It’s the extensions that really make firefox, but unfortunately they’re gone when you change to a different PC. While in the process of rebuilding firefox on a different PC, here are my favourite extensions I’ll be installing. They should all be available from http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/.

Must-haves: These two tools dramatically increase browsing performance

  • Tabbrowser Extensions - Powerful tab-based browsing. The page says TabMix should now be used instead, haven’t checked it out.
  • Mouse Gestures - Allows most browsing to be performed with mouse gestures (e.g. to open a link in new tab, hold right button while moving up away from the link).

Almost essential

  • Bloglines Toolkit - Allows quickly subscribing and checking references to the current page.
  • Unread Tabs - Italices tabs unread tabs.
  • Download Manager Tweak - Opens downloads in a separate tab instead of popup window.
  • ForecastFox - Shows weather forecast, today and next nine days, using little icons on the bottom of the window. Very handy as I rarely remember to check it, and thanks to podcasting, am not really catching local weather reports anymore. (Until automated weather podcast feeds come along, that is).

And the other excellent extensions I'll be installing

  • Translate - Translates web pages to/from English
  • Autofill - Automatically fills out forms
  • ** OpenBook** - When you add a bookmark, it adds a bookmark tree
  • Launchy - Open page in IE or other application.
  • Linkification - Convert any URLs into hyperlinks.
  • Sunrise - Sends any page to Sunrise, a tool for reading documents/HTML/RSS offline on the Palm. (Though I mostly connect to my Bloglines account from the Treo lately.)
  • MozCC - Indicates what, if any, Creative Commons license exists on the current page.
  • QuickNote - Adds a sidebar for note-taking.
  • Wikipedia - Enhances Wikipedia experience.
  • Digger - Quickly go to related URL: (e.g. from a.b.com, go to b.com)
  • Langwidge While You Browse - Integrated language-learning tool, still haven’t found any data files for it though! which I wrote about here.
  • ChromeEdit - Edit user profile

Developer Tools

  • Web Developer - Powerful tool for debugging HTML/CSS problems - e.g. can visualise outlines of tables and see CSS styles being used.
  • HTML Validator - Validates, um, HTML.
  • Live HTTP Headers - View HTTP headers as the page loads.
  • MozEdit - Advanced text editor.
  • Others My usage of these has varied depending on what I’m working on. All are listed at http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/list.php/Firefox/dev.