Firefox Extensions

Compiled by Karen Blakeman
karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk
web: http://www.rba.co.uk/
blog: http://www.rba.co.uk/rss/blog.htm

The internet browser has a range of built-in features that have long made it superior to Internet Explorer (even the latest IE 7!) and there are a host of “extensions” or add-ons that you can download to add yet more functionality. Firefox itself can be downloaded from http://www.firefox.com/ and extensions can be viewed and downloaded from https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/extensions/ . The list can be quite daunting to a first time user so here, in alphabetical order are some of the more popular and useful ones.

Adblock Plus
“Ads are yesterday.” Does what it says on the tin – blocks ads.

Customise Google
Allows you to add or remove elements from Google results pages. Options include: add links to other search tools from the Google results page - tools vary according to whether you are using web, image, news search etc; add position counters to the search results; add links to the Wayback Machine (web page history); filter out specific web sites or pages; anonymize your Google userid.

Copy URL+
For copying and pasting URLs, page titles and highlighted text in one go.

Flashblock
Replaces Flash objects with a button that you can click on to view them. Especially useful for blocking flash ads.

Googlebar
Version of the Google toolbar for Firefox not produced by Google. Has a number of extra features and search options absent from Google's version.

Linkchecker
Checks the validity of links on any web page

Nuke Anything
Kills annoying elements of a page such as images and flash with a right click menu option. Useful when printing out busy pages. The effects of this extension are temporary: use Remove it Permanently (RIP) if you want your removed objects to be remembered.

Resurrect Pages
Find copies of ‘dead' pages in search engine caches and the Wayback Machine (Internet Archive)

Scrapbook
Helps you save web pages and easily manage collections. Can save a single web page, linked pages, highlighted text. You can organize the collection in the same way as your Bookmarks tree and edit and annotate the collected web page.

Tinyurl creator
Adds “Create TinyURL for this page” to the right click menu.

User Agent Switcher
Fools annoying web sites that insist on you using IE that Firefox is IE.

And finally…. if the latest version of Firefox doesn't recognise an extension use the Nightly Tester Tools to persuade it that all your extensions are compatible.

PDF of Firefox Extensions Factsheet (18 KB)