Firefox 2.0 Extensions - Updated

Latest updates (11/30/07)

• added RetailMeNot to ESSENTIAL
• added Colorzilla, GSpace, StumbleUpon to TRYING
• added Fasterfox, FirefoxMenuButtons, Gmail Macros, Image Zoom, to RARELY USED
• added TabEffect to DON'T LIKE
• added Some useful Greasemonkey scripts for YouTube to FIREFOX HACKS
• updated CLEO Extensions file (see instructions for uploading all my extensions, below).

Load them all in one file

To install my Essential AND Trying extensions in one downloadable CLEO extensions file:

• Install the FEBE and CLEO extensions, then restart Firefox
• Right click on cleo_20071130.xpi and save the file to your computer, then open it (takes about a minute to load)  NOTE:  This will not erase you current extensions.
• Restart firefox, then go in and configure your new extensions!
• NOTE: Greasemonkey scripts are not included, you have to load those individually by clicking on the links below.

ESSENTIAL Firefox Extensions

• Back to Top - simple buttons for going to top/bottom of pages
• Copy as HTML Link - allows you to copy any text on a page, and it will include the [href][/a] of the current URL around it.  Great for copying urls for blog comments.
• Customize Google - cool idea - I especially like the links to other search engines, numbering of results, and filters (filter out certain sites from results).
• Download Statusbar - excellent addition, gets rid of need for the pesky download window
• Email This - allows you to select text on a page and automatically email the link and highlighted text.  Supposedly works with gmail, yahoo, and hotmail, outlook express, others. Works fine with gmail, just make sure you are logged in first.
• Faviconize - minimizes tabs to their favicon.  Good if you have lots of tabs open.
• Flashblock - a nice button for your toolbar that toggles flash objects - works perfectly.
• Foxmarks - bookmark synchronizer.  Works well, less obnoxious than Google Browser Sync, doesn't force you to log in every two weeks, but does not sync last opened pages.
• Google Preview - adds preview images to google results.
• Greasemonkey - This app allows you to use any of the many Greasmonkey Scripts.  Here's the essential ones:
  • Auto Add Feed - If you use Google Reader, this plugin allows you to skip that intermediate page when adding a new feed, and you end up directly in Google Reader.
  • Autopager (GM Script) - nice!  As you page down with the space bar on google results, it appends the next 10 results, forever!  No more page changes.  Nice.
  • Google Saved Searches - Adds a nice sidebar with saved searches.  Slows down GR a little, but may be worth it.
  • You can find other useful scripts here (some of which I've tried)
• IE Tab - allows you to emulate IE in a Firefox tab for apps that require IE (like Sharepoint or OWA)
• It's all Text - tired of typing up your comments in some puny comment box? Automatically launch your text editor of choice.  However, you have to copy the text in your text editor and paste it into the original box when done.
• Image Toolbar - like in MS Office, when you mouse over an image, you get a toolbar to save, etc.  I hate this feature in office, but i think it would be useful on the web.
• MacfoxIIgrapite (theme) - very clean and nice mac-like theme.  Pretty.
• Minimize to Tray - removes minimized browser from Start Bar, moves it to a Tray icon.  Works as advertised
• Mouse Gestures - i really like the mouse-button rocker action for forwards/back (hold left mouse, click right to go forward one page, and vice versa).
• MR Tech Local Install - The primary goal of this extension is to provide the tools needed to install and manage extensions and themes locally.  You should get it, esp. if you want to activate extensions that are not yet updated for 2.0, but work fine if you "unlock" them (see Resize Search Box and Colorful Tabs, below).  It also has some cool buttons for your toolbar, including one that opens up extenstions, and one that restarts FF in one click (after installing extensions is when you use it)
• Nuke Anything Enhanced - Temporarily remove anything from a page before printing - if you refresh page, nuked items return.  Nice.
• PackageMapping.com - highlight your package tracking code, and the program will mash up the delivery data with a google map.  Nice.
• Paste and Go 2 - nice buttons that either paste and go (to url) or paste and search from the clipboard, in one click - you just have to get in the habit of using it.
• PDF Download - provides a popup when clicking on PDF links, giving you the option to download or open.
• Print Preview - adds print preview button and context menu.  Works as advertised.
• NEW! RetailMeNot - this excellent extension is invisible until you are on a shopping site that it knows there are coupons for, and puts a little bar up top to alert you to possible coupons.  Nice.
• Screen Grab - simple, free alternative to SnagIt.  In some ways, better than Page Saver (see below).
• Smoothwheel - makes scrolling in firefox much more smooth and pleasurable.
• Tab Mix Plus - FF 2.0 has some new tab features, but still needs more.  This extension provides them
• Tiny Menu - To give you more space on that top toolbar, you can reduce the entire menu under one Menu command.
• Viamatic Foxpose - gives you thumbnail layout of all open windows.
• Woot Watcher - puts the current woot in your status bar.  Very nice.
• WOT - community-feedback based evaluation of sites, measures trustworthiness.  Although I never rate sites, it has caught some evil sites for me.

