15 Best Firefox Productivity Add-ons
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Firefox is indeed THE browser to use these days. While the advent of Chrome has been really promising, still it will take time before we can put Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox in the same row. Having technically lived with Firefox day in and day out, I have got some really cool add -ons to help me in my work. Here is a peek so that you people can also try your hands on and find the best option for yourself.
[A boring plea to all of you before I start here. This blog is meant to help people in technology and share the knowledge. Though I have just started in the blogosphere with my own space, I need your comments and suggestions too to make it more productive. Anyway, let's cut this emotional words short and focus on how we can boost the productivity of Firefox]
1. Noscript
The extension lets you control which scripts run on the page, so you can allow those from the hosting site, but block those from ad networks, for example. NoScript is free to download and install.
Download
2. Customize Google
Customize Google is a very robust extension that lets you customize many features of the services provided by Google.
Download
3. FasterFox
No matter how fast your Internet connection, the Web still makes you wait. You can cut the time it takes web pages to load with the Fasterfox add-on. I am using this app myself and have found it very useful. Something that not only tells us of speed boosting but actually does. It automatically tweaks Firefox's settings to retrieve data from Web servers more quickly.
You can manually right-click the program's muscled-fox icon in the bottom-right corner of the window and click Options to tweak your browser settings manually (choose Custom under the Presets tab to show tabs for resetting the extension's Cache, Connection, Pipelining, Rendering, and Popups options). The add-on also displays the load time for the current page.
Download
4. PDF Options
The PDF Download extension for the Firefox browser
PDFs are very much into Webs now. A Document is almost always found in a PDF format. To download it every time and read is annoying. Why not have a better option? Nitro PDF's add-on lets you decide whether you want to download the file, view it in your Firefox window, or view it as HTML (as long as it isn't copy-protected). After you install the extension, you see a pop-up menu whenever you click a PDF, giving you the option to download it as normal, view it in Adobe Reader or the FoxIt PDF plug-in, or open the HTML version of the file.
Download
5. Adblock Plus
This add-on lets you get rid of flashy banners and advertisements. It blocks all unwanted content like banners, annoying scripts and adverts. Right-click on a banner and choose “Adblock” from the context menu - the banner won’t be downloaded again.
Download
6. Download StatusBar
Download Statusbar manages your downloads in the status bar instead of the Firefox Download Manager. I find that the download manager that comes with Firefox to be very intrusive. Download manager tucks your download progress bars into the generally unused status bar of Firefox. This lets you download care-free without the Firefox Download Manager popping up and interrupting you.
Download
7. URL Fixer
URL fixer will replace the common typos you enter when typing a Web site into the URL bar (i.e., http://www.simplygeeks.blogspot.moc, htp:/simplygeks.blogspot.com).
The auto correct feature of URL fixer is very helpful. “[URL Fixer] will correct common misspellings of .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov, and .mil, as well as the protocol (http:, https:).
It will also correct errors in country code TLDS such as .com.XX, .net.XX, and .org.XX.”
Download
8. Tab Mix Plus
Many of the features of Tab Mix Plus were incorporated into the release of Firefox 2. However, Tab Mix Plus allows you to add finer-grained control of your tabs. The following is a description of Tab Mix Plus:Tab Mix Plus enhances Firefox’s tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager with crash recovery that can save and restore combinations of opened tabs and windows
Download
9. ScrapBook
Scrapbook is extremely useful for researchers and students. Scrapbook saves blurbs from Web pages to your hard drive along with the URL of the originating Web site. It allows you to organize and categorize your blurbs in a format similar to your bookmarks so that when it comes to creating a bibliography or works cited, you won’t waste any time.
Download
10. TrailFire
With trailFire you can mark webpages that you find interesting by leaving notes right on the page. These notes are linked together into trails that you organize any way you desire. The trails you make will guide people on the web , the approach is collaborative as other people can leave responses on the trails you made and even add new marked pages.
The next time you are looking for something on the Web, use Trailfire to mark the pages you find and they will be automatically shared with everyone else through the search engines. You can also keep your trails private if you wish to. Though Google has already come up with personalized search options and etc, still this is a very good option to consider.
Download
11. CoolIris Preview
Cooliris is another helpful add- on I liked.
The extension shows you the destination of a link when you hover the mouse over the small blue-and-green Cooliris icon that appears to the right of the link when you highlight it. You can also use the extension to prefetch Web sites, and you can change the preview action from mouseover icon to mouseover link, clicking link, clicking icon, or pressing Ctrl as you mouse over. The options dialog (which opens when you right-click the blue checkmark icon in the bottom-right corner of the Firefox window and choose User options) also lets you customize the options that appear when you right-click selected text in Firefox, allowing fast searches via the service of your choice, and sending links via e-mail, among other options. Another nice feature of the latest version 2.6 of the extension is the ability to view Google and Yahoo image-search results as a slideshow.
The Cooliris Preview add-on for the Firefox browser
Download
12. Speed Dial
You can easily access your most used websites with Speed Dial. To show the Speed Dial tab, use the Speed Dial button (which can be added to the toolbar), or enter chrome://speeddial/content in your location bar.
To assign one website to Speed Dial, use the new Set as Speed Dial option in the bookmarks menu, or right click on the tab you want to add, and choose Set as Speed Dial.
Download
13. Video Download Helper
This is a must have add-on for video, audio and picture gallery downloads from popular services like Youtube, MySpace and Google Video etc. When an embedded audio or video file is detected on a website the downloadhelper icon gets animated and you can download the required media.
DownloadHelper also allows you to download files one by one, so that you keep bandwidth to surf for other stuff to download.
Download
14. EverNote Web Clipper
Several times during the day we spot interesting things and may want to write about it later. Evernote Web Clipper fits in perfectly with our note taking allowing us to clip web pages, images and text, so that we can go over it later at our own leisure. You may also want to check out Google Notebook add-on.
Download
15. ReminderFox
Since we spend a lot of time using Firefox, we prefer to use ReminderFox for several reasons. It definitely saved us a lot of time remembering birthdays, anniversaries, paying of cable and internet and more without having to maintain another application just for reminding us about important dates and events.
Download
Conclusion
With right add-ons and right workability, Firefox can give you a fully OS like integration inside a single browser. Hope this article will help you in a significant way. If you want to add more to this or suggest anything else, feel free to comment. I need your feedbacks. Take care.
[Thanks to: lifehack.org, thenextweb.com, news.cnet.com, techie-buzz.com]
