When I’m using a windows or linux computer then I normally use the Mozilla Firefox internet browser as I find it easier to use, extend, and customise than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. On my Mac I use Apple Safari and Firefox. Part of Firefox’s appeal is the large range of add-ons that are available that include plugins for handling different media types (music, video, images), extensions that add more functionality to the browser, search plugins that make it easy to use search engines from the toolbar, and the very useful inline spell checkers. Here are some of my favourite Add-ons.
- Java
- Apple Quicktime
- Real Player
- Macromedia Shockwave
- Macromedia Flash
- Windows Media Player
- Adobe Reader (formerly known as Adobe Acrobat Reader)
- MPlayer (multimedia plugin for Linux that replaces many plugins that are only for Mac and Windows)
There is a lot more information about other FireFox plugins on the Mozilla Developer site: http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/ including lists of plugins for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
Extensions
- Adsense Preview – unofficial tool to preview the Google ads that may show on any web page.
- Live HTTP Headers – display HTTP headers in real time while pages are being downloaded from the Internet.
- Web Developer – Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.
- Image Zoom – Easily zoom in, zoom out, fit image to screen or set custom zoom on individual images.
- JSView – View JavaScript and CSS files that are used by a webpage.
- AdBlock – Block adverts, Flash, or images from pages.
- HTMl Validator – Validate the HTML
- Fire Encryptor – encryption, decryption and hashing functions
- FireFTP – FTP client
- SecurePassword Generator – provides a dialog that lets you create secure and customized passwords.
- Master Password Timeout – locks the master security device after a predefined period of inactivity (timeout). When the master security device is locked, the master password must be entered to gain access to saved passwords.
- Dummy Lipsum – Generate “Lorem Ipsum” dummy text
- LinkChecker – Checks links on a web page, very helpful on your own site.
- Copy Plain Text – gives you an option to copy text without the formatting.
- Cookie Culler – gives you much more control over the cookies in Firefox and makes it much easier to block some sites.
- WikiPedia
- IMDB
- Yahoo
- Amazon
- Debian Packages
- BBC News
- MySQL
- Eclipse Plugins
- Java Documentation
Version 2.0 of Firefox is now available. Some of the extensions may need updating to work with Firefox 2.0.