My add-ons

Posted 3 months, 2 weeks ago at 15:34. 3 comments

I realized the other day that I hadn’t done a post about my favorite add-ons since Firefox 1.5. The add-on landscape has changed a lot since that time, sufficiently so that I think it merits an updated post with a short blurb about why I love/need each extension. I’m using some add-ons for Thunderbird too, so I’ve included those as well.

Firefox:

• about:me – interesting to see where my browsing time goes
• Adblock Plus – do you like intrusive ads? Me neither.
• BarTab – by default, Firefox attempts to load all your previous tabs at once when you start the browser. If you had lots of tabs open last session, Firefox start-up can take forever. This extension delays tab load until you actually click on the tab. Note: we’re looking to improve the default tab open behavior in Firefox 4, but how exactly is still under discussion.
• Contacts – a Mozilla Labs project that’s trying to unify disparate contact sources from across the web and give control back to the user.
• Download Statusbar – a lightweight alternative to the download window that is still quite powerful.
• Enter Selects – saves me a whole keystroke every time I use the awesomebar.
• FaviconizeTab – I use this as a poor-man’s app tab right now, but Firefox 4 may obviate the need for this.
• feedly – my preferred feed reader/aggregator
• Flashblock – turns Flash elements off by default, allowing you to click on only the ones you want to load. Saves bandwidth and possibly sanity.
• FoxClocks – shows me the current time from various locations around the world, because I can never remember what time it is in New Zealand.
• Greasemonkey – I use a few simple Greasemonkey scripts to tame the output from some of the web tools I look at frequently for work.
• Jetpack Prototype – no longer under development, but I still use some useful Jetpacks.
• Kidzui – I don’t let my kids surf on their own yet, but when I do, I think this might make a good set of software training wheels.
• Mass Password Reset – I want to hug johnath for this add-on every time I need to reset my LDAP password.
• Nagios Checker (disabled) – I only run this when I’m on buildduty, but it helps keep nagios info available without being obtrusive.
• Live HTTP headers (disabled) – I only run this when I’m debugging AJAX, but useful to have around for when I need it.
• Readability – allows me to focus on the text of articles without all the usual visual distraction.
• TabCandy – this add-on is brand new and still under-development, but it has already changed the way I interact with my browser for the better. I hope that many of it’s features get uplifted into Firefox 4.
• Textarea Cache – ever have your browser close/crash while you were filling out a form or writing an email? You don’t have to worry about that any more.
• User Agent Switcher – I keep this around for the few web sites that botch their UA/version checking.
• VacuumPlaces Extension Improved – cleanliness is next to speediness
• View Source Chart – I actually paid for this add-on back in the day when it was one of the best tools out there for dissecting page layout.
• Weave Sync – I use a lot different machines. Weave keeps my settings in sync across those machines. As a long time user of Google Browser Sync, I was thrilled when Mozilla started the Weave project.
• YSlow (disabled) – I only turn this on when doing webdev, but thankfully I haven’t needed to bother with it much lately.

Thunderbird:

• Bugzilla Helper – allows me to display the user who actually caused the bugmail to be sent, which is very useful when dealing with bugmail in volume.
• Enigmail – I rarely use the encryption functions, but I always (digitally) sign my mail.
• Remove Duplicate Messages – Again, very useful when dealing with large volumes of mail.

Current Tunes: Nothing | Filed under Firefox, Software, Thunderbird |