50 Recommended Firefox Extensions
Firefox is the best web browsers available today. It’s Open-Source and a tribute to the many talented programmers and engineer’s whom have donated their time and work to make this browser the best it can be. What makes this browser top in it’s game? It’s the robust extension support, and over 1500 them available. With that many options, you can customize Mozilla to fit your needs.
Just in case you don’t know, an extension is nothing more than a script that is added on to give more functionality to the browser. These add-on’s allow the user to customize Mozilla Firefox Browser to their specific needs. Users can add anything from a simple toolbar button to a complete new feature like an FTP client or an RSS feed reader right in the browser. There are so many ways you can benefit from these extensions and that’s what makes this browser stand out from the rest and my favorite. Below, we have compiled a list of extensions, what we feel are the best recommended Firefox add-on’s.
1. Aardvark – this powerful and user-friendly extension outlines and provides class or id names for any element under the cursor. It can be used for cleaning up a page prior to printing it (by removing and isolating elements), for making the page more readable. Start Aardvark by right-clicking on the page and choosing “Start Aardvark” from the menu. The extension will run until you leave, refresh, or stop it by pressing “Q” for quit.
2. Adblock Plus – is an enhanced version of Adblock that does an outstanding job of blocking unwanted ads, applets, flash, embedded-media annoying content in pages etc. It’s customizable and can easily eliminate any undesired element from the page on command. A complete subscription-based, automatic update solution is available for the block list, free of charge, as well as the ability to setup custom block lists. I suggest you use Adblock plus in conjunction with the Element Hiding Helper add-on. The Adblock Filterset.G Updater , these two make this add-on even better.
3. Adsense Notifier – if you’re a web master and using AdSense, the Adsense Notifier extension is a tool that provides quick, convenient access to your account data. It can display your account in the follow ranges: Today, Past 7 Days, This Month, All Time, Yesterday, Two Days Ago, Last Month, This week, Last Week, Last Business Week, and Since Last Payment.
4. All-in-One Sidebar – lets you quickly switch between sidebar panels, view dialog windows (downloads, extensions, and more) and websites sources in the sidebar. Inspired by the Opera sidebar, this extension includes a toolbar which can be customized.
5. Autocopy - a convenient tool for copying, you just high light the text to be copied and it automatically copies it to the clip board instead of having to hit ctrl + C every time. You have the option to turn this on or off in the bottom right of the browser.
6. ChatZilla – is a clean and easy to use Internet relay chat (IRC) client that runs in the Firefox browser. ChatZilla is a cross platform messaging client that combines Internet Relay Chat (IRC) with existing web standards like JavaScript plug-ins, HTML, and CSS styling. This IRC client features: multiple servers, a built-in list of standard networks, easy searching and sorting of available channels, logging, and DCC chat and file transfers, plus easy customization with JavaScript plug-ins and CSS styling. If you don’t know any of thing about using this client, you don’t need to worry, ChatZilla is very easy to use.
7. Clear Cache Button – this is the easiest way to clear the Firefox browser cache. No menus, no pop-ups. One button – click it and the cache is clear. Clear Cache Button extension adds a clear cache tool bar button that cleans the cache in one click. Very handy tool for those who have use for it.
8. ColorfulTabs – will assign all your tabs to a different color keeping you well organized and a lot less confused by being able to tell them apart. ColorfulTabs is a beautiful yet simple add-on that offers a strong colorful appeal to your browser. Being able to differentiate between tabs is a great help.
9. Colorzilla - With ColorZilla you can get an advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other useful goodies like color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program. Colorzilla will appear at the bottom of the browser window in the status bar.
10. Cooliris – instantly transforms your browser into a full-screen, 3D experience for viewing photos and videos on the Web. Photos and videos will come to life via a cinematic presentation that goes well beyond the confines of the traditional browser window. With Cooliris, browsing and viewing media on the Web will never be the same again. Search sites like YouTube, Flickr, Google Images, deviantART and more. You can visually shop at Amazon.com and you can discover content from sites like ESPN, MSNBC and BBC, as well as movie trailers and the latest pop culture.
11. Copy Link Text - this little extension allows you to quickly copy links along with the anchor text, even from sites that block you from copying. To apply this extension, just right click a link, and select the option, the anchor text and the link is copied to the clipboard. This is a faster method than selecting the text, highlighting and then copying.
12. CSS validator – one click to valid a page using the W3C CSS validator. Basically This extension displays the number of found errors of the site you are viewing. Nice add-on to have if your the busy type and need to resolve such issues quickly by the click of a button.
