50 Time Saving Firefox Add-ons

50 Time Saving Firefox Add-ons

Firefox as we know is undeniably one of the most popular browser among the users however it is a love hate dilemma. Many vent that Firefox is slow however it still remains as a browser that web developers love most and we probably can’t live the same without it. Here is why, it is supported by a rich community of plugins and add-ons developers which makes it more than just a browser.

In today’s post, we are packing you with some of the most popular and accommodating add-ons that can prove our above statement – Firefox, not just a browser. These add-ons will help you achieve further, increase your productivity and make your working life, much easier.

General add-ons

This section is for the users who are new to these extensions, we present you with a detailed list of add-ons which can be used for general purposes like displaying, finding similar sites, saving the pages, previewing them, tracking the pages, giving a 3D look to your webpage and getting comfortable with different languages.

SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb 11.5 plugin is a sidebar recommended by Mozilla which gets you the related sites making your browsing easier and productive. This sidebar shows you the similar sites in the form of small pictures or thumbnails you are viewing and let you share your favorite sites across your community. This can be used in mini mode or as a toolbar button. Works with version 3.0 – 4.0b3 of Firefox. You can also translate SimilarWeb in your language through BabelZilla and share this plugin with your friends too.

Firefox Environment Backup Extension

Firefox Environment Backup Extension or FEBE 6.3.3.2 created by Chuck Baker backups and rebuilds your Firefox extensions into .xpi files which let you synchronize your home and office browsers. It synchronizes not only the extensions but also the themes, bookmarks, preferences, passwords and cookies. Once installed, a single click can schedule your automatic backup, and also alerts you in case of any incomplete tasks. FEBE works in Firefox 3.0 and use FEBE 5.0 works in Firefox 2.0

Google Shorcuts plugin

Google Shortcuts plugin, created by Soeren Rinne displays all the Google services as buttons or as a drop down menu and you can place this plugin wherever you want which lets you use all the services in a single click. You can adjust the settings and choose the services which you want to make it available as buttons.

ThumbnailZoom

Thumbnail Zoom 1.1 zooms the thumbnail pictures from various sites like Facebook, Amazon, Picasa, Twitter, Flickr, Linkedln and Hi5. This plugin is created by Andres Hernandez, which also shows a floating panel with the zoomed out size of the image or thumbnail while hovering over it. All sites can be enabled or disabled this by using the status bar menu or the add-on settings dialog box.

MorningCoffee

Keep track of your daily routine websites with this add-on Morning Coffee 1.33 created by SJML. You can organize your websites that update on a regular schedule like weekly columns and open them simultaneously in tabs which can separate your lists by time and bookmark the folder integration.

SessionManager

Session Manager 0.6.8.3 by Morac is an add-on that saves and restores the state of all open windows individually restores them at startup or after crashes. Replaces the SeesionSaver and Tab Mix Plus session Manager.

TabScope

Viewing the contents on the each tab may be quite a time consuming task hence, this add-on Tab Scope 0.3.7 makes it easier since you can preview and navigate the tab contents through pop-up either in the backward or forward direction. Also you can directly click on the links and buttons in the preview and scroll through the pages or frames in preview through the mouse wheel.

AutoPager

You can toss the habit of manually maneuver to the next page with this add-on AutoPager 0.6.1.2.6 by Wind Li. This add-on from for Firefox automatically loads the next page of a site when you reach the end of current page for infinite scrolling. Works well with many sites and other add-ons like adblock plus, WOT and greasemonkey script. You can add your own custom autopaging to unsupported sites and also share your site rules.

Download Statusbar

The add-on Download Statusbar 0.9.7.2.by Davon Jenson keeps your statusbar neat with great design and you can manage the downloads from this statusbar without the download window disturbing your browsing. It auto-hides itself when not in use and allows full control without any interruption.

FlashGot

If you want a maximum speed to download your links, movies and clips then the FlashGot 1.2.2 add-on by Giorgio Maone is for you. It is light-weight, reliable and the most popular external download manager which lets you download either one link, selected links or all the links of a page together in a single click with a maximum speed and it can also grab the video or audio clips while they are playing.

