As I start looking toward migrating to my new notebook in a few weeks, my eyes are drawn to the Firefox extensions I currently have loaded. For folks' edification ...

Spiffiness
These make life (or the Internet experience) nicer.

• BugMeNot: Bypass those annoying registration screens for some websites.
  
• downTHEMall: Bulk graphics downloader.
  
• ForecastFox: Put little weather icons in your status bar.
  
• Wayback: Context menu access to the Wayback archive for web sites.
  
• Google Pagerank Status: Shows Google pageranks, just like the Google search bar does.
  
• ImgTag: Get an HTML img tag for a page's graphic file (for direct links to it).

Tabbed browsing
Though FF supports it, these extend it the way I want it.

• Tabbrowser Preferences: The sine qua non, controlling what opens up in a new tab, etc.
  
• Flowing Tabs: Wraps the tabs around to multiple lines, rather than squeezing them into a single line. (A version 1.x-compatable version can be found here.)
  
• Duplicate Tab: Adds a "duplicate tab" (into a new tab, or a new window) function.
  
• Tab Clicking Options: Lets you do certain things by clicking on tabs in certain ways (e.g., close a tab by double-clicking on it).
  
• CTC: Adds "Close tab" to the context menu.

Browser functions
These add to what FF does as a browser.

• Adblock: Block image ads from download and/or display.
  
• Flashblock: Block flash images from download and/or display.
  
• ieView: Open a page in Internet Explorer (for those pages that must be so opened to function, dagnabbit).
  
• Print It!: Adds a print and print preview button to the tool bar, as well as print functions to the context menu.
  
• Add Bookmark Here: Adds to the bookmarking functionality.
  
• Chromedit: Graphical interface to the various FF config files.
  
• SpellBound: Nice spell checker for web forms.
  
• Text Size Toolbar: Adds text size up/down controls to the toolbar.
  
• Session Saver: Tracks tabs you've closed during a session, and saves (and can reopen) open tabs when you close FF (particularly handy if your machine crashes).

One of the cool things about FF is that, if you don't want the functionality listed above, you don't have to have it. And if you want something alternative (or in addition) to the above, chances are there are other extensions that have been created to do it. FF works fine out of the box, but these extensions make it work even better.

Filed under :: My Computer

Les comments on this post here. Cool.

So how come, when I try to install these extensions, Firefox notifies me that "To protect your computer, Firefox has prevented this site from installing software on your computer"?

By default (and as a good security measure), FF blocks any direct installation of an extension from any site unless you explicitly okay it ... by clcking on the little button that shows up next to that message, whitelisting the site, and trying to install it again.

The interface could be slightly smoother, but it's better than, by default, accepting anything that says, "I'm installing myself now ..."

Thanks for the linky goodness! Because, ya know, I don't spend enough time on this machine.

How do you get QuickTime movies to play in Firefox? It kept telling me that QT is not installed, no matter how many times I reinstalled it. I then found and installed MediaPlayerConnectivity 0.3.6, but I stll can't view QT movies. I just tried to watch Lego Star Wars: Revenge of the Brick, and it says it couldn't initialize the application because the file wasn't found. IE6 plays it just fine, though. Is there some other extension I should be using?

I haven't had any problems with the QT plugin (it's actually my player of choice), but ... try here.

Well, I installed the QT program from that site. It installed itunes, and now I can hear QT movies, but can't see them.

Stupid Evil Bastard (29-Mar-05 12:28 AM): http://stupidevilbastard.com/index/seb/comments/dave_fills_us_in_on_his_foxy_extensions/ - ***Dave fills us in on his Foxy Extensions.

Wow, that sounds a lot dirtier than I thought it would. Anyway, SEB regular ***Dave has an entry up about his favorite Firefox extensions that is worth reading if, like me, you've not bothered to make much use of that particular aspect of the b...

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