I think the add-ons you use say a lot about you. So I’ve dumped my list of add-ons, categorized them, and called out some preferences you may want to set if you decide to install them. More after the break.
I don’t like advertising (or anything else that distracts)
- “Ads were yesterday!”
- I’d rather pay for content than be bombarded with advertising. Since I’m in the minority, I have to go rogue and block ads.
- Adblock does away with more than ads though. Check out the Antisocial (removes tweet, RT, like, and +1 buttons) and Malware Domains subscriptions at the bottom of this page. Then consider using Firefox Share (alpha) instead.
- “Replaces Flash objects with a button you can click to view them.”
- I’ve had audio/video auto-play in Flash too many times.
I like to be as secure as possible
- “Password and identity manager for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android.”
- Securely stores your passwords, account info, CC info, etc. To make this extension useful, you’ll need to purchase the Mac/Windows client (which is a bit pricey). Also check out the iOS/Android clients.
- 1Password can be easily used with an encrypted data store on DropBox (a la Firefox Sync).
- “Encrypt the Web! Automatically use HTTPS security on many sites.”
- For supported sites (Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), this add-on passes all requests securely even if an insecure request was originally made (say, from the search bar).
- HTTPS-Everywhere isn’t currently possible on Safari/Chrome/IE due to the inability to rewrite HTTP requests as HTTPS requests prior to sending. Firefox ftw.
I work at Mozilla
- “Add features to Bugzilla.”
- Makes Bugzilla more readable and usable.
I consider myself a power user
- “View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar”
- Keeps you from dealing with window management when trying to check download status.
- This is basically a stop-gap until the panel based download window feature lands.
- “Show tabs like a tree.”
- Places tabs in a sidebar, thus making better use of these 16:9 screens we all have now.
- Tree style tabs also make a lot of sense when used in conjunction with middle-clicking to open a page in a new tab. To open new tabs without giving them focus immediately, go into the Firefox settings, select “Tabs”, and then uncheck “When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately”.
- If you’re on a Macbook of some sort and don’t have a good middle click (cmd+click kind of stinks), try out Middleclick which turns a three finger tap into a middle click.
- “Tab browsing with an added boost.”
- Allows you to customize a number of tab features. If you decide to take me up on using Middleclick, you should consider making middle clicks on tabs do nothing (to prevent errant closing).
- Also try messing with the highlighting of unread tabs under “Tab Mix Plus Options > Display > Tab”.
- “Adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of a browser.”
- Sometimes you come across a site that unnecessarily marks itself as only compatible with IE. Or you may prefer the iPad version of a site due to its cleaner layout.
I’m dabbling with writing add-ons
- Uses the (cmd/windows)-shift-c key combo to copy both the window title and URL as HTML into the pasteboard.
- I have a sneaking suspicion this can already be accomplished by default or with another extension, but I couldn’t find any reference.
- For use with the followalong webpage.
- I’ll have a post coming up with details about followalong, but it’s basically an extension that enables collaborative browsing (think bug triaging, remote presentations, etc.)
I’m sometimes clumsy
- “Fixes common typos in URLs entered in the address bar.”