TRYING

• NEW!Colorzilla - allows you click on any image and get the HEX color values.
• Google Images Re-Linker - Allows you to click on Google image thumbnails and go directly to the large image (saves one step)
• Grab and Drag - allows you to drag pages Adobe Acrobat style with the little hand.
• Greasemonkey - here are the GM Scripts I am trying out.
  • Gmail Cleanup - tweak Gmail, remove stuff you don't want. Includes Accessibility Options and the ability to Remove Adverts
• GSpace - basically, same as Gmail drive app, but in the browser.  Let's you use your gmail account(s) like a storage drive, moving files up and down like ftp.
• PriceDrop - for Amazon, allows you to track individual items, and alerts you when their prices drop.  The only problem with it is that it is not centralized on a server or web account, so it only tracks on one machine at a time - if you have another machine (like a work or home machine), you would have to track those items again from that machine.
• StumbleUpon - I love this app.  We'll see how I like it in a few weeks.  Allows you to find sites similar to the ones you like.  I've found a few great sites using it already.

Extensions that are OK but RARELY USED

• asdf-jkl - shows all of your shortcut combos as mouseovers (on buttons) or next to actions in menus.  But i never really looked at it.
• Bookmarlets - Lots of interesting functional bookmarks you can add to your bookmarks toolbar. 
  
  • TOP bookmarklet takes you to the root level of the domain.
• coComment! - Adds right-click item that activates coComment.  Buggy, conflicts with coComment
• coComment - Adds overlay to blog comment boxes, allows you to track the pages you are commenting on from one central console, shows which ones have updates, also has RSS.  Very nice concept, but it seemed to only track my comments.  Still buggy as of 10/02/07, will try again later.
• Colorful Tabs - actually this plugin is awesome, but with the steel "mac" theme I use, it is not needed
• Commentful - track for new comments on any page you visit - I just never used it.
• Download Embedded - You are supposed to be able to download movie files from the likes of Google video and youtube.  There are at least two other extensions that do this.
• DragDropUpload - allows you to drag and drop many attachments to a gmail email - but I never used it, since I rarely attach more than a couple attachments to emails.
• Extra Search Engines - you can add other search engines to the Search Box in FF.  I added one for Wikipedia, and then searched for and added Onelook, Pricewatch, Pricegrabber, Froogle and Download.com.  This works fine, but there is a better way to search from the address bar.
• Fasterfox - I finally decided to try this popular plugin because FF has been taking up lots of memory, and doesn't release it when you close a tab. This doesn't really fix it, but it does give some optimization options - but I don't see that it made much difference.
• Firebug - helps you look behind the code - CSS, DOM, etc.  May overlap with Web Developer Toolbar.  I found I rarely used it, though it looks like a nice extension.
• Firedoodle - draw with a highlighter on any page in your browser.  It works OK, I just never used it.
• FirefoxMenuButtons - adds 41 possible buttons, some useful ones - but in the end, didn't really use them.
• Firetune - a standalone tuning product for Firefox - works OK, but no real value in my usage.
• Greasemonkey - GM is great, but some scripts I have tried and don't use, though they work fine:
  • Better Gmail - this has a lot of hacks in it, but if you use them all, you'll slow down Gmail to a crawl.  Better to pick and choose which you like - you can download them all and then turn off many.  I just chose to install the things I liked.
  • Gmail Attachment Icons - This gives you attachment-specific icons.  Nice to have, but I don't want to slow down gmail for this.  Also has a cousin, Gmail Attachment Icons Bigger.
  • Gmail Inbox Count First - puts the number of unread messages on the tab title.  Not worth slowing down gmail for.
  • Gmail SuperClean - cleaner skins, but not worth the slowdown for marginal improvements.
  • Gmail Conversation Preview - never used it.
    
