Seven Tools for Making Firefox Jump Through Hoops

By  |  Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 11:31 pm

Steve Bass's TechBiteClear the decks, I’m now an avid Firefox user. It took me a long time to give up my treasured Maxthon, an Internet Explorer shell that I truly loved. When Maxthon was first released, it had features years before they were added to IE8–tabs, multi-threading, groups, add-ons — things the kids at Microsoft should have copied eons ago, but didn’t.

When I first contemplated switching, my Firefox fanatic friends insisted it could do everything Maxthon did, only better. Firefox has a multitude of free add-ons, cool extras to whittle down your browser feature wish list. The add-ons let me modify Firefox to almost replicate Maxthon. (No matter what anyone says, Maxthon outshines Firefox in managing favorites, and saving sites and favorites in groups is wonderfully effortless.) The added bennie is that Firefox offers better security than Internet Explorer.

If you’re an Internet Explorer user, I encourage you to look at Firefox. It’s free; the transition for most people isn’t a big deal (see Switching is Easy); and you don’t have to give up IE to play around with it. (But I bet you will…)

Here are a few of the cooler Firefox add-ons I’m using. Give them a whirl and let me know what you think.

1. AutoPager does the clicking for you and automatically scrolls through those annoying multiple-page sites–way convenient.

2. If you’re an advanced user with lots of extensions, you’ll definitely want to install MR Tech Toolkit; it’s the tool for installing and managing extensions, add-ons and themes.

3. I use the Extended Cookie Manager to set cookie permissions. It’s great for when I want to allow a cookie to be set for a session — or for eternity.

The Extended Cookie Manager lets you change cookie permissions quickly and easily.

4. Grab Easy DragToGo and you’ll be able to drag and drop links from a tab and open them in new tabs–just like Maxthon does.

5. Like living on the Firefox edge? I have just the tool for you. Tweak Network gives you a way to fiddle with the number of simultaneous downloads from a site, and more important, speed up page loads using hidden network settings.

6. How many times have you had to wait 60 seconds when downloading a file from RapidShare or MegaUpload file sharing sites? There’s no more waiting if you install SkipScreen.

7. Tab Mix Plus is an essential add-on that lets you control every conceivable tab function.

Tab Mix Plus lets you tweak tab functions.

[This post is excerpted from Steve’s TechBite newsletter. If you liked it, head here to sign up–it’s delivered on Wednesdays to your inbox, and it’s free.]

 
15 Comments


Read more: ,

12 Comments For This Post

  1. venkat Says:
    July 21st, 2009 at 11:54 pm

    I tried tab mix plus once I don’t know about the remaining thanks for sharing.

  2. xdr Says:
    July 22nd, 2009 at 3:21 am

    SkipScreen saved my life! Love it! thanks

  3. no Says:
    July 22nd, 2009 at 4:08 am

    One word of warning if you’re new to Firefox. We have memory problems. About 50% of people say “what memory problems?!” and the other 50% say “my browser easily consumes more than a gig of memory”. It happens even if you don’t have any extensions installed and the only way to fix it is to restart your browser quite often. This was a problem in 2.0, 3.0, and now in 3.5.

    If you install extensions, it will make the problem even worse for the most part.

    I really wish they would fix it, because it’s the only thing I dislike about my daily browsing experience. But at least they admitted it was a problem awhile back. For a good year or more they just kept insisting “it’s a back-button-history-FEATURE!”.

    (And skip the “you’re doing something wrong then” stuff, because this occurs on multiple platforms and multiple systems over multiple years and multiple versions of Firefox and I have just a little bit of experience with the origins of Firefox since I worked in QA at Netscape in the late 90s.)

    On Firefox 3.5.1 on OSX 10.5.7 I’m running at 1.43gb of memory right now after about 6hrs of CPU time. Time for a restart. (I have 16gb of RAM but if you don’t restart fairly often the huge memory usage causes websites to load slowly, videos to become choppy, and the browser use to become almost impossible).

  4. no Says:
    July 22nd, 2009 at 4:09 am

    Also, don’t forget TabGroup if you would like to have a tree-structured tab experience on the side of your browser. Other plugins will also show screenshots instead of tabs, but that takes up more space of course.

  5. Marc Says:
    July 22nd, 2009 at 6:02 am

    The only reason I use Firefox is AdBlock Plus!

  6. joy Says:
    July 22nd, 2009 at 9:01 am

    you forgot about SimilarWeb , my favorite Addon 🙂

  7. joy Says:
    July 22nd, 2009 at 9:02 am

    there is also SimilarWeb , my favorite Addon 🙂

  8. Anonymous 167 Says:
    July 23rd, 2009 at 2:08 am

    No love for NoScript, I see. It’s the only reason I still use Firefox, that and TMP.

  9. Tom Says:
    July 23rd, 2009 at 6:39 am

    I made the switch to firefox back when it was 1.0. I forget how I found out about it (possible Cnet) but I have never regreted the switch. On my older (900 mz) comp I had the memory issue a lot. with my new comp (dual 2GHz) I only notice a memory problem once in a great while – usually when I have multiple(not 2-3 but across the whole screen) tabs open overnight. But even when this issue is predominate it is still a better experience than IE. And like harry says, you don’t need to get rid of IE to try Firefox.

  10. Mayank Says:
    July 31st, 2009 at 11:57 am

    nice ones..
    try smoothwheel, its sweeeeeeeeeeett

  11. Dana Says:
    August 4th, 2009 at 12:44 am

    There’s one add-on that needs to be added to the list. It’s called Billeo. Scores high on security as it is VeriSign secured and TRUSTe certified. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12715

  12. Short Story Says:
    August 14th, 2009 at 12:51 pm

    Firefox is the best and fastest browser but overcrowded with plugins slow down surfing to speed like old dial up.

3 Trackbacks For This Post

  1. Web Media Daily – July 22, 2009 Says:
    July 22nd, 2009 at 4:22 am

    […] Seven Tools for Making Firefox Jump Through Hoops…       Technologizer […]

  2. Links 23/07/2009: KDE 4.3 Milestone; New Linux RC | Boycott Novell Says:
    July 23rd, 2009 at 5:40 pm

    […] Seven Tools for Making Firefox Jump Through Hoops Clear the decks, I’m now an avid Firefox user. It took me a long time to give up my treasured Maxthon, an Internet Explorer shell that I truly loved. When Maxthon was first released, it had features years before they were added to IE8–tabs, multi-threading, groups, add-ons — things the kids at Microsoft should have copied eons ago, but didn’t. […]

  3. Ten More Super-Duper Firefox Add-Ons | Technologizer Says:
    July 30th, 2009 at 4:58 pm

    […] all:&nbspReviews I love it when you write and pass along handy ideas. After I wrote about my favorite Firefox enhancers,  I received hundreds of messages (okay, 50, but who’s counting) sharing other Firefox […]