13. Dict – provides definitions and thesaurus at the click of a button without having to open another tab and search the web for an online dictionary. Just point at any word – highlight it, right click and select Look up and the word you are looking up will appear there as well. Example highlight the word car and right click, you will see in the menu options Look Up car. Select Look Up car and a pop-up window appears with several definitions, a thesaurus also appears below definitions.
14. DownThemAll - is a powerful yet easy-to-use Mozilla Firefox extension that adds advanced functionality to your browser.There are alot of download managers out there and most are external from your browser. What puts this one at the top of our list is it is intergrated into the Firefox browser and gives you a full-fledged application right in Firefox’s Tools menu. Download speeds within Firefox can be accelerated by up to 400%. Downloads can be paused and resumed at any point plus the user interface and menus can be easily customized via the Preferences dialog. The filter preferences allow you to block certain file types from being transferred. Adding this extension is like giving Firefox downloads a shot of adrenaline.
15. Download Statusbar - displays the progress of current and completed downloads in the status bar instead of showing a dialog for your downloads. You can easily pause, cancel, resume or open the download; double click a download to run it; right click for an option to open the containing folder; download speed display; single click to pause and resume and much more. Options are available to automatically clear files of certain extensions from the bar to keep it organized, such as files that open automatically. You can easily customize the look and feel as well. Download Statusbar is vailable in 25 different languages!
16. ErrorZilla Mod – a handy tool for when a page fails to load in Firefox, ErrorZilla Mod will show options for “Try Again,” “Google Cache,” “Coralize,” “Wayback,” “Ping,” “Trace,” and “Whois”, which can be used to gain access to the page for your informational needs. The add-on is cross-platform and it works on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.
17. FaviconizeTab and Tab Scope both are perfectly match for tab addicts that want to be organized and have a lot of opened windows. FaviconizeTab utilizes a hotkey command to turn any tab into the size of a favicon. This takes up a lot less space when you have 20 or more windows open. Tab Scope provides mouse-over previews of your tabs. So, if you can’t remember what your faviconized tabs were, a quick preview snapshot will remind you.
18. Firebug – is a vital extension if your a web developer. This powerful extension integrates with Firefox to put a gold mine of tools at your fingertips while you browse and will save you countless hours of debugging, styling and cursing. You can inspect page elements, edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. Logging and debugging of JavaScript are provided, no more alert messages to debug the code. To access this extension just click View, then Firebug or you can press F12 or just click the bug icon on status bar.
19. FireFTP - is a powerful open-source cross-platform ( Windows, Mac OS X, Linux) FTP client for Mozilla, which is secure, quick, effective and best of all it’s free. FireFTP has integrated advanced features such as: directory comparison, syncing directories while navigating, SFTP, SSL encryption, search/filtering, integrity checks, remote editing, drag & drop, file hashing, and much more! It’s available in over 20 languages.
20. Fireshot – taking a screen shot of a website is as easy as eating Mom’s Apple Pie with this gem. With one click, Fireshot can capture the entire page or just the visible area of a page you select, then you have options to upload, copy, mail, print, or open the file for editing. It’s internal editor has the ability to add shapes, pointers, text, another image, or draw on the image, which is great for web designers and blog reviewers. Screen shots can be saved to disk using various formats, copied to clipboard, e-mailed, or sent to an external editor for further development.
21. Flagfox – is an unobtrusive extension which displays a flag icon in the status bar from the country of origin which the web site is hosted. This handy extension uses an IP address database rather than relying on the top-level domain. When the flag icon is clicked, information from GeoTool or Wikipedia will load and provide you with an location map, as well as information on the ISP, city, IP address, local time, country code, region, postal code, and more. Best of all it uses very little resource.
22. FoxyProxy – with this extension your connection is safe and anonymous by automatically switching your Internet connection over to a proxy server. This advanced proxy management tool completely replaces Firefox’s limited proxy capabilities. It offers more features than SwitchProxy, ProxyButton, QuickProxy, xyzproxy, ProxyTex, TorButton, etc.
23. Foxmarks - If you have more than one computer, you need to look at this add-on. This valuable extension synchronizes your bookmarks across multiple computers and gives you access to them via their website. Foxmarks is simple to set-up. Basically it works like this, whenever you add a bookmark to your browser at work, the new addition will also automatically sync to your browser at home, and vice versa.
24. FoxyTunes – gives you control over multiple media players without leaving your browser. FoxyTune can be positioned on your statusbar or one of your toolbars. You can control from your browser, playback, volume and see what’s playing along with many other features. Personally I use the Winamp toolbar and love it. But FoxyTunes gives you the better flexability and therefore made the cut for this list.
