What is your Favorite Firefox Extension

[Hauteden]

I'm trying to get some new FF Exts. . . . So I figure I would see what everyone's #1 favorite is.

Mine is hands down "Adblock." Basically this does what you would think it would do, blocks ads. And rather then have in a Blacklist/Whitelist format you chose the ads you do not wish to view. This has improved my surfing experience immensely. Even on sites such as CNN, Yahoo, Hotmail. I never realized how many Ads come from the same companies.


Hauteden

[Brian]

Forecastfox is cool. It's way easier than going all the way outside to see what the weather is.
I like mouse gestures alot, but I mostly only seem to use the back and forward mouse click option.

[Hauteden]

ForcastFox was one of the first Extensions I installed. I work in a bunker and thus no windows :( to see outside.
I was toying with the idea of installing mouse gestures. I liked the concept when used in the PC game "Black & White."

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The Googlebar is, of course, absolutely necessary.

Mouse Gestures is cool once you get used to it.

I also like Tabbrowser Preferences and Auto Copy.

~~ Paul

[IIRichard]

Adblock.

[Theodore Kurita]

AdBlock, since it is hands down the best ad blocking utility I've used in a while.

[heath]

I know you asked for favorite (as in one) but my top faves in order are

[list=1]
adblock - described above
all in one gestures - once you get used to it you can't live without it (up-right to go a tab to the right, down right to close a tab, and lots more - you can add a gesture for "increment a digit in url" for eg. Now what could that be useful for? :p )
ieview - for the odd page that won't display properly in firefox, just right click and choose "open in IE"
conquery - right click context for sending highlighted text to any search engine in your search bar - my most used being google, wikipedia, my work phonebook, IMDB and google maps
flashgot - integrates the firefox download management into "free download manager" a free open source dl manager that I think is the bee's (or several other DL managers but DLM is my one of choice)
greasemonkey - takes scripts that fix up web sites or adds funtionality to them!! For eg you can add a "delete" button to gmail
foxytunes - control almost any music player from the status bar at the bottom of your browser (much like windows media player docks on the toolbar but for many more players)
[/list=1]

[RayG]

My favorite is Adblock (with Filterset.G), closely followed by Bookmark Backup.

RayG

[arthwollipot]

All-in-one gestures. Paste and Go. Reload Every. Adblock.

[Psi Baba]

I use Adblock, Auto Copy, and Forecast Fox. The only thing about Adblock is I haven't figured how to unblock an ad that you've inadvertantly blocked.

[heath]

Originally posted by Psi Baba
I use Adblock, Auto Copy, and Forecast Fox. The only thing about Adblock is I haven't figured how to unblock an ad that you've inadvertantly blocked.

I can't imagine an ad I'd want to unblock :p

But just for you, click "tools->adblock->preferences" (or press control+shift+p) and delete the line in your block list that you want to stop blocking.

[Donks]

AdBlock. I also have installed FlashGot, BugMeNot, Disable Targets and FavIcon Picker.

[Rob Lister]

Originally posted by Donks
AdBlock. I also have installed FlashGot, BugMeNot, Disable Targets and FavIcon Picker.

Two things:

1) What is up with firefox and JREF? There's a bug somewhere that limits the number of times I can refresh a JREF forum page. I know that sometimes it is the JREF server but more often it is my browser. I can wait twenty minutes for a page to reload and nothing. Close the browser and reconnect to JREF and everything is fine and dandy. This is troublesome mostly because my normal surf routine in this forum is to use the "View New Posts" link from the main forum menu. By closing the active instance of my browser I return to only a page or two of new posts as opposed to the several I had not yet reviewed.

2) Bugmenot does not seem to work very well for me. I must be doing something wrong. All of the email/username/password auto-entries are rejected repeatedly. I haven't had a single success yet in 10+ different sites. A 'wallet' extention would suit me but nobody's developed one yet.

[heath]

Originally posted by Rob Lister
Two things:


2) Bugmenot does not seem to work very well for me. I must be doing something wrong. All of the email/username/password auto-entries are rejected repeatedly. I haven't had a single success yet in 10+ different sites. A 'wallet' extention would suit me but nobody's developed one yet.

