My Firefox add-ons

Firefox has been indispensable to me for quite sometime now. First for its better security compared to Internet Explorer. When my friends’ computers where infected by viruses & trojans, mine was safe. Now it’s because of its add-ons (also called plugins or extensions by some).

My criteria for choosing a Firefox add-ons are :

  • Stable : I’ve got rid of those which makes Firefox shaky
  • Works cross-platform : I regularly work on Mac, Linux and Windows, and I want to have similar add-ons setup on them all
  • As little as possible : I try to install only the ones that’s absolutely useful. More add-ons tend to make Firefox to become unstable. 3.x is much better though than 2.x in this regard. Some have reported to install over 100 add-ons with no ill effect. Anyway, I like to play it safe.

Here’s a list of the add-ons that I regularly use :

  • AdBlock : Ad. Blocked.
  • Firebug : THE Swiss-army add-on for web developers. It merges several add-ons, and then add some more functionalities on top of it, like, say, a Javascript Debugger. If you’re a web developer but hasn’t got this installed, you’re missing a LOT.
  • HttpFox : enable you to mess around with the communications between browser & webserver. I’ve replaced Livehttpheaders with this, it’s much more robust compared to it.
  • Tab Mix Plus : I like to open tens of tabs at the same time and do various advanced tabs operations. This is among the first plugin I put in everytime I do a fresh install of Firefox.
  • ScribeFire : I like to blog (thank you Captain Obvious! 🙂 ), and ScribeFire helps with this
  • AdBlock Filterset : keep AdBlock’s list up to date easily
  • ScreenGrab : Take screenshot of websites. Screengrab was chosen because it works on all platforms, not just Windows. Also for its simplicity.
  • Flashblock : sometimes I connect to Internet via slow links, and I don’t like flash contents hogging it.
  • ColorZilla : quickly find out the colors on a website. Very helpful for web developers
  • ChatZilla : sometimes I need to do a quick chat on IRC, and chatzilla enable me to do so without leaving my browser.
  • SwitchProxy : on slow links, I browse the Internet via compressed SSH tunnels. SwitchProxy makes this less painful.
  • DownThemAll : THE download manager for Firefox, it works on all platforms (not just Windows), and with no external software required.
  • Poster : make custom HTTP requests easily
  • Gspace : use your Gmail account as online disk drive
  • Scrapbook : Very useful, it will save current page into local copy on your hard disk AND help you manage it easily. I’ve benefited from it numerous times already.
  • Kamus Pemeriksa Ejaan Indonesia : as it says 🙂

Here are some which I install on occasions, depending on the needs :

  • Glubble : parental control for Firefox
  • SeoQuake : probably the best SEO-related plugin out there
  • Pencil : Sketching & GUI prototyping
  • Table2Clipboard : converts tables in the web pages into the clipboard’s table format – ready to be pasted into Excel
  • Cooliris (PicLens) : If you use a supported platform (Mac & Windows), try this ! Your flickr photostream will suddenly look VERY gorgeous.

This post also makes it easy for me to install my favorite add-ons whenever I do a fresh install of Firefox.

Anyway, what’s YOUR favorite Firefox plugin? Let us know !

72 thoughts on “My Firefox add-ons

  1. Bicara soal add-ons, dulu saya paling suka pakai Greasemonkey.

    Tapi ini hanya pendapat saya sebagai orang awam lho, Pak. Hehehe… :mrgreen:

    Sebab sebenarnya saya bukan pengguna Firefox (saya merasa Opera lebih robust). Meskipun demikian add-ons adalah keunggulan mutlak Firefox yang tidak bisa dikalahkan oleh browser manapun saat ini.

  2. Foxmark! share (sync) the bookmark across multiple firefox installations (school, home, work, and even multiple os on the same pc)

  3. Supaya lebih aman bisa pakai no script. Saya bahkan tidak menginstall Adblock karena pakai add on ini.

    Untuk membantu menghemat bandwith, ImgLikeOpera menjadi add on yang mendekati wajib hukumnya untuk diinstall.

    Untuk mempercantik penampilan bisa juga menggunakan Stylish.

  4. Kalo saya sih yang musti kudu ada itu adalah Adblock dan Flashblock. Gak nyaman browsing kalo keduanya gak ada.

  5. Buat saya, FlashBlock sudah tergantikan samasekali dengan NoScript, yang tidak hanya memblokir Flash tapi juga mencegah JavaScript “jahat” untuk dieksekusi.

    Selain itu, saya sangat senang dengan FEBE yang memungkinkan saya mem-backup semua extension dengan cepat, sehingga kalau mau install ulang tinggal drag-and-drop semuanya.

    Seperti dikatakan iang, extension FoxMarks juga menjadi extension yang tak bisa dilupakan; bookmark di semua kompie yang saya pakai otomatis ter-sinkron-kan.

    Kemudian, saya juga lebih senang menutup Firefox dan membiarkan Download Manager external untuk men-download, karena ini mengurangi memory leak dari Firefox. Untuk itu, extension FlashGot tidak boleh terlewatkan.