25. GMail Manager - if you use Gmail and have more than one account you need to look at this extension. This nifty add-on allows you to manage multiple Gmail accounts and receive new mail notifications. It facilitates easy switching between different Gmail accounts with the click of a button. Displays your account details including unread messages, saved drafts, spam messages, labels with new mail, space used, and new mail snippets. You can customize this by placing the icon anywhere in the toolbar or statusbar.
26. Google Toolbar - is perhaps the best known browser extension and was one of the first toolbars to enable easy searching. The toolbar gives you the ability to search Google from a toolbar, access to your Gmail, auto fill forms, spell check on line and several other features that are useful. Overall the Google Toolbar has evolved into much more than a search box. It’s range of features are impressive and really improves browsing for the user.
27. Greasemonkey - is a brilliant extension to run the many Greasmonkey scripts that allow you to customize sites from Facebook to Gmail. Basically, Greesemonkey allows you to change the functionality of Web sites on the fly by adding new features or stripping out existing ones, and tweaking a site in ways its operator never intended. With this tool you can strip adds from a favorite website, the possibilities are practically endless with thousands of user scripts available.
28. Html Validator – adds HTML validation inside Firefox and Mozilla. It shows the number of errors of a HTML page seen in the form of an icon on the status bar when browsing. The details of the errors can be seen while looking at the HTML source of the page.
29. IETab – another handy extension that embeds Internet Explorer in a Firefox tab. Using a tab inside of Firefox is faster and easier than having to open up Internet Explorer to view coding issues that may be present. This add-on also make it easy for firefox users to visit Windows Update without the need to switch browsers. IE Tab also offers context menu integration and supports external applications other than Internet Explorer. This may seem trivial but you can continue to browse in Firefox while your downloads for IE are being completed in another tab.
30. InformEnter – It adds a small clickable blue icon (that can be turned off with a right click) next to every form field. You can configure it to fill in semi-automatic mode with any frequently used field values for such as: username and passwords, address, website url, email address, phone numbers, street address and so on etc. In the options tab you can set up multiple account to use. It’s easy to set-up and use.
31. Mini Map Sidebar – if you travel a lot then this add-on is for you. Mini Map Sidebar gives you a suite of built-in maps and mapping tools for your web browser and allows you to drag-and-drop addresses or address links to generate maps and driving directions. It provides a whole range of features for working with addresses.
32. MR Tech Local Install – this extension provides the tools needed to install and manage Firefox extensions and themes locally. This add-on has the ability to make older extensions compatible with newer versions of Firefox and the ability to install extensions that aren’t compatible with your current version of Firefox.
33. Meebo – if you use instant messengers a lot you might want to look at this nice extension. It installs a sidebar which you can use for instant messaging via the browser. Supports different IM protocols such as AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, GTalk, ICQ, and Jabber. This extension allow using IM across corporate firewalls. Great way for office workers to communicate without leaving their desks or tieing up the phones.
34. Menu Editor – will facilitate customizing the menus from the File menu bar running across the top of Firefox (File, Edit, View, Go, and so on) as well as the Context Menu system that appears when you right click anywhere within the browser viewport. Menu Editor is great for those who have installed a dozen extensions into Firefox and now have menus all over the place with a lot of unwanted options.
35. NoScript – This is the first very first extention I add to a newly installed Firefox Browser. An important extension for added security that provides extra protection for Firefox as it prevents scripts from running in the background of a website without your permission.
36. Pencil – is an interesting sketching and prototyping tool which can be used to create mockups of screenshots. It includes a variety of basic elements like windows, menus, tables, progress bars, check boxes, buttons, radio buttons, etc. as well as basic annotation tools like text, images, and arrows, to add comments.
37. Sage-Too – With collector of RSS and Atom feed aggregator, you can stay on top of news and updates. It adds an icon on the browser, by clicking the icon it opens a sidebar with all your feeds nice and organized. Currently Sage Too supports 21 languages.
38. SearchStatus – This powerful extension provides extensive search related information to your arsenal about visited web sites, such as: Google PageRank, Google Category, Alexa popularity ranking, Compete.com ranking, Alexa incoming links, Alexa related links, and backward links from Google, Yahoo, and MSN. This information is conveniently displayed in one little area anywhere in your browser, with the remaining data available via a right-click of the mouse. The results can be customized to display the information you fell are important.
