Five Essential Firefox Add-ons for Internet Ninjas

April 27, 2010 - By Alex Miranda

When it comes to browsers, I have no loyalty. I am constantly hopping back and forth between Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. Why? They’re both great browsers that have real advantages over competitors like Microsoft Internet Explorer and the Apple Safari browser. Google Chrome is a really clean and uncluttered browser that is stable and performs well. For its part, Firefox has a slew of great add-ons available to make your browsing experience a little better. Chrome is beginning to amass a pretty good collection of its own browser extensions, but, for now at least, Firefox still has them beat.

Currently, there are over 10,000 add-ons. Add-on categories include tools such as toolbars, social media, messaging, and those that allow for a customized, browser appearance. There are so many that it would be impossible to name every single add-on worthy of your bandwidth to download. If I were hard-pressed to name five of my current favorites, these are the ones I would tell you are must-haves.

Cooliris for Firefox

Cooliris: This is one of the first add-ons I installed for Firefox, and it is still one of my favorites. It simply makes a wall of images out of your search query. Naturally my daughter and I spend lots of time looking at cute kittens and cute puppies on the internet. You can launch Cooliris or you can simply hover over the image if it is a compatible web page like Google or Facebook. The effects are cool, and it’s a far more entertaining way to review images, rather than in the old, boring results provided by most search engines. You can learn more about Cooliris and the websites it supports here.

Power twitter for Firefox

Power Twitter: This is a fairly robust Twitter client for Firefox. It is not going to replace the Seesmic or Tweetdeck applications, but it is a very good alternative for reading your Tweets and updating your status in a web-browsing environment. You can do the standard tweet, reply and re-tweet actions with it. There is a question of the day, which isn’t necessarily of value, but it is an amusing diversion. More importantly, it integrates image uploads and URL shortening, which is a big improvement over the default web-based version provided via Twitter’s website. Also, if you use Selective Tweets you can use this to update your Facebook status as well with a simple #FB. You can learn more about Power Twitter and some of the additional cool features it includes features here.

TwitterBar for Firefox


TwitterBar: If you just want a simple tool to update your Twitter status, TwitterBar is the easiest. All you have to do is to type your Twitter update in the address bar. It’s a simple design intended to accomplish a simple function, which is exactly what you want sometimes. TwitterBar can be downloaded here.

FoxTab for Firefox


FoxTab: This is my favorite way to manage the sites I visit the most. Let’s not complicate things. It is basically a speed dial page. FoxTab is very customizable and lets you choose the color scheme and the page layout that you prefer for your daily browsing. It also lets you customize your favorites or recently visited tab list. Essentially, it’s the perfect way to have your most visited website one or two clicks away. You can get the details on FoxTab here.




FastestFox: For me this Firefox add-on is also an add-on for my search engines of choice, Google and Bing. FastestFox gives you additional options with your search query results. It adds an additional section to search Amazon, Yahoo, Twitter results, and more. There are other things power users may enjoy as well such as downloading all of the images or links from a website. Definitely another must have add-on. Learn more about it here.

These Don’t Interest You? Find Some More!
There are thousands upon thousands of additional add-ons. If you browse the Firefox Add-ons page, you can search by both keyword and categories. Keep in mind that many of the add-ons are independently developed. Some of the developers of these do ask for donations. Be safe and, if you do choose to support them, be sure to do it from PayPal account to PayPal account.
Also, not every add-on is compatible with every version of Firefox. If you are using a beta version of Firefox and want to take advantage of add-ons, it’s definitely a good idea to be sure you have the latest, stable release of Firefox. After all, these add-ons are supposed to make browsing easier!

Alex Miranda
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