Many people said Firefox is not as good as Opera and/or Maxthon because it has less functions; they claimed, goodies like mouse gesture and super drag-and-go should be included by default in Firefox, instead of relying third party developers to deliver them through the form of extension.
IMO, Firefox is on the right track. I'd anytime prefer a web browser that is originally simple but can be shaped/tweaked/configured to the way I like. In contrast, I don't need a bloated browser that has tons of functions but end up utilizing maybe only 30% of them.
However, not all extensions are perfectly developed. Some of them come with spyware/malware, some of them aren't actually practical to use, while some of them are just too bloated for minimalists. Thus, I'm here to share all my favorite extensions that are proven to be trustworthy and I personally find them useful:
Adblock Plus
Are you one of the web surfer who's annoyed with web banners and irritating flash animation? Adblock Plus is very effecient extension that allows you to block unwanted content to make your web surfing experience better. Comes with Filterset.G, it has actually blocked 95% of the ads without having you to do anything. For the rest of the 5%, just block it manually! (for example, Right Click and click "Adblock Background Image" in the menu)
All-in-one gestures
It allows you to send specific commands to the browser by combining mouse movements. It's one of my favorite extension in Firefox, and its convenience cannot be just described in words! I can even add new gesture whenever it's needed!
BBCodeXtra
As a LYN regular, I use BBCode very often to format my posts. With this extension, it can be done easily without having to type all the tedious [] tags.
DownloadThemAll
You can call it an extension, but I'd call it a fully functional download manager that's integrated into my Firefox. With DownloadThemAll, I don't have to install external download manager and install Flashgot to get them integrated together. Other than that, I'm also very impressed with its download speed.
ImageShack Toolbar
Imageshack is one of the most popular free image hosting sites. If you upload images to the web frequently, this is a useful extension as you can just do it with two clicks instead of going to the homepage. However, because it's a toolbar - it does actually occupy some space of the browser.
Tab Mix Plus
A very good extension that greatly enhances Firefox Tab-browsing capabilities. For example, you can force all the links to be opened in existing tab instead of a new tab, you can choose whether or not to have 'X' button in every tab, just to name a few. On top of that, it also comes with a built-in session manager.
Video Downloader
I'm a frequent visitor of YouTube and Google Video. With the pathetic speed of my "broadband", it's almost impossible to view the videos smoothly, moreover, some of the good videos are meant to be collected
Video Downloader is a simple add-on that adds a small icon on the status bar, allowing you to click on it and get the direct download link of the video.Of course, the above are just the extensions I'm using. I'm sure they are more FF extensions that you might like. Just visit the add-on homepage to discover it by yourself!
Stylish ( https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2108/ )
Stylish allows easy management of user styles. User styles empower your browsing experience by letting you fix ugly sites, customize the look of your browser or mail client, or just have fun. With an online repository at userstyles.org, you don't even need to know how to write styles yourself; just a couple clicks and the chosen style is applied. Stylish is to CSS what Greasemonkey is to JavaScript, and unlike other methods of using user styles, most styles take effect immediately.
User guide: http://userstyles.org/stylish/help
Bug reports and feature requests: http://userstyles.org/stylish/discussion
***Having both JSView and Stylish can cause crashes in Firefox 2.0.
Remove It Permanently ( https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/521/ )
Permanently hide content from web pages using the Context Menu. Simply, click and "Remove it Permanently". Now includes previewing of items before removal, support for IFrame as well as lots of advanced features to make it easy for anyone to remove annoying content from web pages.
Colorful Tabs
More previews... ( https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1368/ )
New version 1.6 already available at http://varun21.googlepages.com/main.html
Version 1.5 takes off the close btn from the tab. This has been fixed in v1.6.
The most beautiful yet the simplest add-on that makes a strong colorful appeal. Colors every tab in a different color and makes them easy to distinguish while beautifying the overall appearance of the interface. An essential.
Flashblock ( https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/433/ )
Never be annoyed by a Flash animation again! Blocks Flash so it won't get in your way, but if you want to see it, just click on it.
Menu Editor ( https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/710/ )
More previews...
Customize application menus:
Rearrange or remove menuitems from the main context menu (right-click menu) and main menubar (File Edit View etc.)
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