Expecting additional functionality from your web browsers? Want more features in your browser? Then you might want to add certain addons to your web browser. Addons are the small software or application coded to provide additional functionality and features to your existing web browser. As the name suggests firefox addons are for mozilla firefox web browser. The addons given below are some of the best addons available for firefox web browser these days. Proper description of what each of these addon does is provided along each addon. These can be classified as the top addons available for firefox. If you use mozilla firefox web browser then you must check out these addons as they will really help you to save your time and increase your productivity. So the top firefox addons are as follows :
This add on is best known for its usability. This add on add the Internet Explorer 7 like function into Firefox where the all the currently opened tabs are displayed together in the thumbnail form.This extremely useful add on will save a lot of your time frim search and switching back and forth between tabs. The functionality of Showcase can be compared as the capability of selecting thumbnails as found in Windows 7. A Find bar has also been included so that you can easily search between different thumbnails.
After you have installed the add on, simply point to View and there under you will see a Showcase sub menu. From here you can view and select the thumbnails of all the tabs in current window (local mode) or you can view all the tab thumbnails in all the windows (global mode). Depending on your choice and taste, the showcase can be displayed on the window, tab or on sidebars. You can also customize the key shortcuts from the sub menu and perform many other tasks. Simply download the add on and see the difference yourself!
You must have downloaded content from the internet at some point of your life and you may understand how uncluttered and pesky the interface might become. It becomes flooded with the download windows all over the screen. You feel like getting trapped in one of them. If are facing the same problems then the Download Statusbar is the correct solution to all your needs.
This add on simply prevents any download window from popping up and displays all its information and content in the status bar of the Firefox. However, you still have to open them manually once the download get completed or broken.
To find more about the download i.e. file name, percentage completed, source of download, file location, download speed and so on can be obtained by simple hovering the mouse over the download status window that is appearing below.
Due to its compact size, it allows you to take full control of your Firefox without any hassles or interruption. The interface can be customized fully by manipulating the size of the download window that will be shown in the status bar.
A Beta additional version is being developed that can run virus scan automatically when the download is finished.
This is another interesting add on which previews the page in advance before you click off from your current page. After the add on has been installed, a small blue link will appear on all the links of the current page that you are viewing. You simply have to slide your mouse that link and a window pops up which will contain the preview of the destination page that you want to visit.
Various additions have been to the previewing feature. Additions like sensitive searching has been added in the right click menu of the browser, the feature will search for some highlighted word over the internet and try to capture its meaning from freedictionary.com, Google Search, Google Images or Wikipedia and will display the any found results from any of these four sources in a separate window or tab depending on your taste. You can scroll for images search results from Google effortlessly where all the results will be arranged on an “infinite 3D wall”. You can also mail the links that you have searched for to your friends, family or colleagues.
Another interesting add on functionality is the temporary bookmarking that will display the bookmarked items in a “stack” form.You control the speed of the page views and its activation. You can disable the previewing of certain (adult) sites also.
If you are working with a lot of images or streaming media, then you must be doing a lot of “Save Link As” or “Save Image As” options from the right click menu of your browser. Then you have to specify the location of the specific folders where the file needs to be saved. This can become repetitive and boring at time and can be frustrating also.Then Download Sort can become handy here.
The add on will setup certain content filters that will identify the content of the file by looking at their extension and then save them to their specified folders as ear marked by you. These filters can work on any regular expressions, add on or any specific addresses or URL of the pages. After installation of the add on the .zip files will be saved in compressed folder and .jpeg files will be saved to Pictures folder. However, a major drawback with this is that the add on is insensitive to the left click downloads, so we can expect a better version of it in the near future.
The add on puts an updated weather forecast of any place in the world in your web browser’s status bar. The forecast and entire weather report is being fetched from AccuWeather.com. Once installed the add on will give you a complete control over how to use the information that is being fetched from the website. You can customize the radar image buttons on your panel. You can include the weather forecast and warnings of the next eight days. If you are a traveller then this tool can be highly helpful and beneficial for you.
Set up profiles each having its own customization options and preferences. These weather predictions and updates can be used to get the ZIP codes of the region that you are monitoring. The only downside of this add on is that it relies heavily on the external website AccuWeather.com. If the site is down, then you will not get any updates and forecasts. Maybe these guys should obtain their data from more sources rather relying on only single source.
This is the social networking add on that will help you to find and track those sites that matches your interests and tastes. The more you use this tool the better would be your search results. This add on is regarded as best time killer on the internet due to its social networking nature in which people can engrossed for hours and thereby affecting their output and productivity.
