I am a member of several online technology communities, email lists, chatrooms, and other places where computer geeks and tech enthusiasts debate on the best hardware, software, and many other items.
My pick for the best web browser is and has always been Mozilla Firefox. Why? Because it\’s completely open source, free, and it\’s extendibility.
Anyone can create an add-on for Firefox using a publicly available SDK and documentation. Now the question is what add-ons do I have in my Firefox?
I use the following add-ons and am always checking out new ones. I recommend you check these out, you never know how much easier it could make doing even what you consider the simplest task.
- Ad Block Plus (ABP) – This removes most if not all advertisements from pages, blocks pop-ups and pop-unders, and even items that you choose that are not advertisements. Free subscriptions to common advertisement URL lists are also optionally included.
- Bookmark Backup – This creates a daily backup of your bookmarks and if you choose, other settings in Firefox. Great for syncing between two or more computers, such as work and home, or laptop and desktop.
- Google Gears – Not just for Firefox, allows websites that have added the Gears scripts to save common files to your computer for faster load times when you visit the site again. A Gears enabled site will prompt you to allow it.
- Grease Monkey – Cool add-on that allows user created \”scripts\” to be used to change the way a page is displayed while its loading. Some user scripts include automatically switching back to the \”old\” Facebook layout, instead of loading the \”new\” one.
- Tab Mix Plus – More of a customisation than an add-on it allows you to choose how pages are displayed and loaded in tabs.
- Twitty Tunes – Allows you to \”tweet\” which page your viewing, a short description. Also allows you to \”tweet\” which song you are currently listening to in compatible players.
- IE Tab – Nice add-on because it allows you to use the Internet Explorer program to load pages inside of a FireFox window or tab. Great for older webpages that don\’t work right in FireFox.
- Shareaholic – Allows you to send pages to many Social Networking and Bookmark sites such as Digg, Delicious, Facebook, Myspace, along with many others from a simple button on your navigation toolbar.
- Open IT Online – Allows you to view documents and files without installing additional software using sites such as Google Docs, Google Apps, Zoho Viewer, Snipshot, Pixlr, Picnik and others.
- DownThemAll! – A Download manager that has even faster downloading capabilites than the built in downloads window in FireFox. Great for downloading large files, and documents.
If you use different add-ons, and would like to recommend them to other people, leave a comment below, or email me justin@w8jkc.com