FoxTab

Bring the beauty of 3D in your browser with the add-on FoxTab 1.3 crated by The FoxTab team. This add-on powers the functionality of 3D in Firefox through the top sites for a quick access of your favorite sites, Tab Flipper flips between the opened tab and Recently Closed Tabs for reopening a tab which was closed recently. You can change the size of the FoxTab panel, configure the thumbnails or switch between the previews.

SmoothWheel

Make your scrolling smoother with SmoothWheel 0.45.6.20100202.1 by Avi Halachmi. With this add-on you can specify your speed and step size of the scroll along with the holding steps. This gives the benefits of a faster navigation, less disorientation, and also lets you read while scrolling. Works with the drop down boxes and text boxes too. Has an optional keyboard shortcut where you can disable your SmoothWheel.

Picnik

With the add-on Picnik 2.3 by Justin Huff, it lets you add a menu options when you right click on the images so that you can drop that into the Picnik and a toolbar icon to take screenshots and import them. Can be a simple replace for Photoshop. You can send the whole page or edit only the image.

Scrapbook

Save and organise your web pages just like bookmarks with the ScrapBook 1.3.7 by Gomita which is extremely light, fast, accurate and supports many languages. You can either save the complete or a snippet of the web page. You can filter your search or do a full text search or edit them collected pages and because of this you can save your web page and the website.

Read It Later

Don’t have enough time to read all the pages? Install the add-on Read It Later 2.0.6 by Idea Shower and get the benefits of reading the saved pages later from your computer or phone without having an internet connection or in the offline mode. Your pages are saved to a reading list. This add-on gives you the added benefits of synching your computers at work or home such as synching your iPhone, iPad or iPod. If you want only the text sans the images, then you could activate the ‘Text view’ of this add-on which away the images, layouts and ads from the articles.

Greasemonkey

Greasemonkey 0.8.201004.8.6, an add-on created by Anthony Lieuallen, Aaron Boodman and Johan Sundström is used to customise the display of a webpage using JavaScript. You can also write your own scripts. This has a hidden preference to allow greasing the unmht and has many translations like ca-ES, cs, fr, nl, sr-RS and vi. Licenced under MIT / X11 Licence and works with Firefox 1.5 – 3.6.

IE Tab

Integrate Internet Explorer in Mozilla Firefox with this add-on IE Tab 1.5.20090525 by PCMan, youoo2k. This add-on embeds Internet Explorer in the tabs of Firefox which makes a great tool for web developers because they can easily see how the web page is displayed in IE and switch back again to Firefox in just a single click and see the results.

Automatic Save Folder

The Automatic Save Folder 1.0.1 by Cyan, opens the File Browser using the filters on the downloaded file which are based on the filename and the hosted domain’s name. You can specify the different save folders based on their domain or the filename. The folders will save the download file and save your time by preventing you from looking into that file and if no folder is returned then the suggested folder is set to Desktop. This also watches the folders for new files and does not work with the environment variables.

SkipScreen

Tired of skipping the unnecessary pages and closing them? This add-on SkipScreen by Skipscreen does the job of automatically skipping the clicks through the hoops and delivers to you the necessary content. i.e. you don’t have to wait for any countdowns and this add-on is in the constant process of improving itself all the time. It has been successfully tested on sites like Rapidshare.com, MediaFire.com, Megaupload.com, Sharebee.com, 4shared.com, Limelinx.com, zShare.net and many more.

ImTranslator

Forget about the troubles due to different languages, Install the add-on ImTranslator 3.3.5 by smart Link corporation and perform the real time translation for more than 1640 language combinations. Difficulty in reading is overcome by the TTS Voice which reads out the text in human sounding way in a variety of languages including English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish and many more. Get a spell checker for accurate input of information and translation of single words, common phrases and idiomatic expressions for English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and many languages through the Multilingual dictionary.

Social networking add-ons

This section is for avid users of social networks who want to be constantly in touch with their friends, get to know new people, share their perspective with others. These add-ons make your experience in these networks quite easy by giving making everything faster and easier in a single click. Now clip, sharing, send links to people and all other interesting stuff with the touch of a mouse.