Once installed, the add on will put a toolbar on top of the web browser. This toolbar is the ultimate storehouse of all the social networking power. All the core functions will be done through this toolbar. On first time signing up you have to select some predefined categories like humour, history, etc. which you can always change later on.
Once you have setup everything, simply click the Stumble! Button of the toolbar, you will be taken to some random site that will suit your tastes and choices. If you like the site, give it a Thumbs Up or give it a Thumbs Down. The more you stumble the better results will be presented that will match your preferences and tastes better. You can also submit reviews about a site that is not listed in the StumbleUpon database so that it can become easily visible and available to others. So when someone Stumble about it, then it can become visible to them. The StumbleUpon is all about killing your productivity and time in doing those things that won’t yield any useful output.
Google, one of the world’s most used site. The word Google has become synonymous with search. The better the results delivered the more questions you have to answer. The company has built a whole lot of service that has become part and parcel of our daily lives. So, here comes the next add on that tries to accumulate all the services into a single platform. This add on will try to list all the popular Google services in clean and highly readable format so that they can be used easily.
Once installed the add on will try to put the most used Google services as buttons or as a dropdown list very next to the address bar after you have entered your preferences and services. The Left Click will reach out for the specific service and will open it in the current tab. The Middle Click will however open it in the new tab. Left Click + Ctrl + Alt will open an alternative service in the side bar.
This is a free, cross platform FTP client for the Mozilla Firefox. This add on is a hassle free answer to the complex FTP programs that try to transfer file to and from various servers situated remotely or locally. This add on could easily spell the rein of desktop client FileZilla.
Although, this doesn’t have any sophisticated functionality as offered by various famous FTP clients but this add on has everything that is needed to transfer files to an FTP server. The add on supports SSL, TSL and SFTP. It also supports IPv6 and provides a variety of server encoding character sets. Despite all these the add on is easy to use and straight forward.
Upon installation, the FireFTP will add itself as an option the Right click menu of web browser. On clicking it you will presented with a conventional two panel window containing the local files on the left and the remote files on the right. Before this, a dialog box appears that will prompt you to enter the details of your FTP server and other credentials.
After successful connection you simply transfer with the files from one end to the other just like you do with a traditional FTP server.The innovative feature that sets it apart from others is its “View on the Web” that displays the contents of some remote file in the new tab. You can snip out certain parts of the directory so that the names can be shortened for easy transfer.This add on is facing the versions problems. It shows a regression bug when installed with Firefox 2.0.0.1. So always make a point to upgrade your browser to version 2.0.0.2 before installing FireFTP.
This add on is another important tool for web developers. You can tweak and check for the JavaScript, CSS and HTML all rolled into a single place. This add on can open all the code views either at the bottom of the page or into a separate window.
Once installed, the Firebug add on can be of great utility and it also supports cross browser add on. Let’s see how the HTML coding is inspected in it.
Once you have activated the FireBug, you can run the mouse the desired part of the page and the corresponding HTML tag will be highlighted in the code view which can be easily tweaked and modified. This can also be done for CSS editing and you can see the effect of changes and modifications done on the fly.
The JavaScript debugger is no doubt the best that I have ever used. The debugger quickly finds errors and points out the lines that contain them. You can change the code, set multiple breakpoints, finds the scripts easily, pause the execution at certain lines, and watch stack traces and a lot more to do.
Another attractive addition to this add on is the Network monitoring utility. This will find the causes for the slow loading of pages, malicious JavaScript or any other reasons that might be causing to run the network slow. The file loading will be displayed on a timeline that will feature the loading times of different files and can find out ways to improve it. You can also examine the various HTTP headers that are sent and received by the network. The phenomenon of AJAX has become an integral of part of life and it has been included in the FireBug to make the life of developer easier.
This add on is useful for those who take a lot of professional photographs and printing. This add on is an attempt from the open. Source community to save on the printing costs. Once you have installed the add on, it will put an additional “Remove this Object” option in the right click menu of Firefox. Simply click your mouse over the object that you don’t want to be printed by using this option to zap them temporarily.
The add on can become little fussy sometimes and can take a lot pains to remove the menus and parts of the page like logos etc. In case you have accidentally zapped out something important, you can always recover it using the “Undo Last Remove”. Another shortcoming of the add on is that it cannot zap away the flash content easily. This is because when you right click on the Flash object, then the options in the menu will belong to Flash and not to Firefox. Sometimes the Flash can be removed using the container tags but it can be based trial and error.
This is another all in one utility for the web developers. This add on can be seen as the big brother of FireBug. It has more features and better error management techniques than the former.