Try going to the firefox etensions page and searching for "password" there are several password managers

[Donks]

Originally posted by Rob Lister
Two things:

1) What is up with firefox and JREF? There's a bug somewhere that limits the number of times I can refresh a JREF forum page. I know that sometimes it is the JREF server but more often it is my browser. I can wait twenty minutes for a page to reload and nothing. Close the browser and reconnect to JREF and everything is fine and dandy. This is troublesome mostly because my normal surf routine in this forum is to use the "View New Posts" link from the main forum menu. By closing the active instance of my browser I return to only a page or two of new posts as opposed to the several I had not yet reviewed.
I used to have some issues with Firefox and JREF, but they prety much dissapeared once I configured Firefox properly for broadband. See here (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1299854/posts).

2) Bugmenot does not seem to work very well for me. I must be doing something wrong. All of the email/username/password auto-entries are rejected repeatedly. I haven't had a single success yet in 10+ different sites. A 'wallet' extention would suit me but nobody's developed one yet.
Strange. I've yet to encounter a site that didn't accept the BugMeNot ID. Do you have the latest version of BugMeNot?

[Rob Lister]

Donks,

Thanks. I just did the fix and I'll let you know in a few days if it is faster or not. It does appear faster but the server load could be less.

Heath,

Thanks. I'll look into that. I'll let you know if it fixes the problem.

[prewitt81]

My favorite is StumbleUpon - it lets you channel-surf the internet based on what you tell it you're interested in. Pretty cool.

Very close is the GreaseMonkey/Platypus combo.

[Hauteden]

Getting a lot of good ideas, seem mouse gestures is a hit. I was unaware that people had created filter sets for Adblock. I just made my own, sometimes I even surf sites just to block the ads. :)

[moopet]

After adblock, it's got to be CustomizeGoogle. You can remove google text ads from everything, add in automatic filtering, etc.
For example, I hate looking up technical questions and finding the first ten results are from experts-exchange.com, where I can only see the *question* without signing up. So I use CustomizeGoogle to remove all results matching *.experts-exchange.com/*

[Psi Baba]

Originally posted by heath
I can't imagine an ad I'd want to unblock :p

But just for you, click "tools->adblock->preferences" (or press control+shift+p) and delete the line in your block list that you want to stop blocking.
Thanks for the tip. I kept clicking on the Adblock indicator in the status bar at the bottom right corner, but that only brings up a list of blockable items for the current page.
I probably should have put "ad" in quotes in my question. Some website graphics can get labeled as ads but aren't necessarily ads, and if you block it by being overzealous, you might want to get it back. No, a real ad I'm not likely to want to unblock either.

[arthwollipot]

I hardly ever use Adblock (although I've installed it on the recommendation of several of my friends). For me, ads on websites are ignorable. Sure, I get a little annoyed at popups, but they're intrusive, and Firefox usually blocks them anyway.

Put it this way. When you drive down the highway, do you deface the billboard ads you see? Do you rip ads out of newspapers and magazines? Do you turn your TV off when an ad comes on? If not, then why are internet ads any different?

It's less effort to ignore an ad than it is to block it. Usually I only block the ones that come with sound.

Frog, anyone? (http://www.somethingwrong.co.uk/crazy_frog_baseball/)

[moopet]

Originally posted by arthwollipot

Put it this way. When you drive down the highway, do you deface the billboard ads you see? Do you rip ads out of newspapers and magazines? Do you turn your TV off when an ad comes on? If not, then why are internet ads any different?


Let me extend that somewhat:
You're driving from London to Glasgow. Every time you change lanes you have to drive a hundred yards over a road surface covered with seemingly random moving colours and text.

If my car windscreen was an LCD, with a heads-up-display of speed, time, etc, and I could get a free plugin for your car computer which removed ads from my view of the world, I'd do it.

Silly comparison.

Do I prefer watching movies on a TV channel with or without adverts? Let's see, in order of preference: BBC (no ads), ITV (ads approx every 15 minutes, some news), Satellite (ads approx every 8 minutes), US TV (ads approx every 17 seconds).

