Top 15 Firefox Extensions (PC Magazine)

[Posted February 4, 2005 by ris]

PC Magazine takes a look at some ways to extend your Mozilla Firefox browser. "Extensions can do loads of tasks, from blocking pop-up ads to playing card games -- and even viewing a Web page as if it were in IE -- so they can make Firefox a versatile and customizable platform for your browsing activities. But where to start? Which extensions are worth downloading and installing? We evaluated dozens of extensions and present the best 15 for your perusal. It's easy to add them; just go to the Tools | Extensions | Get More Extensions menu to get started."

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Top 15 Firefox Extensions (PC Magazine)

Posted Feb 4, 2005 22:01 UTC (Fri) by b7j0c (guest, #27559) [Link] (5 responses)

Google preview is fairly useless - they are Alexa.com images archived at some point in the past...the image is *not* a "lookahead" at the actual target page.

How about....

BugMeNot - access to cached usernames/passwords for umpteen account-access sites?

Web Developer - great tools for dissecting pages

User Agent Switcher - for those blockhead sites still "demanding" IE...only insofar as reading the UserAgent string.

LiveHTTPHeaders - more debugging goodness

NukeAnything would be PERFECT if it would just remember what elements i want nuked per url...fairly useless for it to be on-demand only

Top 15 Firefox Extensions (PC Magazine)

Posted Feb 4, 2005 23:38 UTC (Fri) by jwb (guest, #15467) [Link] (1 responses)

LiveHeaders doesn't work with FF 1.0, alas. But it's priceless, and Web Developer is quite useful as well.

Top 15 Firefox Extensions (PC Magazine)

Posted Feb 5, 2005 7:03 UTC (Sat) by acristianb (guest, #1702) [Link]

Hmm, don't know what you're talking about. It works like a charm for me (FF 1.0 LiveHeaders 0.9, Windows XP and Windows 2k).

Top 15 Firefox Extensions (PC Magazine)

Posted Feb 10, 2005 16:59 UTC (Thu) by mmarsh (subscriber, #17029) [Link]

Cookie Culler is one of my favorites. Mark a very small number of cookies as protected, and then clear out all the others with a single button. Duplicate Tab, Single Window, and Flash Click to Play are the others that I really can't live without.

Top 15 Firefox Extensions (PC Magazine)

Posted Feb 11, 2005 2:39 UTC (Fri) by grouch (guest, #27289) [Link] (1 responses)

"User Agent Switcher - for those blockhead sites still "demanding" IE...only insofar as reading the UserAgent string."

I never cater to such idiotic designs. Unless you absolutely have to have access to such a site, please refuse to distort statistics by altering the UserAgent string. Even then, please email the "webmaster" of such a site and point out that the World Wide Web is supposed to be based on platform-agnostic standards. IE doesn't comply.

Top 15 Firefox Extensions (PC Magazine)

Posted Feb 18, 2005 16:12 UTC (Fri) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

If it's a site where you would otherwise spend money, go further; buy elsewhere, at a site that supports your browser. Feel free to tell the site's owners (not the webmaster) how much business they've lost out on by not supporting non-IE browsers.

Web monkeys can win the IE-only argument when they can claim that 90% of people use IE, and the other 10% are insignificant; when management believe that the non-IE users represent a significant spending power, that argument stops holding water. After all, Mercedes-Benz drivers are less than 10% of the cars on the road; it makes very little sense however for a petrol station to turn away Mercedes-Benz drivers.

IE Previewer - 404

Posted Feb 4, 2005 23:21 UTC (Fri) by ccyoung (guest, #16340) [Link]

didn't see reference for IE previewer - although I don't see how anyone could program the renderer to be that bad on purpose - such a service, although massochistic, would be quite valuable.

right now I need to call friends and have them run IE6 (at the risk of their machines) to see how IE messes up a new page.

Top 15 Firefox Extensions (PC Magazine)

Posted Feb 5, 2005 10:36 UTC (Sat) by Thue (guest, #14277) [Link]

Flash click to play is also worth mentioning.

typical pc magazine puff piece

Posted Feb 5, 2005 13:10 UTC (Sat) by segphault (guest, #27468) [Link]

FoxyTunes and cards... wtf? A plugin that does card games doesnt constitute news. LWN shouldnt reference articles like that. Does the googlebar do something that the built-in search interface doesnt already do better? I used to use the dictionary plugin they mention until I discovered ConQuery (http://conquery.mozdev.org/) which does that and a ton of other stuff. If I had to name my favorite plugin it would definitely be Web Developer. I'm getting bored with all these Firefox articles. Yeah, its better than IE - acknowledge and move on. The sad thing about that article, is that some twit probably got paid a lot of money to excrete that pablum.

The extension I want...

Posted Feb 5, 2005 17:53 UTC (Sat) by vmole (guest, #111) [Link]

...is "Open link as text" in the context menu. A lot of sites don't handle things like "Changelog" or "README" or "script.pl" very well. Yeah, I can save it and then open it, but why do I need to? It's just text! I looked around on the firefox site last night, couldn't find it. Does it exist? Anyone? (No, "Plain Text Links" is something else...useful, though).

Top 15 Firefox Extensions (PC Magazine)

Posted Feb 7, 2005 2:11 UTC (Mon) by wolfdancer (guest, #27727) [Link]

The number 1 extension has to be any one that supports rocket navigation. Yes, I know you can buy a fancy mouse that has extra buttons for back/forward navigation. But rocket navigation allows me to use a very small mouse without cost me an arm and an leg, or when I have only a laptop.

Also don't forge the web archiver (something like that) that allows you to take a snapshot of any page you are visiting. It saves everything (images, texts) into ONE single file so that I can bring it back whenever I want, or send it to someone.

Top 15 Firefox Extensions (PC Magazine)

Posted Feb 7, 2005 13:44 UTC (Mon) by mwh (guest, #582) [Link]

I still want Firesomething for 1.0...