One of the great things about Firefox is the ability to add extensions. Themes are cool and I love tabbed browsing and the stability and consistency at which it works is awesome as well. The extensions are what really sets it apart from Internet Explorer. I’ve tried Opera, but not long enough to know if it supports plug-ins/extensions in this manner. Here are the extensions I always install.
1. Download manager tweak – this one I like to tweak so that my downloads show up in the side bar.
2. PDF Download – I like PDF files, but I don’t like PDF files when they try and load inside the browser. This makes it easy to download the PDF or go ahead and view it in the browser.
3. Adblock – Easily block ads and images from whole domains.
4. IEView – There are still websites that just don’t work right in any other browser but IE with this you can easily right click and open the current page in IE.
5. Stumble Upon – Basically it’s channel surfing for the internet. You can only find so much stuff through Google or other search engines. With this you give it topics and it randomly gives you sites others have recommended.
6. Opanda IExif – With this you can right click images and view the Exif data stored in the image. Many images have the exif data totally removed from them, but on those that still have it intact you can get interesting info about the image.
There are tons of extensions out there and you have to be careful about installing some of them. Some have caused Firefox to crash or have long wierd pauses before loading pages. But if you have trouble uninstall the extension and you are back to happy browsing. You can find all of the above extensions and more at
Mozilla Update.