  • Gmail Forward Thread - Forward an entire conversation.  Never used it.
  • Gmail Macros - Adds extra keyboard macros/shortcuts. Note that I am using the BN version - I just don't use em.
  • Gmail Label Colors - never seemed to show different colors.  May work fine, but not essential.
  • Google Reader Preview Enhanced (GM Script) - allow you to view the original html of posts in Google Reader, even comment from within GR. Didn't use much.
• Google Bookmarks Button - allows you one click access to your Google Bookmarks (note:  I used yourweb to port my Firefox bookmarks to Google).  I just never used Google bookmarks.
• Image Zoom - allows you to easily zoom in/out on an image using the control key and the mouse wheel.  However, this caused weird mouse behaviors, zooming when I did not intend.  Wasn't worth it to me.
• LivePagerank - adds google pagerank to status bar.  Simple, consistent, unobtrusive.
• Page Saver - This app works nicely as a free Snag-it substitute (but only in the browswer), but the free version does not allow save to clipboard.  A plus is that it does not require the installation of Java, but if you already have that, ScreenGrab allows you to save to clipboard, free.
• Resize Search Box - works nicely, but I no longer use the search box
• Searchbar Autosizer - resizes searchbox based on what you enter.  Awesome.  Now with max and min width settings. This works fine, but there is a better way to search from the address bar.
• Split Browser - this allows you to compare windows side by side or horizontally.  I tried it once before, but it was buggy and caused crashes.  Newer version may work out better, but I didn't use much.
• Style Sheet Chooser II - Works fine, but you have to somehow load alternate style sheets for it to work.  Probably works nice if you take the time to put in some other css files.
• URL Fixer - ever enter .co instead of .com?  This fixer fixes these on the fly.  In real life, however, I don't think i used it much.  And of course, it WON'T change .co to .com, because .co is a valid extension.
• View Source Chart - shows page source, blocked out and indented.  Nice.
• Web Developer - lots of nice tools for evaluating web sites - the View Source text editor is very nice - great tool, but I don't use it.
• Xippee - allows you to add or omit terms from search results by selecting them, no more typing needed.  Nice.
• YSlow - this tool allows you to analyze sites for items that slow the site down.  It's pretty detailed, but I found it too technical for me, and a bit slow itself!  Requires Firebug extension.

Extensions I've Tried and DON'T LIKE

• Ad Block / Ad Block Plus - I found that this extension often blocked images I wanted to see, and even when I whitelisted a site, images were still missing, even after I deleted the extension.
• Advanced Dork - easy access to google's advanced operators - but it didn't really allow me to search within a site easily
• Autocopy - copies highlighted text to clipboard.  Becomes a pain if you highlight some text in your blog editor in order to paste in a URL - when you highlight the text, it replaces the URL.  Argh.
• Bookmark Launcher - quick bookmark button.  But I couldn't figure out how to get the dang button on the toolbar.  Sigh.
• easyGestures - not so easy, clumsy but interesting popup.  I liked Mouse Gestures better.
• Google Browser Sync - syncs your last pages viewed (across computers) AND bookmarks - very nice.  However, it regularly demands that you log in.  While it's unique and full feature set works fine, I really wanted to just sync bookmarks, and Foxmarks works fine for that.
• Greasemonkey - GM is great, but some scripts I have tried and don't like:
  
  •  Gmail + Google Reader - this lets you see both Gmail and GR in one page, but it's way too crowded for me.
  • Google Reader Feeds - Adds a "Feeds" field to the menu in Gmail.  The problem is, if you have other GR scripts (like the excellent GR Search box), you can't see them because the navigation is still gmail nav.
• IE View - this just opens up the page in a separate IE instance - not as elegant as IE Tab, which opens up a new tab in FF using the IE engine.
• Gbutts - Adds buttons that link to your other Google apps from Gmail.   But I could not get the toolbar to show up.  May work fine, but I couldn't figure it out.
• Performancing - this extension promises to be a good blog poster/editor app, but it seriously messes up when editing content on my TypePad pages.  Doesn't have support for the extended entry.  Good idea, still not ripe.
• Pronto Shopping Messenger - brings you instant price comparisons when you shop online via a small message window that alerts you of potential savings - but it slowed down Firefox something awful.  I have replaced it with RetailMeNot and PriceDrop
• StatusbarEx - This extension is supposed to show various system statuses in your status bar, but I could not get it to work.
• TabEffect - works ok, but obnoxious, and on my machine, stumbles a bit. 
• XUL/Migemo - nice Safari-like in-page search, highlights ALL matching words at once.  But slows down FF to a crawl. 

Essential Firefox Shortcut Keys

• / > Find text as you type
• F3 > find next
• CTRL-E or CTRL-K > move cursor to Search Box
• ALT-D > highlight Address Bar

Other Useful Firefox Hacks

• Use firefox as a replacement for Windows Explorer - sweet for browsing, but of course, you can't move files around.
• Searching from the address bar - no more need for a search box
• Some useful Greasemonkey scripts for YouTube

Comments

[Cineaste]

What I like about Firefox in addition to the extensions and themes is that it actually renders web pages correctly. Sites look different in I.E. I need to try some of those shortcuts you have. I didn't know about them. Thanks for the tips!

[Cineaste]

I use the iFox Metal theme if anyone is interested in cool Firefox themes.

