There are hundreds of Firefox Add-Ons out there! But which ones do you need (or want)? One great way to find out is to read recommendations from others. In that spirit, here are 7 of my favorites:
1. DownThemAll
Have you ever gone to one of those sites where the author has very helpfully divided a large download into multiple files? But then you have to right-click and save each one individually? DownThemAll will let you choose from a single menu to download all files from a page.
Settings enable you to choose which file types will be automatically selected and, of course, you can uncheck anything you don’t want to download.
2. InFormEnter
InFormEnter makes it faster to fill out online registration forms. You choose which bits of information you want it to save. Then, when you’re filling out a form, just click on the handy button beside the form field, and up pops a list of all your information bits. Click one and it fills right in.
(This has been helpful for me to enter annoyingly “random” sets of numbers, such as the library card number I have to enter every time I log into our library account. I wouldn’t recommend saving credit card numbers, though.)
3. Lazarus: Form Recovery
Oh, my goodness, this one is a lifesaver! You’ll want to periodically empty its database, because it can fill up fast, but this one saves the information you enter into online forms so you can retrieve it later. If you’re thinking of names and addresses, that probably doesn’t sound very helpful, but this ismuch more than that!
We’ve all tried to send email through sites’ forms, and had them “error out” on us. Lazarus: Form Recovery will allow you to fill that email back in without retyping it. (I have literally saved entire blog posts with this add-on!) When you need to fill the form back in, right-click on the form field, select “Recover Form,” and choose which text you need to re-enter.
4. RSS Icon
In previous versions of Firefox, a small RSS icon appeared at the right-hand side of the address bar when the current page had an available RSS feed. For some unfathomable reason, the developers removed this during the update to FF4. (Yes, it apparently was intentional.) Some of us now aren’t even sure how to subscribe to a feed in Firefox! We also missed the ability to see at a glance whether there even is a feed for the current page. The RSS Icon add-on simply restores this functionality.
5. Power Twitter
Power Twitter just “makes Twitter better.” (their words 🙂 ) This adds functionality to the regular Twitter page, when you’re there.
6. Social Fixer
What Power Twitter does for Twitter, Social Fixer does for Facebook (except on steroids). It has lots of options, and will even let you rearrange some things to work more like older, less annoying versions of Facebook. It also has an easy “off” button you can use, in the event that Social Fixer is lousing something up. (It hasn’t ever caused me a problem, though.)
7. Search Add-Ons
Okay, strictly speaking, this is more than one add-on. But one of my favorite Firefox features is the ability to customize the search box, so I can search sites I frequently use, with just a click or two. I have installed add-ons to search IMDB, Bible Gateway, Swagbucks, Wayback Machine, World Catalog, Allrecipes (and the single-ingredient search), Amazon, Google Images.
This post is being submitted to Works for Me Wednesday.
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