Firefox Extensions

Quite a lot of people use the Mozilla Firefox web browser on Linux. One of the great features of Firefox is the extension capability. Additional functionality can be just a few clicks away. Here’s a list of some of our favourite plugins and why we like them.

[[https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=60|Web Developer]]

Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.

Proponents: AlanPope, DanPope, AdamTrickett

[[https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=433|Flashblock]]

Never be annoyed by a Flash animation again! Blocks Flash so it won’t get in your way, but if you want to see it, just click.

Proponents: AlanPope, DanPope

[[https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=59|User Agent Switcher]]

Adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser.

Proponents: AlanPope

[[https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=953|RefControl]]

Blocks or spoofs sending HTTP Referer (ie. referrer) headers for privacy reasons. Prevents the websites you visit seeing what you have been searching for, for example.

Proponents: DanPope

[[https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=436|SessionSaver]]

Restores your tabs and windows including their history and form contents from the last time you ran Firefox. (In Firefox 2.0 natively.)

Proponents: DanPope

[[https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=12|All-in One Gestures]]

The complete mouse gesture package. Draw shapes to quickly access browser functions. Even more useful to me are the rocker gestures: hold the right mouse button and click the left to instantly jump back.

Proponents: DanPope

[[https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=537|Redirect Remover]]

Replaces links that contain a URL with that URL (and highlights the link to tell you it’s done it) eg. out.php?http://www.hantslug.org.uk becomes http://www.hantslug.org.uk This turns out to almost always be beneficial from the user’s point of view as such URLs are almost always used to introduce advertising or invade your privacy by watching which links you click.

Proponents: DanPope

[[https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=176|MiniT]]

Adds tab dragging with drop place indicator. (In Firefox 2.0 natively.)

Proponents: JeremyWard, TonyWhitmore

[[https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=722|NoScript]]

Block Javascript by default, enable by exception.

Proponents: AdamTrickett

[[https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=10|AdBlock]]

Block adverts and other similar annoying screen spam.

Proponents: AdamTrickett

[[https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=138|StumbleUpon]]

A great way to waste hours of your life stumbling upon websites you may never have seen before.

Proponents: AlanPope

[[https://addons.mozilla.org/addon.php?id=158|Tabbrowser Preferences]]

Add more flexibility and control over tab behaviour – a myriad new options appear in Preferences, including things like automatically opening searches in a new tab.

Proponents: TonyWhitmore, AdamTrickett

[[https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1843/|FireBug]] and also [[http://www.joehewitt.com/software/firebug/|Author’s Home Page]]

The all in one HTML/CSS/JavaScript/DOM debugging tool. A perfect companion to the Web Developer plugin.

Proponents: AdamTrickett

[[https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2207/|Cooliris]]

In browser previews of links. Hover over a link and get a preview of the contents!

Proponents: RobSmith, TonyWhitmore

[[https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/126/|Tinyurl]]

Available from the tools menu and copied to the clipboard, it makes creating short URLs via the tinyurl.com site very easy!

Proponents: TonyWhitmore