Your fav FF4 add-ons

I'm sure at some point a thread like this has been run, but figured a new one for Firefox 4 would be nice.

Adblock Plus- I think anyone running FF has this.

FabTabs- just stumbled on this the other day. Basically, it colors your tabs to the prominent color of the webpage. Kind of like how IE9 does it, but in this case it's just the tab. I find it pretty cool if not superfluous, but it makes FF look that much nicer.

Fast Dial- found this the other day too. Whenever I press the new tab button, I get a "speed dial" page with bookmarks that I've chosen. There's also "new tab king" which automatically picks the pages based on usage, but I found it to have too many "features" such as backgrounds and searches and what not. This is very straightforward but others might prefer that. I highly highly recommend this. Instead of getting a blank page or your home page, you get easy access to how many ever bookmarks you designate.

Personal Menu- I use this to have my bookmarks button become a drop-down menu rather than a link. Very very useful.

RSS Icon in AwesomBar- pretty straight forward. Never used it, mainly for aesthetic purposes. But if people use the RSS button, this would be very useful.

Tab Mix Plus- customize the heck out of how your tabs work. Very very useful.

 

I think Sylph is the most underrated optional boss/summon.

 

LOL that's where my mind went

 

Those I use and love the most are as follows:

1. Adblock Plus
2. Password Exporter (lets you export all your saved passwords to a file which you can import using the same addon on another PC or if you reinstall FF or the PC... Very useful!)
3. Webmail Notifier (use it for a few old mailboxes that I haven't added to my default POP3 application, quite handy!)

I avoid using many addons in general, as FF is laggy enough the way it is!! Terrible they couldn't fix it in 4. I wish Opera 11 had addons and better usability.... it runs so much smoother and faster.

 

I'm sticking with FF3 until they update all my current add-ons.

 

.... which are ...... ?

 

• Barlesque
• DownthemAll
• Flashblock (Opera and Chrome have this built in, why doesn't FF)
• Ghostery
• iReader
• Last.fm
• ReaditLater
• Stumbleupon
• Turn Off the Lights

 

You guys know AdBlock was outmoded before Firefox 1 even came out, right?

 

Like all these?

 

The vast majority of extensions for browsers seem related to fixing things the main dev team should've fixed themselves (scrolling, zooming, image resizing, etc.) I've yet to find a worthwhile addon for Chrome. I don't use Opera, but I imagine it's a similar situation - especially given Opera's notorious page breaking ways despite the devs' sperg like obsession with standards.

Slightly off topic: Quite clever of Google to require a software installation to block their analytics.

 

Using quite a few but my fav's at the moment are:
Aaaptabs - Let's the adresbar disappear on Apptabs (since they should be pretty much static if you ask me)
Adblock plus (+ Popup) - Some sites really put too much ads on their webpages.
Checkplaces - checks all your bookmarks if links still work etc.
bittorrent webui - add a torrent directly to your webui from utorrent, bittorrent (aka your server for example).
download manager tweak - clearly more feature rich ''what have i downloaded manager''
Flashblock - Block all flash on a page (or whitelist them). Very usefull for when surfing the web on notebook and wanting to save some battery life by blocking flash.
movable firefox button - put the big orange firefox button anywhere. It shrinks the icon too.
OpenDownload (fixed) - Open a download directly similar to IE behavior.
ReadItLater - Save websites that you want to read later. You can register an account and sync them across multiple firefox (even chrome) browsers.
Skipscreen - skip waiting times for free users (rapidshare and way more services).
Yet another smooth scrolling - finetune your scrolling behavior.

 

That's interesting, I'm curious how it would work. Have you tried it with MegaUpload?

 

I checked all of the above out, didn't find almost anything useful or attracting (besides Adblock which I already use), but the last one ( Yet another smooth scrolling)! Works quite good, starting to like it

 

To people using AdBlock: you should look into using a Hosts file instead. It can block connections to any IP (ad sites, spyware, etc) on a system wide level and uses next to no system resources. AFAIK AdBlock still allows FF to connect to and download content from adservers, it just blocks them it being displayed.

 

This is great and all; but most people use adblock because it can automatically update its blacklist. A real timesaver when you have hundreds of new ads and sites everyday that you wouldn't want to see.

adblock and it's consumption of system resources clearly has no issues. the browser even scrolls faster because its not displaying power hungry flash ads and banners.

 

1. Fire gestures. In my view by far the most underrated add-on of all time.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/firegestures/

Very difficult for me to use a system without these mouse gestures. Greatly increases my efficiency.

2. IE Tab 2- needed for work for all of the non FF compatible websites there still are out there.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ie-tab-2-ff-36/

3. Nosquint- nice for a 1080 screen.
4. Dictionary
5. Toolbar buttons- love that download button.
6. Stylish- I find not too many people know about this one. Very cool with customizing popular websites.

 

That's a gross exaggeration. The vast majority of ads come from a handful of sources with static or rarely changing URLs. Regardless, it's pretty simple to download and update a hosts file yourself.

but it's still downloading them, eating up your bandwidth and exposing you to all sorts of potential harm. Even if it's not using a staggering amount of resources it's still a waste when you could have superior results with a completely insignificant footprint.

As I said, AdBlock has been obsolete since before it was even created.

 

Host files are great. I personally use one and have adblock disabled but there's nothing stopping someone from using both.

 

Google Shortcuts
Adbock Plus
Barlesque (Thanks to Jayayess...)
ChromEdit Plus
Default Full Zoom Level
Download Statusbar
Firefox Sync
FoxClocks
HTTPS-Everywhere
NoScript
Session Manager
Tab Mix Plus
Toolbar Buttons
WOT
XMarks
Yet Another Smooth Scrolling

 

I understand your point here. I too would like the idea of not having to waste bandwidth to download ads even if I don't actually see them. This would definitely be very much worth it for those under a monthly cap or paying per kb.

So I gave it a try; disabled adblock and installed mvps hosts file. What the mvps hosts file does for me is instead of showing the ads; it shows the ff error page of "unable to connect" which is pretty ugly; but effective.

So I enabled adblock again and those error pages on sites are now removed and as before; even the space that they normally take are now compressed to show more content.

As a conclusion; thank you for showing us about hosts file; but it looks like having both is better than having one.

 

This is great stuff. I didn't know about HOSTS files, but I like the combination of HOSTS and adblock very much.

Also want to suggest these add-ons, the only ones I use in addition to adblock plus:

IE tab 2 (for those sites that only work/work better in IE)
Session Manager (great for research/saving multiple sessions)

I wish Gmailspace still worked...

 

no, removes them from the DOM before they get loaded. and auto-updating to new stuff. and removing it from the DOM means removing the blank-space that would appear else, too. thus saving screen space, too.

 

AwesomeBar HD: Find what you want
Install

<video controls="" width='640'>

<source src="http://videos-cdn.mozilla.net/serv/labs/prospector/awesomeBarHDIntro.webm">

<source src="http://videos-cdn.mozilla.net/serv/labs/prospector/awesomeBarHDIntro.ogv">

Please download Firefox 4 to watch the WebM video.

</video>