Firefox Add-ons you should definitely use
There are thousands of thousands of Firefox add-ons. Everyone has their own personal favorites. But I am sure some of them are everyone’s favorite.
I am trying to compile a list of the best of the Firfox add-ons which are useful to specific purpose and can make life bit easy
I would like to request all the visitors and readers to help me compile this list by suggesting their own favorites and what they find good about it. I will keep updating this list based on your feedback and after I try it.
Below is the list of Firefox add-ons I liked. I have categorized the list as per my convenience and based on purpose.
Toolbars
- Web Developer: The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools. This toolbar makes a Web developer life easy. This toolbar has tool related to Cookies, CSS, Forms, Images etc.. It also have tool to validate web page again different web standards like W3C, section 508 etc.

- Google Toolbar: Almost everbody knows about this toolbar. This provide many features related to google like bookmark, gmail access, page rank, auto fill etc.

Blogging and Review Tool
- ScribeFire: ScribeFire is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog. You can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, upload images, and post to multiple blogs.
- FireShot: FireShot is a Firefox extension that creates screenshots of web pages.
Unlike other extensions, this plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify web captures and insert text annotations and graphical annotations. Such functionality will be especially useful for web designers, testers and content reviewers.
It’s possible to choose whether you want to capture entire web page or take screenshot of only visible part of the web page.The captures can be:
– uploaded to FREE public screenshot hosting
– saved to disk (PNG, GIF, JPEG, BMP)
– printed
– copied to clipboard
– e-mailed– sent to configurable external editor for further processing.

Web Development
- Firebug: Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. A must for web developers.
- YSlow: YSlow analyzes web pages and tells you why they’re slow based on Yahoo’s rules for high performance web sites. YSlow has dependecy on Firebug.
Themes and Customizations
- Cooliris: Full-Screen, 3D — Cooliris transforms your browser into a visually stunning experience for searching, viewing, and sharing online photos and videos. Our "3D Wall" lets you effortlessly search and zoom your way around thousands of images, videos, movies, news feeds, and even online retailers. To share stuff with friends, just drag and drop
Bookmarks
- Read It Later: Read It Later allows you to save pages of interest to read later. It eliminates cluttering of bookmarks with sites that are merely of a one-time interest. It Includes following features
i) Save pages to a reading list to read when you have time
ii) Offline Reading Mode – Read the items you’ve saved for later on the plane, train, or anywhere
iii) Access Anywhere – Manage your list in any browser, on any device
iv) RSS Feeds – View your list from anywhere with automatic rss feeds of your items
v) Sync Between Computers – Sync your reading list with any number of computers, work or home
vi) After reading, bookmark pages on your preferred bookmarking service
vii) Click to Save Mode – Quickly batch a reading list just by clicking on interesting links
Others
- Google Redesigned: Google Redesigned is a Mozilla Firefox extension designed by Globex Designs that aims to fully redesign the look and feel of popular Google services. This is achieved with Cascading StyleSheet (CSS) files which are loaded on the client’s browser. The extension simplifies the use of these styles by providing auto-updates, easy management and notifications of changes. You can also download and use the styles individually by going to their respective pages.

- Flashblock: Flashblock is an extension for the Mozilla, Firefox, and Netscape browsers that takes a pessimistic approach to dealing with Macromedia Flash content on a webpage and blocks ALL Flash content from loading. It then leaves placeholders on the webpage that allow you to click to download and then view the Flash content. This enhance the speed fo FF by blocking the Flash and FF consume less memory.
Disclaimer: The description of the add-ons has been taken from their respective add-on pages. I have added some comments to it though. Any error in description or features mentioned but not available is the responsibility of respective add-on providers. The description provided here is just for information only. I do not take any responsibility for the use of these add-ons. Some add-ons might not work on all platform. The exact features can be found on these add-on pages on Mozilla. (Some images are taken from Mozilla Add-ons pages/developers pages.)