Yonoo

Yonoo 7.4.1 is created by Yonoo, an add-on installed as sidebar making it easier to connect with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Yahoo and more in one place which convenient you to share all your photos, videos and links online. It supports Facebook’s Inbox message and notifications, Twitter;s retweet functionality, reply all and favorite support. Also It also has a spell check feature, font size selection feature and bug fixes.

Qwisk

Sharing on the website from your images and videos can be done in a single click or drag and drop feature with this plugin Qwisk created by Garbowza. You can share and discuss your content with the people in your communities where the people can receive your shares instantly as you browse. It also has an innovative ‘mini-browser’ technology which lets your audience to share and discus content with a custom community.

Firebug

Firebug is a web development tool which can be opened in a separate window or as a bar at the bottom of your browser. This add-on inspects the HTML and modifies the style and layout in real time with the Firebug’s CSS and uses the most advanced JavaSCript Debugger which can pause the execution and measure the performance. Use it as a ruler and measure the offsets, margins, paddings and sizes for you. Monitor the speed or loading of your pages and get to know the reason for the slowdown of your pages. Get a detailed information about the errors in JavaScript, CSS and XML.

HootSuite

Crazy about Facebook, Twitter and Linkedln, then this add-on Hootsuite 0.6.1 created by Hootsuite is for you. Just hit the Hootlet buttin your URL will be shortened automatically and the text is grabbed from the site i.e. an ow.ly link is provided automatically and you don’t have to leave the site to tweet. This ass grabs the headlines from the source;s tad and is used as a default text.

Amplify

Share and spark the conversation about the articles or excerpts from articles, tweets, posts or any stuff on the net using this add-on Amplify 3.0.0 created by Clipmarks. The clipped or amplified stuff can be auto postto Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, Tumblr etc. You can also connect with your friends and look at what they’re amplifying. Works with Google Readder also. This add-on is SEO friendly and makes your conversation ‘Smart’.

Delicious Bookmarks

Integrate your browser with the social bookmarking service ‘Delicious’ through the add-on Delicious Bookmarks 2.1.1.06 by Yahoo! Inc which integrates the bookmarks and tags and maintains them for easy and convenient access. This makes it easier for you to stay updated on the network and links for you, search, browse, access and share your bookmarks with your friends and others. If you dont want any buttons from Delicious you can install the classic mode.

PowerTwitter

Add more features to your Twitter with this add-on Power Twitter 1.40 by Narendra Rocherolle and Nick Wilder who add many features to your Twitter like photo uploading, link shrinking, link translation, link expansion and inline YouTube, Flickr, TwitPic, GoogleMaps and other playable media. This add-on overlays on the Twitter website and monitors the link clicks and builds up the anonymous aggregate trends and has an implementation of oath which no longer requires your Twitter password.

AddThis

AddThis 3.1.0, and add-on by AddThis makes your social bookmarking simple by integrating Web 2.0 bookmarking, blogging, news, photos & videos, social networking and e-mail services which can be shared with just one click. This can be done in several ways through the Sharing toolbar or the Navigation toolbar button, Context menu or the URL bar icon. Without opening any other application window you can email and use your address book from Gmail, Yahoo! and Hotmail.

Browser tabs add-on

Reading more or collecting more information means open a large number of tabs which sometimes can drive you nuts due to the same layout. If you have faced such a situation, then these add-ons can be a great relief to you, since they give the tabs a different color and give you a preview of the contents without reading the page making your experience easy and time saving.

Showcase

Showcase 0.9.5.5 add-on by Josep del Rio is to manage your browser’s tabs. Showing them as thumbnails in a single window, sidebar or tab or zoom the thumbnails using the mouse scroller. This add-ons has two modes, a global mode to show the thumbnails for all tabs and a local mode to show the thumbnails only for the current Firefox window. You can select these tabs in the same way as you select the files and you can also filter the thumbnails using the Find bar. The Showcase menu is listed under the ‘View’ menu where the default shortcuts are listed and can be changed using the Keyconfig extension.

