowing for a seamless browser experience from computer to computer.  Best of all, it’s an open source project that is ready to greet the new wave of online applications.  Expect big things from this extension, perhaps even the inclusion of it by default into later Firefox versions.  (Note: This extension currently only works with Firefox 3+)

Get It Here

Shareaholic

If you are a social media user/consumer, this extension is perfect for you, if not a necessity. What is does is place a convenient button next to your address bar, which provides a context menu that queries various social media sites, and populates a list with relevant stats.  In plain english, if a site has diggs, it shows how many diggs it has.  If it has none, you simply press the same button and it will submit it.  The image here shows what the contextual menu looks like.  Currently, Shareaholic supports Del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, Foxiewire, Friendfeed, Google Bookmarks, Google Reader, HealthRanker, Magnolia, Mixx, Reddit, Simpy, Streakr, StumbleUpon, Truemors, Tumblr, and Twitter.  Whew! Shareaholic also easily lets you e-mail items of interest to your friends, as well as check on the latest community links at Bzzster.  Basically, this is the best social media extension around.  Forget little extensions that only support one site; this extension rolls everything into one ultra-useful application.

Get It Here

Hit the jump for more great extensions! Read it Later

This video explains this extension quite well.  Check it out:

This is a great help when filtering through articles that you are interested in, but can’t read at the moment.  The nice part about this extension is that it works inside your bookmarks, so if you have this extension installed on two separate platforms, and have your bookmarks synced, you’re unread news will follow you! (Note: No Firefox 3 support yet, but it’s coming soon).

Get It Here

Remember the Milk for Gmail

I’m *just* starting out with a sort of GTD philosophy (nothing involving folders, just exercising various productivity tips I’ve picked up here and there).  I made the mistake of giving up on notebooks a couple of years ago and started to try juggling things in my head, but it takes too much mental energy and you end up forgetting things along the way.  So I’ve been experimenting with various digital to-do lists, and have recently discovered Remember the Milk.

Remember the Milk is a great website that offers you the ability to keep synchronized digital to-do lists.  They keep adding features that make their software nearly ubiquitous and accessible from many different platforms, from Blackberrys to iPods to Windows Mobile and even Twitter.  Their goal is to let you have your daily to-do list available from anywhere. One such place they integrated with is Gmail.

Gmail, imho, is one, if not the best web-based e-mail service around, and if you haven’t tried it out yet, give it a spin.  The Remember the Milk extension for Gmail integrates your to-do list on the right hand side of the page.  The extension allows you to create tasks, link tasks to e-mails, connect tasks with Google Calendar, and even query your contacts if you need to associate a task with a particular person.  The program seamlessly integrates with Gmail and makes for a more robust and useful experience. Also check out Remember the Milk for Google Calendar.

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Faviconize Tab

All self-respecting Firefox ninjas should have this invaluable tool in their arsenal. Quite simply, it allows a user to double click on a tab and shrink it down to its favicon.  It’s a brilliant little bit of functionality, especially if you juggle around a lot of open tabs at a time!  No more scrolling side to side to find your pages that are lost in the shuffle.

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Smart Bookmarks Bar

The Bookmarks toolbar is a great tool for having your favorite links accessible at your fingertips at all time, however, it runs out of space fast.  Similar to Faviconize Tab, Smart Booksmarks Bar shrinks down all your links in the bookmark toolbar to just the favicon.  This allows you to put a vast many more links up there.  I have at least 75 links lined up on my bookmarks bar, and you think that would be confusing, except the favicons make everything instantly recognizable.

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Better Gmail/Gcal/GReader Google software is a key piece of the web for me.  As far as I know, there is nothing as integrated, accessible, or intuitive as these pieces of software.  That doesn’t mean they can’t be improved.  I’m grouping these three extensions together because what the wizards at Lifehacker do is take useful greasemonkey (another useful extension) scripts and bundle them together into handy, compact extensions for each application.  They offer a great deal of bonus features that seriously improve upon Google’s products, and are well worth your time.

Get em here: Better Gmail, Better GCal, Better GReader

And finally, there are some classic standby’s that are worthy of mention here.  Maybe you’ll discover a gem you didn’t know existed before!  The links will take you straight to the download page.

Oldies, but goodies:

• Adblock Plus - Just like the name says, blocks most ads.
• All-in-One Sidebar- Convenient Opera-style bar that provides easy access to all your settings in one location.
• Download Statusbar - Replace the standard download dialog box with a small bar located on the bottom of the Firefox window
• Downthemall -Powerful download manager, for those who need a bit more power under the hood.
• Firebug - Probably the most powerful web-development extension around.  A must have for developers, or just curious hobbyists who are just looking to learn.
• ForecastFox - Simple weather plugin that runs in the Firefox status bar.  Now you don’t have to go outside to check the weather! (Kidding…)
• Foxmarks - Sync your bookmarks across multiple computers.  Very handy!
• Greasemonkey/Stylish - Similar extensions that have similar functions, albiet working different ways. Both modify sites by installing (for Greasemoney) scripts and (for Stylish) style sheets.  Take a look at the useful scripts/stylesheets at Userscripts.org and Userstyles.org.

• Tab Mix Plus-This adds some serious functionality to your tabs, including the ability to undo closed tabs.  Very useful!

One final note, if you are running the newest release candidate of Firefox and can’t get every extension to work, consider installing the Nightly Tester Tools.  This will create an option called “Override All Compatibility,” and will allow most, if not all your extensions to run.  Do this at your own risk though, as you might experience some unintended buggy behaviors.  In my experience, most extensions work just fine.

This post was inspired by the Spread Firefox Download Day 2008.  The goal of this day is to get a Guinness World Record for most software downloads in a day.  Pledge to download on the day Firefox 3 is released and help Firefox proliferate, and expose people to the open-source philosophy!  Click the image below and check out the cool site they have going there:

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