[seeker]

I liked ifox metal, but for "mac-like" themes, I like Macfoxiigraphite (ungainly name) better.

[Cineaste]

Here is a problem/question I have with Firefox's spell checker. I often inadvertently add misspelled words to the firefox dictionary. How do I remove these?

[seeker]

You can go to "Documents and Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\.default\" and edit the file "persdict.dat" Each word is on it's own line and you can only edit it when FireFox is closed, otherwise, your changes won't be saved.

[seeker]

Here's more ff dictionary stuff
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/11/firefox-2-spelling-dictionary-hacks.html

[Sandy]

I have no idea what any of this means. But I find it so interesting how quickly the conversations can become civil, even freindly on this site.

[Cineaste]

Thanks!

[seeker]

Well, I really harbor no lasting animosity towards these guys, and I suspect that they are actually more like me than I would admit. We can all seem like monsters from such an impersonal distance. In the end, it's about beating our ideas up against one another, not actually beating or winning. At least, that's my approach. I don't so much try to convince as to build convincing arguments through dialogue. I know that I may not seem like I am listening, but I do.

[Cineaste]

Sandy, you conveniently set Seeker up perfectly to get on his soapbox to explain about how understanding he "really" is.

I don't so much try to convince as to build convincing arguments through dialogue. I know that I may not seem like I am listening, but I do.

It depends on the subject. On subjects like FireFox extensions, movies, etc. there is a nice dialogue with Seeker. However, with topics like creationism, you will find that any meaningful dialogue is stopped dead in it's tracks by his irrational faith. Show him a rock is older than 10,000 years and he won't listen to you at all. Point to a biblical passage and he is all ears.

We can all seem like monsters from such an impersonal distance.

This is a curious thing to say. "Monster" is an interesting choice of words. I'd say we sound all too human.

Usually I am the guilty one getting a thread off topic but this time I'm just responding :)

[seeker]

However, with topics like creationism, you will find that any meaningful dialogue is stopped dead in it's tracks by his irrational faith. Show him a rock is older than 10,000 years and he won't listen to you at all. Point to a biblical passage and he is all ears.

Back at you. You have not "proved" the age of rocks, and I believe I have legitimate reasons to doubt, which I've presented. I have never claimed biblical authority instead of science, it's just that you refuse to argue science, but rather, rely on such ad hominem remarks.

I have always said there are good reasons to doubt, but you don't like it, so you sling names as if that makes me less credible. Whatever.

[Cineaste]

You see Sandy? We never get anywhere on certain subjects.

[Sandy]

sigh. It was nice while it lasted...

[Cineaste]

I know, but Seeker is usually a nice guy, it's just that on certain subjects he refers to scripture instead of common sense. Result, a communication breakdown. I'd say give Seeker another chance Sandy.

[Cineaste]

Disable Snap Previews

Have you noticed that a lot of site are using those pop-up graphic previews when you hover your mouse over a link? Ursi's Blog is one of them. It's called Snap Preview Anywhere.

If you find them as obnoxious as I do, here's how to disable it. it works.

[seeker]

I included the code because I like it. It can be annoying i guess.

[Cineaste]

I like it too, the above is block quoted. It's just an option.

[Cineaste]

I've just seen the future of computers.

Remapping the Universe

In this video, Jeff Han and Phil Davidson demonstrate how a multi-touch driven computer screen will change the way we work and play.

[Silver Hallide]

Snap Previews are beyond annoying. When they work correctly, which is rare, you get a nice preview. When they don't work, which is more often than not, it forces you to click twice to go anywhere on the web.

It gives me pause in my desire follow any link to an article from this site. Not good.

[Silver Hallide]

Snap Previews are beyond annoying. When they work correctly, which is rare, you get a nice preview. When they don't work, which is more often than not, it forces you to click twice to go anywhere on the web.

It gives me pause in my to desire follow any link to an article from this site. Not good.

[Lawanda]

I was beginning to HATE IE! I just downloaded firefox, and I have had no trouble with it so far! WAHOO!! TY!

Every time you post on Firefox extension, you title the post, "Firefox 2.0 Extentions." That's the wrong spelling.

[seeker]

Thanks, fixed it - I had it right in the technorati tags. That's one of those words I consistently misspell - I also have brain problem with "occasional" and excerpt. And spellcheck doesn't show up on the blog titles, even though it does work realtime in the post area.

[joaquin]

Thanks for the extensive review list.
I was curious as for the problems you experienced with cocomment, it should be tracking all comments from any blog and not just yours. If you have the link to the exact blog that you had problems with would be great so we can look into it.

Thanks
joaquin

joaquin@cocomment.com

"Very nice concept, but it seemed to only track my comments."