ColorfulTabs

Give your tabs a different look with the ColorfulTabs 4.6.3 by Binary Turf where each tab is given a different color making it easy to distinguish and gives a beautiful look to the overall background. A new colorpicker is also added with this.

CoolPreviews

CoolPreviews 3.1.0625 by the Cooliris Team, as the name suggests it is created for the experience of a faster browsing. This add-on gives you a preview of the links and the images while hovering over the link without leaving your current tab. You can control the speed, sensitivity and the activation method of the preview window and toggle any of the previews on / off any specific site. Send instant links to your family or friends and bookmark the items to the right column with the ‘Stacks’ feature and transform your browser into a 3D wall to browse your photos and videos in a much faster way.

ChromaTabs

Make a colorful difference in your tabs with the ChromaTabs 2.0 add-on by Justin Dolske. This add-on gives a specific color to the website loaded and helps you distinguish color th of the tab contents based on a distinct visual cue. The colors are picked using the site’s tab icon or automatically picked based on the site’s host name. You can also pick a color based on the favicon color ands generate the images only when needed. This add-on may not work with the custom themes or extensions that modify the tabs.

Security and privacy for safe browsing

WOT

WOT 201000908 is a plugin created by WOT Services for safe browsing which provides reputation ratings to search results when you use Google, Yahoo, Bing and other sites while protecting your personal information along with your online email account. This plugin is recommended by CBET, PC World, Tech Republic and other authorities. WOT uses a traffic light style rating system to ensure your safety when you surf.

FireFTP

FireFTP plugin used to provide easy access to FTP server is created by Mime Cuvalo includes many features like directory comparison, synching directories, SFTP, SSL encryption, integrity checks, remote editing along with transferring your files. This is a secure, cross platform FTP for Mozilla which works with Firefox 3.5 – 3.6 and is licenced under Mozilla Public Lincence version 1.1. It has also got IPv6 support, Proxy and FTP support alson with the integrity checks.

Adblock Plus

Install Adblock Plus 1.2.2 created by Wladimir Palant and get rid of the flashing banners, adverts etc. and browse peacefully. This add-ons automatically removes the online advertising by blocking all the malware domains due to the support from more than forty filter subscriptions which also customizes your filters including a context option for images, a block tab for Flash and Java objects to remove the scripts and style sheets.

Other useful add-ons

Some of the add-ons may not satisfy any general purpose but may cater the needs for some special purposes like analyzing the traffic or working with PDF files or adding your signature. These may not be suitable for daily purposes but can be of great help at other times. Do not miss these special tools.

PixlrGrabber

A plugin to pull down the images and make screen grabs, Pixlr Grabber 2.0.4 is created by Ola Sevandersson which makes it possible to right click any image or background in the web to edit and lets you edit, save or share your final grabs. You can either select the entire page or select areas your desire to edit. It has Pixle Rditor to edit the images and Pixlr.imm.io to save the images to the desktop.

Gmail Notifier

Gmail Notifier 0.6.4.2 by Doren Rosenberg is the original notifier for Gmail which allows you to monitor checking multiple accounts inside your browser’s UI. This add-on stores all the passwords in your browsers password manager and makes it default to use https to connect to Gmail. Not compatible with the new version of GoogleApps.

Web2PDF

Web2PDF 1.8 is a tool to convert your web pages to PDF files directly from the browser. Created by Tomas Rutkauskas, this plugin uses Web2PDF online service but cannot convert the HTML files and also cannot convert the protected web pages where login is necessary i.e. you cannot convert your e-mail to PDF. Web2PDF convertor is licenced under Mozilla Public Licence, version 1.1 and works with Firefox 1.5 – 3.6.

WiseStamp Email Signature

WiseStamp Email signature is created by the Wise Stamp team is a signature creator used to empower your email signatures in Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail. You can personally design signatures, automatically insert them, add a logo to your signature with an easy setup and configuration interface. This plugin easily links to you with the social services and includes and Instant Messaging. Gives you Full Ltr & Rtl language support and supports all the web malfunctions.

