The Mozilla.org Thread, Everything Firefox, Mozilla and Thunderbird related.

[Wolf]

Wolf's Choicest Firefox Extensions:

The lean and quick minimalism of Firefox and its optional extendibility may be what draws a lot of people in over other alternative browsers like Mozilla and Opera, but nonetheless I doubt that many people would claim its default install is anywhere near its proper potential. So though it may be the case that a “must-have” extensions list is of very dubious universality, I still think there is quite a lot of merit in pointing out certain superlative extensions to people who may not have the time to spend an hour trawling through texturizer...

So without further ado here is what I would recommend:

Add Bookmark Here:
http://texturizer.net/firefox/extens...ddbookmarkhere
It may seem trivial but I’ve found that having a current tab ‘bookmarker’ embedded in the actual bookmark drop-down list is much faster and more intuitive than trying to add it through an extra UI popup. This is especially useful if you are like me and have a verbose and heavily nested bookmark structure – just browse to the desired sub-folder and click ‘Add Bookmark Here’ to add the current tab there.

Adblock:
http://texturizer.net/firefox/extensions/#adblock
Essential extension for blocking adverts – be they images, frames, or flash elements. Be sure to check Collapse Blocked Elements in Adblock's preferences to have the best browsing experience.

It is also a good idea import an advanced Adblock filter like those from the Adblock Project or you will end up adding many individual images unnecessarily.
(NB – when you import the text file based filter make sure to delete any blank lines in Adblock's preferences or you will end up blocking all images.)

If you need any more convincing, here's an example of Adblock at work. The following are page renders of the popular gaming news site www.bluesnews.com on Internet Explorer versus Firefox:

Click to view full-sized image!
Hosted by UGBox Image Store


Click to view full-sized image!
Hosted by UGBox Image Store

ChromEdit:
http://texturizer.net/firefox/extensions/#chromedit
This extension allows you to access a neat in-browser editor for userChrome.css, userContent.css, user.js, and prefs.js. It can be brought up via the Tools menu and, if you so choose through its own neat button.

Let’s face it Firefox may be the best browser by a decent margin but it is hardly perfect yet. Until the Mozilla people hit milestone v1.0 I can foresee a need to edit these files for many reasons into the future some of which probably aren't their fault - ie. the vB textbox. This extension just makes that process as painless as possible.

I’ve included a screenshot for the curious:

Click to view full-sized image!
Hosted by UGBox Image Store

Copyimage:
http://texturizer.net/firefox/extensions/#copyimage
This is another seemingly trivial extension which can make life easier if you do any kind of Photoshop or PSP manipulation based off the web images. It's one of the things I noticed pretty quickly after migrating from IE.

Download Manager Tweak:
http://texturizer.net/firefox/extens...admanagertweak
This tweak extension just improves the Firefox download manager and gives you the option to speed up its startup time, display it in a tab and have mini-download alerts amongst other things.

Download With:
http://texturizer.net/firefox/extensions/#downloadwith
THE tool for parsing URLs to any program through a right click menu. I’ve got mine setup so that I can parse links to WackGet, Flashget, Streambox VCR, and Media Player Classic. It couldn’t be easier to set up either – just define a label, point to the .exe and use the argument 'URL' in [].

NeedleSearch:
http://texturizer.net/firefox/extensions/#needlesearch
I’m being deadly serious here - do not accept any substitution search-bars, this one is easily the best. It has about a 98% chance of quickly and easily adding any search field/engine to its toolbar drop-down list. Don’t bother stuffing around with the default search bar, with its clunky plugins and 'GET' limitation - just use this instead. You can have multiple input fields and it doesn’t have any trouble dealing with many complex additional search parameters. If the form is set up correctly it just works. Trust me, I use some rather hardcore database search engines for philosophy, governmental stuff and law journals and NeedleSearch handles them all perfectly. You can even use it as a parsing variable in order to go to a particular web-page via domain/%NeedleSearch%/ .

It's really an essential IMO.

Net-Usage Bar
http://netusage.mozdev.org/installation.html
This one is for the broadband users with the following ISPs: Bigpond, Optus, Netspace, iiNet, Internode or Coditel. Not much to say really, it is a perfect way of having automatic graphical monitoring of your usage stats within Firefox. It tells you everything you need to know.

Sort-Bookmarks:
http://texturizer.net/firefox/extensions/#sortbookmarks
This is a classic illustration of how truncated Firefox is at this point of development. Regardless it is essential if you want to quickly sort a lot of bookmarks.

Tabbrowser Extensions
http://texturizer.net/firefox/extensions/#tbe
This extension is highly recommended for anyone who wants to have a more sophisticated tabbed browsing environment. Includes all the settings you could possibly want about focus, windows versus tabs, on-close session saving, etc you name it.

X:
http://texturizer.net/firefox/extensions/#x
I’ve just recently started using this extension and find it quite good. With a click of the "Paranoia" button you can choose whether you want to clean the history, saved form information, stored passwords, download history, cookies, and cache. Very handy for those who like to keep a clean system or remove traces of sensitive information.

[.evilsync*]

^

Rate, well done.

