My essential Firefox add-ons

Posted on: Tuesday 22 March 2011 /
Categories: Nerd Stuff

Firefox 4 has been released today. I would love to upgrade, but I’m afraid I will lose some of my add-ons, because they’re not compatible yet. Time for a little research. And I’ll review my favorite add-ons while I’m at it. A disclaimer upfront: if my review says: ‘compatible with Firefox 4’, it says so on addons.mozilla.org. I didn’t test it, yet.

  1. LastPass. The most important add-on that I have. It is the interface to LastPass.com, the password manager that I have been using for the last year or so. It has plugins for Firefox, Chrome and MSIE, so I have my passwords at hand, no matter what browser I use. I wouldn’t know what to do without it. Compatible with Firefox 4.
  2. Yoono. A sidebar that connects to your social networks. For me, it is a nice and efficient Twitter client, which shows my timeline as it updates in any browser window. It supports Facebook, MySpace, Twitter (multiple accounts), Flickr, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare and more. Best distinguishing feature: groups. Compatible with Firefox 4.
  3. Firebug. No explanation necessary, right? The DOM at your fingertips. Should work with FF4.
  4. NoScript. Blocks Javascript on untrusted websites. There is no excuse for not using it. Compatible with FF4.
  5. Web Developer. Adds a toolbar to Firefox or Chrome with many essential tools for web developers. Version 1.1.9 is compatible with Firefox 4.
  6. ShowIP. A small, but incredibly handy tool, that displays the IP address(es) of the site you are visiting in the toolbar. Great if you are testing sites on different servers and want to see where you ended up. Also good to see if you’re connected over IPv6, for example, and do whois lookups straight from the toolbar. Compatible with FF4.
  7. Shorten URL. Shortens the URL of the current website, using one of over 100 services for URL shortening (bit.ly, is.gd, tinyurl.com, etc.). Great if you use Twitter directly from your browser, or with Yoono. According to its homepage, it doesn’t work with FF4 yet. Comments on addons.mozilla.org suggest that this extension has been abandoned, and people seem to use Cutyfox nowadays. I’ll check that one out!
  8. Server Spy: indicates what webserver is serving the current website. Works with FF4.

So… it seems I should be fine! Maybe I’ll give Firefox 4 a go one of these days. Well, there’s one extension that I didn’t mention, which is the Garmin Communicator plugin. Owners of Garmin devices like myself need this to update the maps on the device. The plugin reportedly works with FF versions up to 3.6. However, my Garmin Zumo is severely broken at the moment, so I can do without their crappy plugin for now 😉

Great. Now all I have to do, is find the time!