Five must have Mozilla Firefox extensions

Almost everyone today has used or heard of Mozilla Firefox, The Mozilla foundation’s award winning open source web browser. By default, Mozilla Firefox is just a basic web browser. However, Firefox is a very powerful web browser where the ability to customise and extend the browser into whatever the user wants makes it very popular. In this post, we will look at five Firefox extensions that I consider must haves for internet users that will greatly extend Firefox and give users a more enjoyable experience.

1. NoScript – The NoScript extension is the de facto security extension for Firefox. NoScript blocks JavaScript/plug-ins on un-trusted pages. Pages and domains can be flagged as trusted/white-listed or blacklisted. This extension protects Firefox users from malicious code and exploits in pages that rely on JavaScript or Plug-ins to deliver their payload. The NoScript extension also protects Firefox users from XSS cross-site scripting attacks, and enforces application security boundaries. The NoScript extension also blocks annoying Flash based advertisements, and other annoying junk. It can also be configured to block or allow certain elements on web pages. NoScript is the number one security extension for Firefox, and makes my number one on this list.

2. Video DownloadHelper – The number two extension on my list is Video DownloadHelper. This extension allows Firefox users to download Adobe Flash/Embedded videos directly from sites like YouTube, Dailymotion, Google Video etc. This means you can actually download the embedded videos directly to your computer and can save them for later viewing. With this extension,  you won’t have to rely on visiting the same web page over and over to watch that wonderful YouTube video you enjoy so much.

3. Greasemonkey – The third extension on my list for Firefox is the Greasemonkey extension. Greasemonkey allows you to use scripts to modify how web pages work. For example, it can be used to bypass the countdown timer on many free file-sharing web sites. It comes with many scripts by default, and you can write your own or add more if you choose. Greaemonkey allows the user to have much more control over how web sites operate, and allows the user to add functionality to make things easier. Greasemoney is a great extension to have because of its unlimited potential to add so much useful fuctionality to web pages.

4. Webmail Notifier – The fourth extension on my list is the Webmail Notifier extension. This extension adds a mail notifier to your Firefox Status bar. It will periodically check your Web Mail accounts, and notify you of any unread messages in those accounts. It supports Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Microsoft Hotmail, and others. It also supports Facebook, Orkut, and others via scripts. This Add-On will save users time that don’t want to set up a email client like Thunderbird. Since it will keep track of your email accounts, you won’t have to be constantly checking them manually. a time saver indeed.

5. Adblock Plus- The fifth must have firefox extension on my list is Adblock Plus. The Adblock Plus extension allows Firefox users to block annoying advertisements. It can also download and use ad-block lists from a variety of different sources. In essence, by using this add-on it is possible you will never see a single advertisement while browsing the web. I think this is nice, and if paired with the NoScript extension, those annoying Flash based ads will be blocked as well which means you get a nice fluid web browsing experience free of annoying advertisements.

There are more then just five Firefox extensions, however, I felt these five are a good base to start from. I do want to issue one word of caution. Do not install extensions or add-ons from questionable sources. Ideally, extensions and add-ons should only be downloaded and installed from Mozilla Firefox’s community maintained extension web site to be sure that nothing malicious is installed on your system. Feel free to visit Firefox’s extension page and browse around the sheer number of add-ons available, and experiment i am sure there is an extension there that will fit your needs. Happy browsing.