Mozilla Extensions
This page is under reconstruction
Extensions add small pieces of functionality to the browser (or mail client). [It's worth noting at thsi point that extensions are different to plugins—though often they get eroniously refered to as plugins. Plugins allow things like Flash to work. For help with plugins see the plugin help pages]. This allows the browser to remain light whilst being customised to suit your needs. There are however some extensions which really do seem to be must haves. I've split my personal list into those for general users and those for web developers. Further extensions can be found at the official Mozilla site or one of the large extensions lists
Repackaging Extensions
When an extension is developed part of the information included is the maximum version of Firefox (or Thunderbird etc) that the extension is expected to work with. Unfortunatley some extensions become abandoned by their original authors and over time stop working because the newest version of Firefox has too high a version number. It is often possible to get these extensions to work by changing the maximum version they will work with (note that this isn't always the case—sometimes an extension really is incompatable with the latest version of Firefox on a fundamental level). This is a simple procedure (involving downloading the extension file, unzipping, editing a text file and rezipping) is quite well explained in Mozillazine's knowledge base. If you find yourself doing a lot of this sort of thing you should probably check out the Nightly Tester Tools extension.
Repackaged Extensions
I've repackaged a couple of extensions myself. I didn't write these but the original authors don't seem to be updating them anymore, so for my own use, or to help out someone on Mozillazine's forums, I've bumped the maxVersion number.
General Browsing Extensions
- Adblock
- Extremely powerful advert blocking extension. Remove banner ads, flash ads and pretty much anything else with just a right click. Supports wild cards and even regular expressions for full ad control. Choose whether to simply hide or not download at all. Especially useful if you're on a slow dial up connection, or just get really annoyed by ads. Highly recommended.
- Calendar
- Adds a calendar to Mozilla. Includes support for the ical format. Highly recommended
- Preferences Bar
- Quickly change Mozilla preferences (allow/disallow popups, javascript, etc).
- Mozilla Home Button
- Adds a Home Button to the navigation toolbar, something which for some reason I miss when it isn't there.
- Greasemonkey
- See the Greasemonkey page
- Google Bar
- Emulating the IE googlebar extension in Mozilla, and more. Get your search results in a new tab etc. Highly recommended.
- Mycroft
- Many, many additional search plugins for the sidebar search ta. Allows easy searching of a huge variety of sites. Also allows you to search multiple engines simultaneously.
- Linky
- Open all links in a new window or tab. and variations (such as all image links, selected links, etc).
- Radial Context
- Pie menu context menus. Basically mouse gesture navigation in what I find to be a more intuative way. I set the menu to only appear when dragging so as to maintain a normal context menu as well. Highly recommended
- User Agent Bar
- Change the user agent presented by the browser. Often a site will work perfectly well in Mozilla but "sniffs" the browser type and decides it can't handle it. Setting the user agent to a version of IE (or quite often Netscape) that the site does support can fool the site and allow it to be viewed.
- Tabbed Browser Extensions
- Advanced options for tabbed browsing. Manipulate tabs as a group, force new windows to open as new tabs instead, undo close tab and other nice things. Highly recommended.
- Context Menu Extensions
- Adds funtionality to the context menu, including user defined stylesheet management, the ability to launch external applications, etc. Also adds a few other useful things.
- BugMeNot
- If you're sick of sites that require you to register before you can view the content then this is for you. Adds an option to the right click context menu to access BugMeNot.com's database of registrations to find one for the current page
- Download Status Bar
- As an alternative to showing an entire download manager, or nothing at all, I find this quite nice. Keeps track of your downloads in a bar at the bottom of the browser window.
- Text Link
- Enables double clicking of plain text link (i.e. url's not actually marked up to be a clickable link) to open them
- PopUp Alt Attributes
- Often web designers add information to images that appears as a tooltip in Internet Explorer. Sadly they often do this in an incorrect way (technically they use the alt attribute when they should use the title attribute), which means the tooltip does't appear in other browsers. This fixes the problem for Mozilla, making it show tooltips in the same way as IE.
Web Development Extensions
- URIID
- Adds an id/class attribute to every page in order to be able to select specifically that page, site with user stylesheets.
- Checky
- Easily check a web page against a variety of standards and accessibility checks, etc. Includes HTML and CSS validation. Highly recommended.
- Javascript Console
- Quickly check some javascript code. Note that the Mozilla Suite includes a Javascript debugger (Venkman), look under Tools->Javascipt Debugger
- Live HTTP Headers
- View HTTP headers in real time.
- Small Screen Rendering
- Emulates the rendering of a web page on a handheld device with, well, a small screen.