EDIT:

Anyone else use any other extentions which are very helpful etc?

And is there a base website with a heap of skins etc for firefox/thunderbird?

[Wolf]

A new version of DownloadWith has been released which integrates the hack work done by Paradox to add a better integration of download managers into FireFox. I've got to say that this really improves my Firefox experience...

http://downloadwith.mozdev.org/

[.evilsync*]

Just wondering if theres an option on thunderbird where it wont delete the email from the server?

I'm asking this, so I can view emails through thunderbird, but I want to keep a few emails on the webmail for backup reasons (atm thunderbird deletes the emails from the server, so if I've viewed them first through thunderbird, I cant through webmail later).

[Shinglor]

Originally posted by .evilsync*
Just wondering if theres an option on thunderbird where it wont delete the email from the server?

I'm asking this, so I can view emails through thunderbird, but I want to keep a few emails on the webmail for backup reasons (atm thunderbird deletes the emails from the server, so if I've viewed them first through thunderbird, I cant through webmail later).

Tools, Account Settings, Server Settings.

[Wired_man]

Good work Wolf I already use many of those extensions but I will try some more from that list.

My question is does anybody know of a way to remove items from the context menu (right click pop up menu) in Firefox? I really only use a few of the items and it'd be handy to remove many of them.

[nexx]

Originally posted by .evilsync*


And is there a base website with a heap of skins etc for firefox/thunderbird?

http://texturizer.net/firefox/

Skins/Themes, extensions, tips+tricks, everything you need

[nav]

thankyou for the post wolf. i'm really liking the net-usage extension.

[noogabooga]

anybody know how to resize the URL & search bars? I am using a different theme and the search bar is simply too long, which in turn has shorten the URL bar considerably.

[.evilsync*]

Originally posted by Shinglor
Tools, Account Settings, Server Settings.

What am I suppose to be looking at?

There doesnt seem to be an option there..

[Shinglor]

Originally posted by .evilsync*
What am I suppose to be looking at?

There doesnt seem to be an option there..

"Leave messages on server"

[Wolf]

Originally posted by nav
thankyou for the post wolf. i'm really liking the net-usage extension.

No problem mate. Ever since finding this thread I've become the biggest Firefox fanboy. All my friends, family, partner + her family have been converted. There's only a bazillion other IE users to go.

[syper]

I've been using firefox for about a month now, and I am fairly impressed. However I have had a few times when firefox will crash completely or lag.

When I am downloading a lot of files at once, the "Downloads" window (ctrl+e) gets a lot of lag, and sometimes freezes up firefox all together. This usually happens with 6 or more files going at once. After i hit OK on the download, there is usually about a 5 second lag where i cant do anything but wait for it to start downloading. Then when it crashes after a while, i have to start the downloads all over again, i cannot resume because all that comes up is the cancel button.
The download tool definately needs some fixing up.

Just today firefox froze and started to take up 100% cpu usage when i tried to open a .pdf file (although this could be acrobat readers fault). And when it stops responding, when i re-open it, the icons that where in the bookmarks toolbar thing, have re-set to the normal page type icon.

And finally, scrolling. I had to install a few extensions to get scrolling smooth, and do a few tweaks, but there is stiill some problems with firefox and my Logitech mx500 mouse. Firefox can handle scrolling up with the scroll button that's above the scroll wheel, but it cannot scroll down very well, (with the button below the scrollwheel) - it goes down one line, and then it refuses to scroll any further. This is not a big problem as i can just use the scroll wheel, but these extra buttons would be nice to have, as they worked perfectly well in IE.

Apart from these three things, I think firefox is great!
I no longer get any spy or adware (according to Ad-aware and Spybot) which is amazing. But i hope to see some of the things i mentioned fixed in later versions.

[bioxeed]

Originally posted by syper
When I am downloading a lot of files at once, the "Downloads" window (ctrl+e) gets a lot of lag, and sometimes freezes up firefox all together. This usually happens with 6 or more files going at once. After i hit OK on the download, there is usually about a 5 second lag where i cant do anything but wait for it to start downloading. Then when it crashes after a while, i have to start the downloads all over again, i cannot resume because all that comes up is the cancel button.
The download tool definately needs some fixing up.

I used to get this when I had ALOT of stuff in the dl window (i mean literally hundreds of old d/ls) clearing the dl manager and everything is nice and speedy. I've got it set to auto-clear the dls after i close firefox now so it's all good.

Originally posted by syper
And finally, scrolling. I had to install a few extensions to get scrolling smooth, and do a few tweaks, but there is stiill some problems with firefox and my Logitech mx500 mouse. Firefox can handle scrolling up with the scroll button that's above the scroll wheel, but it cannot scroll down very well, (with the button below the scrollwheel) - it goes down one line, and then it refuses to scroll any further. This is not a big problem as i can just use the scroll wheel, but these extra buttons would be nice to have, as they worked perfectly well in IE.

Sure this isn't just one of the extensions playing up? I only use the tab browsing extensions atm and I can use the 2 extra buttons on my mx700 fine for scrolling up and down.

[.evilsync*]

http://www.yuorbashed.com/thunderbird.JPG