The add on is offers an entire range of tools that allows you to tweak the pages on the fly and modify certain aspects like cookies, sessions, cache, etc. which was not done by the FireBug. With WebDeveloper, you can tweak out various forms, clear out the cache and private data, and modify cookies on the fly.
Upon installation, a separate toolbar for it will appear at the top in the Tools menu. This toolbar is handy in many situations and can be turned off when you are not in the mood for web development. This add on can be beneficial for the regular users. It can help them to turn off the background images and many more. This add on is recommended to be used in co-existence with the FireBug if you want to do web development.
Have you ever thought about arranging the Google search results in the two columns of your wide monitor to better utilise the space or to disable the edit button of Wikipedia, just in case you don’t want to edit the pages accidentally or intentionally. The simple answer to all your queries is Greasemonkey.
Greasemonkey is a simple add on that does nothing in your web browser. It simply enables scripting that can be applied onto your pages so that you can enhance their experience on your machine. These scripts are coded in JavaScript and you can do anything with. There are infinite possibilities that exist.
There are a large number of generous sites that give away their created works for free. Simply visit the site http://userscripts.org to have access to hundreds of scripts for free. Some of the scripts have very interesting functionality like integrating various apps of Facebook on a single platform or introducing search results from various search engines and presenting them in a streamlined form.
You can also develop your own scripts and visit http://wiki.greasespot.net/ to get more information and resources about it. The link has tutorials, discussion forums, API documentation, community support and much more.
This add on is a must have those who visit a specific bunch of websites for most of their time. The Session Manager add on will save the status of all the currently opened tabs and windows and in the event of a crash, it will try to open them automatically and will start the session from where you left it.
If you are a regular web surfer that is hooked onto Facebook, Gmail or any other websites and happen to visit them every time you start the Firefox, then instead of opening each and every tab, the Session Manager will open all the tabs in a single step.
Simply save your most recently visited sites in different tabs and save them under the Session Manager with some name. It is located in the tools menu. When you start your Firefox again, instead of starting the Default page, choose the session that has been saved by you with the Session Manager.
The Session Manager is compatible with those versions of Firefox that is greater than 2. So make sure to upgrade your Firefox to version greater than two before installing Session manager.
This add on enables you to perform certain functions and commands using mouse gestures and scroll wheel navigation. There are more than 90 commands that have been designed using certain gestures which comprises of the mouse clicks and scroll wheel.
Some of the interesting gestures includes auto scrolling when you click the middle button of the mouse or executing “Back” command when you hold down the right click button and drag the mouse on the left. The add on offers a wide selection of commands for the improvement of experience for the user. You can only select a small subset from these depending on how frequently you use them based on your gestures.
This is add on is a password manager utility that makes your browsing a secure experience. The lasspass supports a variety of plugins for the Firefox and Chrome. This add on is also a form filter that will filter out any malicious code of phishing scripts that might be running through.
All your sensitive data that you be encrypted locally before it is sent to the server, therefore the LastPass cannot even access your password. The application also allows you to export passport from the various vendors and will capture those password that even the other password managers won’t be able to capture it. A single master password will control the activity of this add on. All your sensitive data is encrypted on the local end so only the LastPass password can only unlock it.
This addon will allow the users to block unnecessary advertisements and popups. This allows you to control the internet in the way you like. The add on is available in multiple languages and has more than forty filters available with it so as to filter out the unnecessary content on the internet.
You can customize its interface and control it in the way you like. Also participate in the community support by contributing your usage and reporting bugs and issues.
Another security add on that will suspend any malicious JavaScript or any other scripts on your webpages. The active content objects like XHR and ActiveX temporarily disabled to protect you from XSS and Clickjacking. The extension also has some versioning issues so please visit its official website and resources to gather more information on it.
This is a bookmark management tool that helps you to efficiently organize and store your bookmarks. On installation the add on will start backing up and synchronizes the bookmarks. However if you want to share your bookmarks with everyone on the network then you should install this add on every individual computer and XMarks will share them seamlessly across network.
Certain backup and security services are also provided along with the details of the usage by the users. You can access your bookmarks online by logging onto site https://my.xmarks.com.
Easiest way to download videos from various video streaming sites like Youtube, MetaCafe, etc. The add on will add single click button for download of video in multiple supported formats like flv, 3gp, mp3, mp4and HD. The extension will save the videos with name as it appears on the website. Do visit the official site to report to the various issues that is add on is facing.
This extension will try to integrate Facebook into your web browser. Upon installation, the add on will integrate different widgets and will arrange into a drop down list. Search for your favourite friends and find out what’s happening in their lives. Get notifications about friend requests, pokes and messages right. Connect With your friends by chatting them in the Facebook side bar. Share images, videos, photos and much more in few simple steps.
