Over the past couple years I’ve become a big fan of Mozilla Firefox. The main reason: You can customize with Add-ons it to fit your needs.
Here are my top 10 Firefox Add-ons
1. Alexa Sparky — Sparky is a free plugin built by Alexa and gives you useful information about the sites you visit without interrupting your Web browsing.
- Learn about Website Traffic Trend information and be able to see if a site getting more popular, or less popular. It provides detailed traffic information including Reach and Rank.
- You also can use it to compare a site’s traffic to other sites on the Web.
- Surf more efficiently with Related Links for each page — If I like this site, are there others that I might want to visit?
- As you surf around you are helping to make the Web a better place for everybody by contributing to the traffic information that Alexa provides.
2. Facebook Toolbar (Once you’re logged into Facebook you’ll have easy access to your Facebook profile, pages, friends, inbox and more.)
- Search Facebook from anywhere — The Search Box allows you to easily search Facebook no matter where you are.
- Get Notified — Icons on the toolbar tell you how many new pokes, friend requests, and messages you have. Connect with Friends
- Click the icon to view your Facebook friends in the sidebar. You can sort your friends by name or status and easily interact with them and their profiles.
- Share Content —The share button lets you share the page that you are currently browsing by sending it to friends or posting it to your profile.
3. LinkedIn Companion for Firefox (add your new contacts quickly and efficiently) You gain you immediate access to your LinkedIn network as you browse and read email.
- See LinkedIn profiles for anyone sending you Web email
- Search your LinkedIn network from any web site
- Bookmark profiles and searches for easy access
- Find a job by seeing who in your network can connect you to hiring managers while you browse major on line job websites
4. Delicious Bookmarks (Bookmark and share all your favorite sites, articles, videos and more) Integrate your browser with Delicious (http://delicious.com), the leading social bookmarking service on the Web
- Search and browse your Delicious bookmarks
- Keep up to date on your Network and Links For You
- Access your bookmarks from any computer at any time
- Keep your bookmarks organized using tags
- Share your bookmarks with friends or anyone on the Web
- Import your existing Firefox bookmarks
5. StumbleUpon (Bookmark and review your favorite sites and get recommendations of other similar sites) With StumbleUpon you can also connect with friends and share your discoveries, meet people that have similar interests, and check out what other people are discovering.
6. SearchStatus (displays Google and Alexa info) Display the Google PageRank, Alexa rank, Compete ranking and SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank anywhere in your browser, along with fast keyword density analyser, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, Alexa info and other SEO tools.
7. Web Developer (see what cannot be seen) This recommendation is particularly true if you want to learn more about how Web sites are constructed. The Web Developer toolbar is not only useful for Web developers, but also for average users. It provides quick access to non-visible information behind a Web page like, CSS, Tables, Cookies, Forms, and much more.
I highly recommend using the Web developer toolbar in conjunction with Firebug. These two Add-ons helped me learn about Web site structure and CSS much faster than I would have by reading about it in books or watching training videos.
8. Firebug (great to use with the Web developer toolbar) Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.
9. Twitterbar (Tweet directly from the URL address field in your browser) TwitterBar allows you to post to Twitter from Firefox’s address bar. A small Twitter icon sits to the right of your address bar; clicking on it will post your tweet, and you can hover your mouse over it to see how many characters you have left. Clicking the Twitter icon when visiting a webpage will send a tweet containing the URL of the webpage you are currently on.
10. ScribeFire Blog Editor (Edit your blogs) ScribeFire is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog. You can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, upload images, and post to multiple blogs.
Here are the blogging services compatible with ScribeFire:
- WordPress.com (http://www.wordpress.com)
- LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com)
- Xanga (http://www.xanga.com/)
- Windows Live Spaces (http://spaces.msn.com)
- Performancing (http://www.performancing.com)
- Jeeran (http://www.jeeran.com)
- Tumblr (http://www.tumblr.com/)
- MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/)
- b2Evolution (http://b2evolution.net)
- Splinder (http://www.splinder.com/)
There are thousands of other great Add-ons to use with Firefox and more being added every week. Getting started with a few of these Add-ons will make your Internet browsing a more robust and useful experience.