Do I rip ads out of newspapers? Well... the medium is completely different, isn't it? That's one point of this:
The medium is different, people want a service with no ads, and it's possible to remove them with little or no hassle.

With adblock, for instance, once I've given it a good ruleset (or borrowed someone else's) I don't have to worry about 99% of the web. My girlfriend's PC has an 800x600 monitor, and she uses Yahoo! mail and MSN. Using IE, she has to scroll to see if she has new mail, past the adverts. Using firefox with adblock, she doesn't.

It's a no-brainer. Really :)

[Soapy Sam]

Speaking of no-brainers.

Hello World?

What are these extensions of which you enlightened ones speak and where does one seek 'em?

Next- I tried the link Donks gave and reset my network settings. I now find JREF is slower than before. It doesn't seem to have affected anything else, so I'll assume it's JREF at fault and leave it for a while.

[_Q_]

Originally posted by Soapy Sam
What are these extensions of which you enlightened ones speak and where does one seek 'em?
I'm just an end user, and I don't know the nuts and bolts of how they work. I view them as "widgets and gadgets" that add particular features to Firefox.

Where to get them? Try http://extensionroom.mozdev.org

[Fungrim]

Here goes:

Sage
Web developer
Bookmarks synchronizer
Adblock
Forecastfox
ShowIP
Disable targets for downloads
ReloadEvery
Single window
Tab clicking options
LGet

[Rob Lister]

Originally posted by arthwollipot
It's less effort to ignore an ad than it is to block it. Usually I only block the ones that come with sound.

You're not using adblock effectively. Once you block an adserver you don't see ads from that adserver ever again.

each adserver serves thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of different web pages.

Well, well worth the effort.

The problem is that adblock plugins are catching on and so the market will adapt and the adservers will catch on as well and change their stratagy to make it harder for the user to get a fix on source of the ad. I'm already seeing this (ads that are served by URL's composed completely of random charactors).

[Rob Lister]

Originally posted by Rob Lister
Donks,

Thanks. I just did the fix and I'll let you know in a few days if it is faster or not. It does appear faster but the server load could be less.

Heath,

Thanks. I'll look into that. I'll let you know if it fixes the problem.

Donks. Your fix appears to have greatly increased the speed of firefox (which was already faster than IE) and mostly fixed the problem I have with JREF. I think the rest of the problem is on their side but I'm still not sure.

Heath. No joy.

[Moose]

Originally posted by Rob Lister
The problem is that adblock plugins are catching on and so the market will adapt and the adservers will catch on as well and change their stratagy to make it harder for the user to get a fix on source of the ad. I'm already seeing this (ads that are served by URL's composed completely of random charactors).

Aggressive bottom-feeders aren't that much of a hassle to block, actually, if you have a decent firewall and are willing to get your hands a little dirty.

Open a console window. Type "ping blahblah.com" and note the IP address.

If you're using ZoneAlarm, add that IP to the "Forbidden Zone" (I think ZA calls it), or better yet, add the entire IP's range (if the IP is 1.2.3.4, a good range to block is 1.2.3.0 - 1.2.3.255). Other firewalls (good ones, anyway) are likely to offer you the capability of blocking specific external networks by range.

If a site is buying up a large number of random-character domains, they're likely to have a whole C-class so you can't conveniently block them with a single IP. The firewall will simply block their whole network. The browser will simply note the ad is inaccessible and work around it. Problem solved.

[Wudang]

A big hole has been found in greasemonkey.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/20/firefox_greasemonkey/

[Donks]

Originally posted by Rob Lister
Donks. Your fix appears to have greatly increased the speed of firefox (which was already faster than IE) and mostly fixed the problem I have with JREF. I think the rest of the problem is on their side but I'm still not sure.
Glad to hear. Worked for you, didn't work so well for Soapy Sam. Oh well, 1 for 2.

[alfaniner]

Some of these extensions sound interesting. But as a new user of Firefox, what are the dangers of installing something malicious? Granted it's probably far less than anything with IE.