My Favorite Firefox Addons

I read an article on the internet a couple of days back regarding the top addons for the Firefox web browser. This article prompted me to list down the number of addons I had installed for firefox over the times and the result was well… staggering

1. StumbleUpon Toolbar

(Download from : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/138)

StumbleUpon (http://www.stumbleupon.com) is a social networking site.. a great social networking site which helps you discover new links from various topics from food to technology to politics. And SU is the one of the first social networking sites to which I was hooked to. What SU does, is to provide platforms to share web links on various topics, review websites, meet people who share similar interests and exchange web links with them.

Firefox supports the SU toolbar which is one of the first reason why using SU is so fun and easy. The SU toolbar provides option to stumble upon wide range of topics. If you want to stumble the sites of a fellow stumbler (well thats what users of SU are called) then type in the name and you are ready to go. If you like a website then click on “I Like it” so that some one else who wants to see your favorite sites can stumble upon this link. For a newly discovered site, the toolbar displays a window which allows you to write a review and select a label. Really easy!!!! Also with notifications of messages and with keyboard shortcuts, stumbling is really easy!!!

2. Meebo Addon

(Download from : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5700)

Meebo(http://www.meebo.com) is a site which provides simultaneous login into your GTalk, Yahoo, AIM, MSN and many other IM accounts.. Apart from that meebo provides great applications like online games, file sharing, video chat among others.. With no downloads required whatsoever Meebo is truly an innovative step towards instant messaging.

But what makes Meebo more like-able for me is the Meebo addon with the Firefox. Meebo Addon provides features like automatic login when you open the browser window, message alert, user login alert. These notifications are not present otherwise and this addon really helps you by giving alerts when you are also doing some other work.

3. Firebug

(Download from : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843)

Firebug is another firefox addon which basically allows you to inspect and also edit the CSS, JavaScript, DOM among others.
I wont write anything else.. this small and a very novice tweak will make you programming buddies fall in love with Firebug.

5. Cool Iris Previews

(Download from : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2207)

Cool Iris Previews is another cool addon from Firefox. What Cool Iris does is pretty simple, when you move your mouse over a certain link a Cool Iris icon comes near that link. Moving you mouse over that icon will open the corresponding link. Really useful when you use FireFox like me with three widows open and about 10 tabs in each of them trying to access a web page. Opening another tab or another window is not going to be convenient.. Cool Iris comes in handy at this time. Apart from this, Cool Iris provides other functionalities like sharing of web links to your friends. Cool Iris also provides Google and Wikipedia search by selecting the text on the web page and right clicking the mouse. A stack option is available in Cool Iris which is a temporary bookmark option available.

6. Thumbstrips

(Download from : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5045)

Yet another bookmark addon is Thumbstrip. What makes Thumbstrip a download option is that it stores thumbnail images of the websites visited by you. So next time you need to revisit a previously visited link, simply open the Thumbstrip toolbar and select the website. So now there is no need to remember the names of the link. Thumbstrip also gives you the relative time as to when the website was previoisly opened, so searching becomes more easy.

7. Google Preview

(Download from : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/189)

Another interesting addon from FireFox is Google Preview. Google Preview gives you thumbnail images of websites along with the Google search results on the same page. And why is it beneficial? Well for people who continuously search something on the internet and if they previously found a solution to their problems but failed to save the webpage, then sometimes looking at the image along with the generated results helps them in going back to their webpage. I installed this addon when I faced the same problem a couple of times. And trust me its really useful.

8. Hyperwords

(Download from :https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1941)

Hyperwords is another very useful addon from FireFox. Its really simple to use, what you have to do is just highlight the text and immediately a drop down comes which gives you options like Google Search, Images search from Flicker, Google, etc.. People search from Facebook, Myspace etc.. Maps search. You can also search Wikipedia, TV.com and if the highlighted text is a name of a company then you can also view the stock details and the financial details of the company. Apart from this hyperwords also translates web pages, share web pages and even blog it. If the selected item is an accessory then hyperwords also gives you an option to search Ebay, Amazon etc.
Truly one of the most useful addons by Firefox

9. Read it later

(Download from : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6000)

Another simple addon is the Read It Later. What you simply need to do is right click on the web page and select the option Read It Later. This option will save the webpage link inside the bookmarks folder. A simple and easy utility

10. Flash Got

(Download from : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/220)

FlashGot is another useful addon while downloading from the internet. FlashGot allows the user to select a pre-installed download manager as a default download manager. So instead of using the inbuilt download facility from FireFox now you can set Free Download Manager or Download Accelerator Plus for standard downloading and BitComet or Azureus for torrent related downloads. FlashGot also allows the user to select multiple links at the same time and download all of them at once.

11. Tab Effect

(Download from : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4258)

Tab Effect is another cool addon which helps you add effects while changing tabs. No special advantage apart from that. I basically downloaded this so that I could impress my friends…

12. Shareaholic

(Download from : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5457)

Ok we have Digg Toolbar and StumbleUpon Toolbar..how about now having an addon which allows you to share links across sites like Twitter, Facebook, Del.icio.us etc. Thats precisely what Shareaholic provides. Once you open a web page and you feel like this web page is worth submitting around the social bookmarking sites then simple click on the Shareaholic button, a drop down window comes which will show you whether the page has already been submitted to a corresponding site. If not simply click the website to which you want to submit the link. A simple registration will allow you to share this web page to your friends via email..

So there you go a list of..12 addons from Firefox. All these firefox addons just make my surfing a better experience….

By Anand