HeadlinesTicker

HeadlinesTicker 0.7.1 by LLLuna is a simple RSS / Atom reader which shows the headlines on the status bar and whose default feeds are the CNN and BBC. You can also add feeds by the feed preview page or can change the headlines and use the filters.

Dropico Media Manager

Dropico Media Manager add-on created by the Dropico media is installed as a sidebar which drags & drops your photos directly from your social network sites or from your e-mail account to your Dropico account. You can also also upload your photos using this plugin and also share, manage and edit the photos online using the Dropico Dashboard feature. You can also directly download the photos in its original size and get the latest photofeeds from your friends in the upcoming versions.

DownloadHelper

Download and convert your web videos from sites like YouTube with this Firefox add-on Video DownloadHelper 4.8 by MIG. Works as a tool for extracting the web content to capture image and video files from sites like Dailymotion, Dreamhostm iFilm and others. The icon from this add-on gets animated when it detects any image or video file and lets you download it one by one or all of the links to images or videos by simply clicking on the item.

PDF Download

PDF Download 3.0.0.1 by the Nitro PDF Software is used to do multiple operations with PDF files like creating, handling and viewing. This reduces the browser crashes, speeds up the display and converts any unsecured web page into a high quality PDF page. You can view the PDF file online or as HTML, convert those pages to PDF and download them in more than 19 languages.

Search Status

SearchStatus 1.33, an add-on for Mozilla by Craig Raw displays the ranking from different sources like Google PageRank, AlexaRank and mozRank in your browser. Along with the rankings also displays the keyword density analyser, keyword / nofollow highlighting, related links and other SEO tools. Work with Firefox 3.6 and SeaMonkey 2.0 and has a better and compatible private mode management.

StumbleUpon

The add-on is created exclusively for StumbleUpon users. StumbleUpon 3.73 by Stumble upon makes your experience quite interesting. Installing this add-on, places the StumbleUpon toolbar which can be hidden or displayed with a hotkey. Clicking on the button shows you the websites of similar interests. From more than 500 topics to choose from, this makes your surfing quite beneficial and a knowledgeable one. Not only browsing the topics but with StumbleUpon, connect with your friends, share your favorites with friends and others, meet new people and learn what they are discovering.

MeasureIt

Measure the width, height or alignment of a web page with this add-on MeasureIt 0.4.5 by Kevin Freitas which draws a ruler across any web page and takes the measurements in pixels. It has a configurable fill color and transparency for the rectangle selection and shows the area of the selection by width times height.

HTTP Fox

This add-on HttpFox 0.8.8 by Martin Theimer acts as as HTTP analyzer for Firefox which monitors and analyzes all the incoming and outgoing traffic between the server and the browsers. Its main function is to bring the functionality from tools like HTTP watch and IEInspector to the browser. The information available are the Request and response headers, Sent and received cookies, Response body and POST parameters.

Gmail Manager

This add-on can increase your usage productively in using the Gmail. This add-on for Firefox, Gmail Manager 0.6 by Todd Long is created as a notifier for multiple accounts, This can be use to view the account details including the unread messages, spam messages, labels of new mail, draft mails, used space and new mail snippets. You can also manage this add-on from the toolbar or statusbar. Get a drag-and-drop support for the statusbar or toolbar replacement. Has a support for Flock 2.5 and Songbird 1.2.

All-in-One-Gestures

Execute common commands with the mouse gestures and more with this add-on All-in-One-Gestures 0.21.1 by Marc Boullet. This extension can execute the commands using the scroll wheel navigation, rocker navigation, mouse gestures and page scrolling. This is highly customizable where you can customize the gestures in detail.

ColorZilla

Colors play the most important part since they define the nature of the website, so here is an add-on exclusively for colors, ColorZilla 2.2.2 by Alex Sirota which can get a color reading of any point in the browser, adjust its colors and paste it in another program. You can measure the distance between two points on the page by zooming on it, choose colors from the pre-defined color sets from the built-in palette and save any scheme in the custom palettes. This add-on also supports the HSL color and CSS3 attributes. You could get the information about the DOM elements quickly and easily by the DOM spying features.

(Bellfoong)

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