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Favorite Firefox Add-on?

Nathan Havemann has a favorite Firefox add-on. What’s yours?

Been watching for awhile now, and I would like to recommend a handy little app provided by Firefox Add-ons.

This nifty little Firefox add-on is called “mouse gestures“. It’s an add-on that I can’t live without, and it has simplified my life on the web tremendously. That being said, you may have heard about it, may be using it, or you might despise it (or you might not even be using Firefox), but never the less, some of your viewers might find it helpful. How it works is you input commands into your Firefox browser through simple mouse gestures.

For example, if one were to open a new tab, all one would need to do is hold in the right mouse button(the right mouse button must be held down when making a gesture simply to avoid accidental gestures), then quickly swipe the mouse upwards, inserting a command, and a new tab will open for you. At first it seems tedious and slow, but after a few minutes of use it becomes a fast way to input browser commands (its function is similar to hot keys, but in my experience at least, it has proven to be slightly more efficient).

Some additional gestures include right clicking a link, flicking the mouse upwards, causing that link to open for you in a new tab. Also, one could either swipe the mouse to the left or the right when holding in the right mouse button to either browse a page left or right respectively. The gestures listed previously is just a small sampling of the gestures which are available, listed simply due to their “most commonly used” status.

I encourage that you try it out and see for yourself what a great timesaver it is (even though you use hot keys), if that is not the case I am sure someone out there who do not use hot keys would find it useful.

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26 Comments

mizzal wrote an interesting post today onFavorite Firefox Add-on?Here’s a quick excerpt It’s an add-on that I can’t live without, and it has simplified my life on the web tremendously. That being said, you may have heard about it, may be using it, or you might despise it (or you might not even be using

my fav addon in firefox is ‘foxmarks’ – it syncs my bookmarks with a foxmarks account, which i can use on any computer.

The one I use the most is Web Developer Toolbar, it’s a must-have for any web designer/developer.

my favorite addon is FasterFox for obvious reasons…its faster!

My favorite right now is IE tab. I don’t use IE, but there are some sites that just don’t work the same in Firefox; e.g. some won’t download audio files properly. Right click on the offending page, select “Open in IE tab” and it does as the command implies. Handy.

Stylish.

Absolutely love Firefox’s ability to change the way websites are displayed if you know CSS.

For example a simple: #eaa { display: none !important } hides that kinda annoying admin bar you have here on your website. Maybe it’s very useful for you, because you see more links on it rather then just “Home” & “Logout” that users with “Subscriber” user levels see :) And since there is an icon shortcut for “Home” in the right top corner already, there’s almost no use for admin bar, because I don’t want to logout and if I’d really need to I’d know where to find a “Logout” link ;)

boredcollegekid

October 6th, 2007
at 7:21pm

I got a bunch of favorites, but probably the top three would be snap links (opens multiple links in at once), scribefire (blog editor), and cooliris Preview (always you to preview sites like ask.com does)

Yeah, mouse gestures are great. Mozilla should include this feature in Firefox, instead of it being an add-on. I have found using the mouse gestures in my browser (Avant) increased my productivity greatly, no longer do I have to click the back button, etc.

The web programmer inside of me is screaming “Web Developer Toolbar” so I’ll definitely go with that. Seriously: If you browse the web and want control over what’s on the page, get the web developer toolbar.

- Adam

I like the FasterFox, NoScript, AdBlockPlus, and ImageZoom…and of course you just can’t live without the Download StatusBar!

I’ve got several add-ons that I consider essential for all my firefox browsers. As a matter of fact I maintain a page of my favorites at http://www.tsudohnimh.com/tools/#Firefox

A couple must haves:

Foxmarks – Keep bookmarks automatically synched between multiple computers. This is essential if your bookmarks are an import resource and catalog.
PDF Download – Allows you to download PDF without automatically opening the file.
TinyURL – Creates TinyURL button for quick TinyURL creation. I don’t know how the world lives w/out TinyURL
Download StatusBar – Great downloads tweak that allows management of downloads from a status bar.
AdBlock – It blocks ads, lots of them.
Site Advisor – McAfee’s Site Advisor provides link ratings on search results to protect you from potentially malicious sites

Here are some of my favorite Firefox addons: Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer, Adblock Plus, ChatZilla, Download Statusbar, IE Tab, Mouse Gestures, Split Browser, Tab Catalog, and All-in-One Sidebar.

HyperWords (http://www.hyperwords.net/) is a not very well-known, but really handy add-on (gives you a range of context menus, such as copy as plain text, translate, and more). I could not live without IE Tab (http://ietab.mozdev.org/), because IE is our corporate-approved browser, and most internal Web sites use integrated Windows authentication. I use Cooliris Preview (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2207/) to preview pages without opening them. I keep a list of recommended Firefox add-ons at http://alekdavis.blogspot.com/2007/05/recommended-firefox-add-ons.html .

Cesare G. Rossi

October 7th, 2007
at 7:46am

My favourites are FireFTP (the best ftp client for FireFox) and Google Browser Sync.

Greeetings from Italy!

Aardvark – I can trim down blog pages before printing them so that I print just the useful part (the post in the middle) and not all of the goop to the left, right, top, or bottom.

mines is faster fox

Web Developers’ Toolbar – awesome for the programmer inside all of us!

Better GMail – the only way I could find ot automatically include HTML signatures in my outgoing GMail emails!

IE Tab – fab – now there’s no need to ever load IE!

FlashGOT – download using FlashGET with ease! Thank the lord!

Just my 2 cents!

Some extensions I cannot do without:

Adblock Plus
All-in-one gestures, All-in-one Sidebar
DownThemAll
HTML Validator
IETab
My IP tool
Super DragAndGo (

Hmm, let’s try that again since this form doesn’t seem to like less-than or greater-than symbols (no form validation or HTML entity encoding, so it seems!)

Some extensions I cannot do without:

Adblock Plus
All-in-one gestures (should be a permanent feature)
All-in-one Sidebar
DownThemAll
HTML Validator
IETab
My IP tool
Super DragAndGo (best extension ever!)
TargetAlert
UndoCloseTab (should be a permanent feature)

I like trackmenot and stumble (yes I have a split personality :)) also the dictionaries are very handy.
I also see some nice ones above which i’m going to try.

I can’t believe that nobody has yet mentioned NoScript! It’s the best way to control what websites do to my computer.

My one indispensable extension is ScrapBook. Saves any Web page and lots of printer ink. Once tried I doubt many would ever remove it.

Stumple Upon is my fave add on!

Google Browser Sync is a must for anyone with more than one computer! I also can’t live w/o ‘Better Gmail’ (search for it on lifehacker) and Gmail Manager.

My faves would have to be AdBlock Plus, ChatZilla(So I can chat on IRC Channels) and IE Tab.

What Do You Think?