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GNU/Linux Free Software & Open Source

Top 10 firefox extensions I can’t live without

Mozilla collections

Recently Mozilla launched Firefox extension collections to avoid hunting
down your favourite extensions for certain tasks.

Here’s my top 10 firefox extensions I cant live without:

  1. Firebug
  2. This is a web developer must have. It has a ton of features, like code inspection, javascript debugger, css debugger and http console for errors and GET/POST values. If you don’t have Firebug by now, it means you’re not a web developer.

  3. Google Preview
  4. This nice extension adds a screenshot of the website beside each result on your google searches so you can preview if that’s the site you’re looking for or can ditch it if it looks phony.

  5. Del.icio.us Bookmarks
  6. Since I’m not always using my main laptop, having access to my bookmarks on any computer is a very important feature. Del.icio.us is the social networking site for bookmarks, so you can send and recieve links to and from friends, tag your bookmarks, etc. This extension integrates delicious with Firefox very well so you can access your links easily.

  7. Adblock Plus
  8. Helps you clean up your browsing experience free from most ads.

  9. Measure It
  10. Gives you a ruler to measure distances and sizes of on-screen items for your web development needs.

  11. Colorzilla
  12. Another web developer extension that provides you with an “eye dropper” feature to select colours on the screen like in image editing programs like The Gimp, so you can easily find out the colour code and values for colours you see on the web.

  13. DownThemAll!
  14. A downloader tool to accelerate, pause and resume downloads. I use it mainly for large files and for easily downloading a bunch of files from a certain page. You can customize the download command with regular expressions to get what you need with a single click.

  15. Download Statusbar
  16. I’m not a big fan of the Downloads window, so this download statusbar is perfect to track your downloads progress without having additonal windows open. It adds progress bars on top of your status bar at the bottom of your window, and you can easily open your downloads with a click.

  17. Stop-or-Reload button
  18. I like clean interfaces. So a button for stop and another button for reload, take too much space for tasks that can’t be used or done on a given situation. This extension combines the two buttons in one, so when a page is loading, the button displays as a “stop” button. When the page is already loaded, there’s no need for the stop button, since there’s nothing to stop, so it transforms in the “reload” button so you can reload the page. It frees space and removes clutter from the Firefox main toolbar.

  19. PDF Download
  20. I tend to download lots of PDF files I find around the net, and clicking on a link only to find out I have to wait for the PDF viewer to start is a waste of time. PDF downloader detects pdf links and prompts me what I would like to do whenever I request a page, either saving it for later read or viewing it immediately on the browser. A time saver indeed.

These are the extensions I must immediately have when installing Firefox on any of my computers. I have many more, but this ones are the most important ones.

What extensions you can’t live without?

By Gabriel Saldaña

Gabriel Saldaña is a web developer, photographer and free software advocate. Connect with him on and Twitter

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