My 10 Favorite Firefox Plugins

Firefox seems to be the browser of choice for most people I know. Perhaps still not the most used overall, but certainly on it's way to becoming the most used web browser. Let's face it, if Firefox came pre installed and the auto default browser in Windows, it would no doubt be #1.

Anyway, I like Firefox and I especially like all the plugins you can install for it. Here are my 10 personal favorites:

#1 Google Toolbar - How we functioned on the internet without the Google Toolbar is beyond me. This set of tools has become so necessary for day to day browsing, as well as in the professional worlds of SEO and web design/development. The Google PageRank viewer is just one of many features that will keep you in the loop.

#2 ScribeFire - An absolute must have for avid bloggers. An extremely functional interface allows you to simply highlight and right click text on a web page to post it to one of your several blogs you can have setup in ScribeFire. Blogger blogs, Wordpress blogs, and more are supported and very easily configured. You can also easily add images, videos, music, it has a rich text and HTML editor, it allows you to easily add Technorati tags to your post and dozens more great features.


#3 InFormEnter - This little beauty saves me a ton of time not having to fill out every single form I come across on a web site. While Google Toolbar has an auto-fill feature, InFormEnter takes it to a new level. You can setup custom profiles using various information. Then by selecting the profile you wish to use, a blue arrow appears next to the text fields in forms. You simply click the arrow and select what you wish to input. It's a great time saver, and it also helps to keep a lot of data organized for you.

#4 Xmarks - For some reason they recently changed their name from Foxmarks to Xmarks. This has got to be one of the greatest things invented since Firefox itself. Have you ever had your computer die on you? Or lost a hard drive? Yes, I'm sure it's happened to us all at one time or another. It's bad enough having to reinstall all your software and set up your entire computer again, but for me the worst part was that all my bookmarks were gone! What a pain having to re-bookmark everything. Xmarks backs up all of your bookmarks and stores them remotely. It runs completely in the background, uses virtually no ram, you hardly ever even notice it, but it constantly backs up all of your bookmarks. When you need to restore them, it's as simple as clicking restore.

#5 Firefox Showcase - As a Mac user I really appreciate this addon. If you are familiar with Mac OSx's expose feature, then you will feel right at home with Firefox Showcase. This addon allows you to view all your open tabs and/or windows as thumbnails in 1 tab or window. It's great when you have a lot of tabs open and you want to be able to see all of them without having to tab through them all one by one.

#6 IE Tab - Here's an addon that I can't use on my Mac, but wish they would make a Mac friendly version. This addon allows you to view a web site the way Internet Explorer would display it in a tab. As web developers know, it can be a huge challenge sometimes to get a web site to look the same in all browsers. This is an easy way to check your web site in IE without having to run it.

#7 ColorfulTabs - Not the most "WOW" addon, but I like it. It adds some color to my tabs much like a those old sticky tabs would divide your binder back in high school. You can customize the look somewhat, and you can add a background image but I find that it makes the text difficult to read.

#8 DownloadHelper - Have you ever seen a video on Facebook or YouTube that a friend posted that just cracks you up and you want to show your other friends only to find out that the video has been taken down? Well I have. No more with this addon. Now you can download videos from web sites like YouTube and save them on your computer, or put them on your ipod.

#9 FireFTP - This is another great way to have less applications open. FireFTP is an FTP client built right into a Firefox tab. One side is your local files, the other your remote server. Create as many accounts as you wish and flip between them. Simple, functional, practical.

#10 Digg Toolbar - A quick and easy way to Digg your favorite stories and articles (like this one ;) ) and submit your own articles directly to Digg. You have your account already to go so it's just a simple point and click!

I hope you enjoy my 10 favorite Firefox plugins. Please let me know what some of your favorites are.

Technorati Tags: firefox, plugins, addons, software, seo

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By John Simmonds @ 4:06 PM