Coding Passion

Firefox is certainly one of the best browsers to browse the Web, but out of factory it is lacking some features I really like, luckily there are a variety of extensions that provide just that functionality. These are the extensions no one should miss:

• AdBlock Plus:Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page? Install Adblock Plus now and get rid of them. After installing it you will be asked which blocklist to download, after which you will see far less advertisements.
• All-in-one-Sidebar: we all hate popups, they are annoying, catch our attention right when we were reading something and did I mention that they are annoying? But what about the browsers own popups, when a download starts, to manage the bookmarks, extensions, themes and the like? We want to see them but we don’t want them to jump in our face. This is what All-in-one sidebar does, it puts all the stuff that would usually require an extra window in the sidebar.
• Download Statusbar: as mentioned above we don’t want download popups all over our desktop, yet we want to see when a download finishes. Download Statusbar puts all the needed information (and even more) into the status bar, where it is visible, but not annoying.
• Firebug: Firebug is probrably the best extension for Web developers ever. It is unobtrusive yet powerfull, with it’s DOM-Inspector, HTML-Inspector, Javascript Console, JavaScript debugger, it even allows you to tweak the CSS on the fly and for those worried about the last millisecond in loading times it has a network monitor that tells you exactly when an element started loading, how long it took and how big it was. I don’t know how I survived without Firebug for so long.
• Fission: actually just a visual gadget that displays the loadstatus in the address bar instead of the statusbar on the bottom. I really love this unobtrusive little piece that was borrowed from Safari. With this little png it looks even more like Safari
• Gmail Manager: I love GMail, this is no secret, but I’m not one of those that keep a browser tab open for it, yet I want to know immediately when new messages have arrived. GMail Manager allows you to monitor multiple accounts in the statusbar, when hovering over the icon it even shows you the subjects and a short extract of the mails. This is an absolute must have for all GMail lovers!
• Google Browser Sync:Using Firefox on different machines I’d really like to have the passwords, bookmarks and sessions across all of my Browsers, and right then Google Browser Sync comes along: Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions.
• Greasemonkey: Sometimes single sites don’t have all the features that would be nice to have and that’s about it what Greasemonkey does. Greasemonkey allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript. Hundreds of scripts, for a wide variety of poular sites, are already available at http://userscripts.org. You can write your own scripts, too. Mark Pilgrim’s definitive Greasemonkey guide, diveintogreasemonkey.org will show you how.
• Secure Login: A login extension similar to Opera’s Wand login. It uses the built-in password manager, but deactivates the prefilling of login forms. Instead, you are now able to login with one click or a keyboard shortcut (ALT+N - changeable via settings). Just add the Secure Login toolbar button to your toolbar, or use the provided statusbar icon.

With these FireFox should get even more usefull, becoming a true allrounder and great productivity tool.
What about you? What are your favorite extensions?