So I jumped on the bandwagon and switched over to Firefox 3.0 when it came out a week or two ago, and was pleasantly surprised after some forced addon (used to be called extension) updates that everything worked brilliantly, including my favorite plugin, Firebug. I meant to write this post containing the addons I use and recommend a long time ago (once again, jumping on the bandwagon as everyone else and their dog that has a blog has done this topic too...), but now is as good as ever, especially since there are some updates for Firefox’s new version.

• Adblock plus:
  • Block unwanted ads, images, and other multimedia.
  • Notes: Had to upgrade to this from just “Adblock”.
• Adblock Filterset.G Updater:
  • A good set of ads to block for Adblock.
  • Notes: This doesn’t seem to be updated much anymore, and never checked to see if it worked with Adblock plus.
• AI Roboform Toolbar for Firefox:
  • This is a software suite that always you to store passwords and personal information in encrypted (against AES) container files against a master password, so it’s pretty darn secure. It interfaces well with both IE and Firefox, and really helps with the filling out of personal info on those long tedious credit card forms and such.
  • Notes: I just wish it worked better outside of web browsers in the Windows environment... maybe one day I’ll make something for that, it would be fun.
• BugMeNot:
  • Bypass web registration by checking the bugmenot.com database for free user-provided accounts.
• Cache View:
  • Allows you to go to a cache for the page you are currently on from one of the many caching services like Google Cache, Coral Cache, and archive.org’s Wayback Machine.
  • Notes: I modified this to allow you to open all cache sites at once and to work for Firefox 3... maybe one of these days I’ll release the additions.
• Download Statusbar:
  • “View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar”
• Firebug:
  • Required for [web] programmers, and still very useful for [web] developers. Some main features include:
    • JavaScript console for debug output and real-time JavaScript injection
    • JavaScript debugging
    • Realtime HTML DOM view
    • Realtime editing of DOM object information and positioning
    • DOM object CSS styles and where they came from
    • Downloaded files with their acquisition time
  • Notes: This is by far my favorite Firefox extension.
• FireFTP:
  • Fully featured FTP manager.
  • Notes: You’ll never need to find a component FTP manager again once you’ve got this great Firefox integrated one.
• Greasemonkey:
  • Insertion of JavaScript scripts on specified web pages.
• Html Validator:
  • Realtime HTML validation of viewed web pages without having to go through w3c.org (web standards committee).
• IE Tab:
  • “Embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox”
  • Notes: Since IE is sometimes a necessity when people refuse to conform to standards; and for developers to make sure things look right in the (unfortunately) most used web browser.
• keyconfig [functions for] [Original?]:
  • (Re)bind keyboard shortcuts in Firefox.
  • Notes: I heavily rely on this since I’m a bit of a shortcut nut.
• Locationbar²:
  • Adds options to the location bar like:
    • Highlighting the domain
    • Go to parent directories of your current URL by clicking
    • Hide the protocol (ex: “http://”).
  • Notes: I originally used this because it fixed a major problem that plagued Firefox and still plagues IE in which the address bars show escaped URLs (like “Firefox%20Extensions” instead of “Firefox Extensions”), so foreign URLs, which used lots of non-ASCII characters were next to impossible to read. I submitted this to Mozilla a ways back, and fortunately it was fixed for Firefox 3. This, IMO, is one of the most important fixes for Firefox 3, and it wasn’t even really advertised.
• OpenDownload:
  • “Allows you to open ANY file (executables, etc.) from the internet into the default program assigned by your operating system, without needing to save it first.”
  • Notes: This is not marked as compatible with Firefox 3, but works fine. Firefox has added an “applications” tab to its options dialog that kind of takes care of this, but this still does at least allow direct opening of all file extensions without also mapping them in Firefox.
• Tab Mix Plus:
  • “Tab browsing with an added boost.”
  • Notes: This is becoming less needed with each Firefox version upgrade, but it still has a lot of options in it that make it worthwhile.
• User Agent Switcher:
  • Switch the “User Agent” of Firefox to fool pages into thinking you are using a different web browser or crawler.
  • Notes: There are many uses for this, one being to see how pages change for web crawlers.
• View Cookies:
  • “View cookies of the current web page.”
  • Notes: Firefox 3 has added a feature to make this no longer needed, but I still much prefer the way this extension handles cookie viewing.
• Web Developer:
  • A plethora of very useful web developer tools.

• Answers:
  • Alt+Click on any word or term for quick info from answers.com.
• ChatZilla:
  • An IRC (it’s a kind of chat room protocol) interface through Firefox.
  • Notes: I’m sure I’d use this a lot more... if I actually used IRC.
• DownThemAll! & FlashGot:
  • Ability to download lots of content and/or links from web pages.
• Morning Coffee:
  • “Keep track of daily routine websites and opens them in tabs.” You can set websites to load by individual day, weekday/weekend, or every day.
  • Notes: No longer really needed since RSS has become so commonplace.
• Page Update Checker:
  • “Automatically checks to see if a web page has changed.”
  • Notes: No longer really needed since RSS has become so commonplace.
• Referrer History:
  • Viewing how you browsed to pages through a referrer tree.
  • Notes: This is not compatible with Firefox 3, hasn’t been updated for ages, and is extremely slow as it uses a brute force method to build the referrer tree. I might see if I can find a better version of something like this (or make it) if the need ever arises again.
• Torbutton:
  • Toggle completely anonymous web browsing at the push of a button.
  • Notes: I found using the tor network way too slow, so I have since abandoned it for faster methods, which I will post about some day. Tor still remains an excellent “full-proof” way to stay anonymous on the internet though.
• VideoDownloader:
  • Download videos from many popular sites.
  • Notes: I prefer just using Firebug and a download manager now...

• Enhanced History Manager:
  • Lots of neat history managing features...
  • Notes: This addon hasn’t been updated in a long time... I’m not sure if it works with Firefox 3. To be honest, I don’t even remember what it does completely.
• Image Zoom:
  • “Adds zoom functionality for images...”
  • Notes: Firefox 3 now has full page zoom, as opposed to just text, so this is no longer really needed.

And as a Bonus, MozBackup is a simple utility for creating backups of Mozilla products’ profiles.