I’ve been using Firefox since version 1.5. The main feature that drew me to the open source browser was the that it supported user-generated plugins. I downloaded FF and stumbleupon and I was hooked. Since then I’ve tried dozens of plugins and some have made me wonder how I used the internet before they came along (like stumbleupon and googlepedia) while some have made me wonder simply “why?”.
The list below is comprised of the former type of plugin. These are the plugins that I could not imagine getting through my day-to-day routine without.
1. StumbleUpon (download)
I honestly cannot remember which site or person turned me on to SU but whomever did is evil. SU is the most addictive experience I have been a part of since World of Warcraft. It is the perfect marriage of user generated content within an online community and it symbolizes Web 2.0 perfectly.
2. Google Reader Notifier (download)
The premise for this plugin is simple. If you have a Google Reader account this plugin will scan your incoming articles and alert you to how many you have and in what folder they are stored.
3. GooglePedia (download)
I’m not sure why this plugin isn’t offered by Google. It will take your google search query and run it against Wikipedia and embed the most relevant article into the search results page. This plugin can slow down the loading of the results page (but it can be disabled easily by clicking the ‘hide googlepedia link’).
4. Morning Coffee (download)
For me this plugin is more like after dinner cocktail. I use this plugin more at night to catch up on google reader, twitter, the blog, gmail and other websites without having to remember them.
5. CustomizeGoogle & GooglePreview (download) & (download)
I probably should have included all the google-based plugins together but oh well. CustomizeGoogle is perfect at removing unwanted ads from the search results page while GooglePreview does an excellent job at showing me the page I am about to navigate to beforehand.
6. FoxyTunes (download)
What can I say, this plugin will handle Windows Media Player and iTunes but it will also handle more obscure media sources like Pandora, MusikCube, Las.fm and even Xbox Media Center. Plus it will embed your “currently listening to” in your blog or forum posts.
7. Download Statusbar (download)
When I downloaded Firefox I was very happy that it eliminated the annoying download status window that plagues IE to this very day. But I eventually grew tired of having to hide and show this window to check on long downloads. Enter the Download Statusbar plugin. This baby creates a small, unobtrusive taskbar within FF that displays your current (and past) downloads. It will even color-code them by download speed!
8. Firebug (download)
Every web developer needs this plugin. I wish with every ounce of my soul that IE had a plugin like this. Firebug has solved many a javascript/css/html nightmare for me (even those I encountered only in IE). This plugin can cause some sites to run slowly but it can be disabled very easily.
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