    Karena saya juga me-maintain sebuah filterset untuk AdBlock Plus, maka kewajiban bagi saya meng-install AdBlock Plus: Element Hiding Helper.

    Karena saya sering membuka > 20 tab, maka Colorful Tabs sangat menolong.

    Kemudian, untuk mempermudah copas URL, maka saya menginstall extension CoLT (Copy Link Text). Dan saya lengkapi juga dengan Text Link, sehingga kalau ada URL yang un-click-able, bisa tinggal saya double-click saja.

    Lalu saya juga sering melakukan webcapture untuk ditampilkan sebagai screenshot; untuk ini saya pakai FireShot agar web page yang panjang dapat tercapture dengan mudah.

    Karena ada beberapa situs yang tidak bisa diakses kalau lewat SQUID proxy di kantor, saya jelas wajib install FoxyProxy, yang akan otomatis mengganti proxy sesuai dengan URL.

    Agar tab-bar saya bisa multi-row, bisa di-duplicate, dan bisa auto-refresh, saya juga install TabMixPlus.

    Lalu saya juga install Google Gears untuk mempercepat Gmail. More Tools Menu untuk membersihkan menu “Tools”, jadi tambahan2 dari extension masuk ke menu baru “More Tools”. Redirect Remover agar menghilangkan redirection (beberapa site ‘membungkus’ link external dalam sebuah URL, akibatnya situs tujuan ‘terbungkus’ dalam sebuah Frame iklan). Session Manager untuk manajemen session. SQLite Manager agar saya bisa oprek2 cookie.

    Last but not least, saya install InfoLister untuk membuat daftar lengkap dari extension & plugin, sehingga bisa saling berbagi.

    Terlalu banyak extension? Well, dengan 34 active extension dan 67 tab terbuka, Firefox saya hanya menggunakan RAM 188 MB… lumayan kan? Soalnya tidak ada Flash yang jalan (diblok oleh NoScript) sehingga tidak boros memory.

  6. @Wirawan – ini pengakuan dosa juga: saya kebingungan menggunakan Greasemonkey, hehe. Dan firefox jadi cenderung tidak stabil, sehingga kemudian saya uninstall.
    .
    Then again – memang saya pasang Greasemonkey versi awal / jaman dulu banget sih. Sekarang mungkin kualitasnya sudah jauh lebih bagus lah ya ?

  7. @Willy – betul sekali, Webdeveloper juga adalah plugin yang musti ada bagi para developer.
    .
    Thanks!

  8. @iang – menarik sekali, thanks !
    .
    Kemarin ini saya coba plugin Google untuk sync bookmark di komputer2 yang berbeda, tapi sering sekali bermasalah. Akhirnya saya uninstall.

  9. @Charly – Barusan lihat2 FireShot, memang betul2 bagus ya.
    .
    Sayangnya dia tidak bisa di Mac OS X. Dan sepertinya juga tidak jalan di Linux. Tapi bagi pengguna Windows, FireShot memang kelihatannya sangat oke.

  10. @Pandu – wow, luar biasa lengkap ! 🙂
    .
    Cukup banyak yang baru saya tahu. Banyak yang bisa kita explore nih.
    .
    Terimakasih banyak untuk sharingnya yang sangat menarik ini.

  11. Foxmarks (as said above) is cool as I use multiple pc’s. I also like colorpicker a lot as I can never remeber my website html color codes! I also use the google notebooks add-on.

  12. Thanks for the plug in list. I didn’t realize the firefox had so many. Nice to see. Do you know if these are compliant with 3.0? Or do they have to catch up still?

  13. @Sandy – I’ve been installing Firefox 3 in several machines now and installed most of the plugins listed here every time. No problem.
    It was probematic, but thankfully the authors of the plugins have catched up now.

  14. @Sandy – I’ve been installing Firefox 3 in several machines now and installed most of the plugins listed here every time. No problem.
    It was problematic, but thankfully the authors of the plugins have catched up now.

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  16. Thanks for the plug in list! I was recently working on a html page in dreamweaver and I couldn’t get the right colors and kept having to look for a color chart. This makes things much easier. Thanks!

  17. Nice list of add ons. I hope you can list next time a list of firefox add ons for SEM purposes… anyway, thanks for this list… It will surely make me busy for several hours or days…

  18. Firefox is by far the best browser I have ever used. Shows png images correctly, has barely any security holes, and it’s very fast. I never use IE anymore, one of my first computers I ever used had IE and guess what? It had a ton of viruses!

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  21. harapan saya semoga firefox dapat memaksimalkan lagi keefektifan penggunaan memori bagi mereka yang ramnya agak terbatas.

  22. wow .. aku aja masih sedikit menggunakan add on .. bisa di coba nih .. 😀

  23. Ad block buat apaan? add onsnya gak familiar semua buat saya. hehe. ga tau fungsinya juga. kalo di saya paling add ons, idm sama seo tools hehe..

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