39. Shareaholic - a must have extension for those who do a lot of social bookmarking. With one click you can submit the web page you’re on to your favorite bookmarking service, such as: digg, del.icio.us, facebook, friendfeed, bit.ly, connotea, google bookmarks, google reader notes, gmail, kaboodle, magnolia, meneame, mixx, myspace, plurk, reddit, soup.io, stumbleupon, tipjoy, tumblr, twine, twitter, weheartit, yahoo buzz, and ycombinator without spending any more time than you have to away from the article. You can also e-mail the web page directly to a friend.
40. SEO for Firefox – a well thought out extension for Firefox that grabs a lot of useful marketing/seo data and allows you to instantly review the sites from search results. You get information such as: page rank, age of site, page links, catched data from Google, Alexa, Technorati, Dmoz related information and so much more. If you need to research a website’s information then this tool is no doubt a must have.
41. SpellBound - provides a spell checker similar to one seen in most word processors. As a word is entered in any text box of a page, Spellbound highlights the misspelled words with a red dotted underline. The spelling can then be easily corrected by clicking on the red underlined word which opens a pop up menu with potential corrections, offering a choice of which word to replace.
42. Sxipper – will manage your passwords and automatically fill in registration, sign-up, and sign-in forms through a simple, attractive interface. Unlike other form fillers, this one stores your private data in a encrypted location on your computer, which means it’s a secure system for automatically adding your personal information and passwords to Web sites.
43. Tab Mix Plus – a robust add-on that enhances Firefox’s tab browsing functionality. It provides options for controlling tab focus, link opening, many new tab display capabilities, tab clicking behavior, undo closed tabs and windows, advanced session management, and much more. This powerful extension can be a little overwhelming for the novice, therefore we recommend checking out the Download.com Tab Mix Plus user’s guide.
44. TwitterFox – as we all know Twitter has become the thing these days and many of us use it. This extension is a Twitter client that resides on your status bar and notifies you when your friends update their tweets. Also it has a small text input field to update, copy, re-tweet, open tweet in new tab and delete your tweets.
45. UnPlug – lets you save video and audio embedded on a web page. It works with many video sharing sites, such as YouTube, Google Video, and others. Simply to use, just browse to a page where you want to grab media from and click the little smiling fish icon on your browser, it will download the media.
46. Validaty – provides you with a one click button to validate a page using a validator like validator.w3.org on your web browser. You just click the Validaty icon in your toolbar and the page is validated for you and the icons shows the status of the validation. Really simple tool meant for the user under time restraints.
47. Video DownloadHelper - Assists you in locating and downloading videos from over 500 websites from all over the world. Basically it’s a tool for web content extraction. Its purpose is to capture video and image files from many websites. Video DownloadHelper places an icon on the stausbar with menu of options that allows you to download files by simply clicking an item
48. WeatherBug – this handy extension places an icon on your statusbar to access local weather conditions and forecasts. The data presented as well as its placement is highly configurable I use it to display the current temperature and some other related information directly on the statusbar. This way I know if I should blog or go fishing.
49. Web Developer – this powerful tool is a must have extension for every web developer. It adds a menu and a toolbar with various web development tools to your browser. It outlines page elements, displays the size of images, gives CSS and form information, disables certain elements on a page, and much more.
50. Web Directory Form Filler - whether you’re a long time web directory submitter, or just getting started, web directory submissions can be a benefit your online business or website. This add-on normally sells for $150 US dollars, however it is now free. You can find the demo on how to set-up here. Very nice form fill catered specifically for directory submission.
If there is gear you want be sure to let your friends and family know that you Gotta Have it! with this fun addon for Firefox..
http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59269
Let me know what you guys think!! Going to be adding Twitter and Facebook abilities shortly
DudeGotta Team
[...] users more than 7,000 add-ons to help customize their browsing experience. We did an article called 50 Recommended Firefox Extensions which is no doubt a save for your favorites. Check out the video after the [...]
spellbound has turned into browser hijacking malware… better not install it.
I love FireFTP, but unless I’m missing something, there is no way to transfer a whole folder. Inevitably when I try it, it copies only the first file in the folder.
Still, it sure is nice to just open that up instead of having to launch a separate ftp client, most of the time.
The best list of addons I have seen, very useful
[...] on the browser. I myself do not use Safari, instead I use Firefox mostly in part for it’s hugh extention support and Google [...]
[...] came across this list of 50 recommended Firefox loyal users, or Mac Chrome to-be ones. And while I haven’t gone through all of them, the ones [...]
Great Jobk! My favorite extensions besides those in the list above are:
- abduction (same as like screen grab)
- customize Google
- flashblock
- febe
- idm cc
- imglikeopera
Thanks for sharing.