{"id":358,"date":"2009-05-03T20:50:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-04T01:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/?p=358"},"modified":"2018-01-22T15:46:46","modified_gmt":"2018-01-22T21:46:46","slug":"my-favorite-mozilla-firefox-add-ons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/2009\/05\/my-favorite-mozilla-firefox-add-ons\/","title":{"rendered":"My Favorite Mozilla Firefox Add-Ons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Note: The post below was written several years ago, and links might be out-of-date.\u00a0 Additionally, as of Firefox 57, the browser platform is using the new <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/addons\/2017\/09\/28\/webextensions-in-firefox-57\/\">Web Extensions format<\/a>, and older add-ons are no longer compatible (here&#8217;s a <a href=\"https:\/\/digital.com\/blog\/webextensions-firefox\/\">blog post from Digital.com <\/a>that provides some more information).<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The good news is that there are updated versions of many of these add-ons here&#8217;s one list of potential <a href=\"https:\/\/digital.com\/blog\/webextensions-firefox\/\">Firefox Replacements<\/a>), and there are many new ones that are worth trying.\u00a0 I hope to write a new, updated post sometime in the future<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Several months ago, I took the plunge and switched from my primary browser (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.avantbrowser.com\/\">Avant Browser<\/a> \u2013 which basically automates IE with a bunch of new features) to Firefox.\u00a0 I was on the fence for a while.\u00a0 I generally liked Firefox\u2019s user interface and performance, but missed some of the navigation features that were available in IE.\u00a0 What finally pushed me to switch to Firefox were some really useful (but not always well-known) add-ons.\u00a0 I now find them to be almost indispensible to my web browsing habits.\u00a0 So, without further delay, here\u2019s a list of my favorites (with minimal comments as the Firefox Add-Ons site provides the best explanations with screenshots):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/addons.mozilla.org\/en-US\/firefox\/addon\/4925\">AutoPager<\/a>: The page-based nature of the Web can make it really difficult to navigate through large documents.\u00a0 Often, you\u2019ll have to click through pages one-by-one.\u00a0 What if the Google Search result you want didn\u2019t make the first page?\u00a0 You generally would have to manually navigate to the next page of results (or change the default view to include more results).\u00a0 And don\u2019t get me started on sites that force you to click through a dozen pages to read an entire article.\u00a0 AutoPager can automatically load content from additional pages without losing context.\u00a0 It supports hundreds of sites out of the box and provides an easy way to add support for new sites.\u00a0 I highly recommend it, at least until the Web (and advertising) start supporting better ways to view large amounts of information.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/addons.mozilla.org\/en-US\/firefox\/addon\/8879\">FoxTab<\/a>: A great multi-tab browser that allows you to choose from a wide <a href=\"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/foxtab.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display: inline; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; border: 0px;\" title=\"FoxTab\" src=\"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/foxtab-thumb.png\" alt=\"FoxTab\" width=\"244\" height=\"121\" align=\"right\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>variety of different \u201cgallery\u201d views that show thumbnails of open tabs.\u00a0 It seems to scale and perform well, even with dozens of open tabs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/addons.mozilla.org\/en-US\/firefox\/addon\/4810\">SpeedDial<\/a>:\u00a0 Most of us frequent the same sites many times per day.\u00a0 The default user behavior \u2013 typing URLs or choosing them from the Bookmarks list \u2013 can be quite cumbersome.\u00a0 As its name suggests, SpeedDial provides users with thumbnails of their most common web sites whenever they open a new tab.\u00a0 ~80% of the time, I use the keyboard shortcuts (Alt-# or CTRL-#) to open the sites I use the most.<\/li>\n<li>Read It Later:\u00a0 It might seem a little strange, but I\u2019ve all but abandoned the use of bookmarks in my browsers.\u00a0 I am usually very organized, but I found that it takes too much effort to store and organize separate links (many of which tend to quickly become outdated).\u00a0 Read It Later provides a great way to keep track of specific articles and content that you plan to read later without requiring you to create bookmarks.\u00a0 When you\u2019re bored, you can just click on its icon, and you\u2019ll be presented with on of the pages from its list.\u00a0 You can easily mark something as \u201cread\u201d without having to deal with deleting bookmarks.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/addons.mozilla.org\/en-US\/firefox\/addon\/1419\">IE Tab<\/a>: Despite a strong push to work on standards-based sites and browsers, the need to launch IE is sometimes inevitable.\u00a0 An example that comes to mind is the SQL Server Reporting Services web site which doesn\u2019t seem to render properly in Firefox.\u00a0 IE Tab allows you to simply click an icon on the status bar to switch to using the IE rendering engine for that tab.\u00a0 You get to stay in the comfort of Firefox while using IE behind the scenes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Those are the highlights of my favorite extensions.\u00a0\u00a0 You can easily download and install all of these extensions using the <a href=\"https:\/\/addons.mozilla.org\/en-US\/firefox\/\">Firefox Add-Ons<\/a> page.\u00a0 Installation couldn\u2019t be much simpler, and it\u2019s really easy to try out new extensions.<\/p>\n<p>But, wait &#8211; there\u2019s more:\u00a0 So far, my favorite theme is <a href=\"https:\/\/addons.mozilla.org\/en-US\/firefox\/addon\/8782\">Chromifox Basic<\/a>.\u00a0 As its name implies, it\u2019s hardly the flashiest of themes.\u00a0 But, I really like its simple look and customizations.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s certainly no lack of web pages and blog entries that highlight \u201cmust-have Firefox.\u00a0 (There are so many, in fact, that I\u2019m not going to bother to link to any of them.)\u00a0 Now, I can add myself to that list. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Note: The post below was written several years ago, and links might be out-of-date.\u00a0 Additionally, as of Firefox 57, the browser platform is using the new Web Extensions format, and older add-ons are no longer compatible (here&#8217;s a blog post from Digital.com that provides some more information). The good news is that there are updated [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,24,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun-stuff","category-it-tips","category-general-systems-admin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1112,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions\/1112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}