Favorite Firefox Extensions

I’ve been a happy Firefox user for quite some time. I even run on nightly builds on a daily basis (the new auto-update feature of upcoming 1.5 release makes it really easy). I’ve tried quite a few firefox extensions so far, below is a list of some that I’ve found to be invaluable.

If you’re using a nightly build, or a beta and some of your extensions are disabled, use the Nightly Tester Tools extension to enable them again.

Web Development

  • Web Developer
    An excellent extension, worth getting firefox just for this. Too many features to mention here. Invaluable.
  • Inspect Element
    Adds an option in the context menu which when clicked will take you to the respective element in the DOM Inspector (built-into firefox).
  • Console²
    Console² is an enhancement over the default Firefox Javascript Console that let’s you display errors filtered by type (Errors, Warnings, Messages), language (JavaScript, CSS, XML) and context (Chrome, Content). Furthermore it provides a simple search box (as seen in the History and Bookmarks sidebars) and some accessibility improvements.
  • IE View
    Adds an option in the context menu to quickly load current page in IE, for comparisons.

Usability enhancements

  • Greasemonkey
    Allows the customisation of pages through Javascript. You can find a wealth of ready-made scripts here. Unique.
  • Adblock Plus
    Get rid of ads, once and for all.
  • BugMeNot
    Another form to fill out, another service that needs registration? Right-click on any form field, select bug-me-not and this extension will load user-supplied information from a central site to automatically fill it out and submit!
    Brilliant!
  • PDF Download
    Gives you an option to either download a PDF, view it in another tab using Acrobat Reader, or as HTML!
  • Tweak Network
    This extension will allow you to tweak network settings to improve performance.
  • Feedview
    Displays RSS feeds as a regular web-page.
  • FlashGot
    Integrates 3rd party download managers (such as get-right) nicely into firefox.
  • Google Toolbar for Firefox
    All google goodness in a toolbar which is customisable.
  • Stop-or-Reload Button
    Replaces the Stop and Reload buttons with one that changes state appropriately. Nice if you want to save some space.
  • Tabbrowser Preferences
    Provides several options to customise your tab-browsing experience.

Updated 09/10/05 - Added Console², Nightly Tester Tools