Firefox Extensions

I began using Firefox back in '04 when it was still in beta. I must admit I decided to try it because I loved the name (so similar to my beloved Foxfire) and its beautiful flaming-fox logo. But I quickly discovered that it was vastly superior to IE, which had recently infected my computer with various trojans and viruses and sent me to the college IT lab a number of times. But aside from the better security, Firefox's greatest feature is the ability to add extensions. Extensions make surfing the internet (and designing sites) much easier and more pleasant. Here are my favorites:

Gmail Manager
This has completely changed the way I check email. As soon as there's a message, my status bar tells me and a single click takes me there: no more logging on to gmail every ten minutes to see if there's a message. It's especially great for the way it flawlessly handles multiple accounts, since I have three (I'm a bit of an email account whore — I have 5 or so non-gmail accounts, too).

googlebar
My very first extension; absolutely necessary for those of us who are googling constantly. The best features are the up-a-level button, previous and next result buttons for easier browsing, and the the search terms button to find a term on a page.

Tab Mix Plus
Many different settings to make your tabs work with the way you like to browse. I've set mine to have the tab bar at the bottom, with each tab having its own close button, double click to duplicate a tab, etc.

My Portal
My Portal is simply an html page made out of your bookmarks, but with great extra features like expanding/collapsing folders and text size based on how recently you visited the link. My Portal makes an excellent homepage.

Web Developer
This is essential for anyone who designs sites. The most useful features for me are the resize window, to check how a page looks in other screen sizes, and the open page source button, which I have set to my preferred editor, Notepad++.

Bug Me Not
Don't you hate it when websites, and especially newspaper sites, make you sign up for a free account before you can read their articles? Bug Me Not signs you in to one of its pre-made accounts with a simple right-click. This is a real time saver for me, especially at work when I'm visiting various newspaper sites to link to articles. Because I really don't need my own account for every newspaper in the world.

Copy Plain Text
I just hate it when I copy something from the net and it lands in my word or excel file with all its formatting and I have to go in and change everything back. This extension copies just the text and none of the formatting with a right-click.

URL Link
Now every time someone mentions a url without linking to it, I simply open it through the context menu, instead of opening a new tab and copying and pasting it in. It can even add www. if it's missing.

Update Bookmark
Allows you to update bookmarks by right-clicking from the bookmark menu, so you don't have to go through the edit properties hassle. This is great if you frequent sites that change location, or are making your way through an archive of something.

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