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PC Pro's top 15 Firefox extensions

Posted on 13 Aug 2008 at 12:09

One of Firefox's chief attractions is that it can be tailored to your needs with a vast library of third-party Extensions. Here, the PC Pro team pick their 15 favourite Firefox add-ons. All are compatible with Firefox 3 - simply enter the URL and click the Add to Firefox button. Unwanted Extensions can be disabled or uninstalled by clicking Tools | Add-ons.

1. PicLens
www.pcpro.co.uk/links/167piclens
This jaw-dropping plug-in converts pages of images - be they from Facebook, Flickr or Google Image search - into a smooth-scrolling 3D wall on even the most modest hardware. The real show-stealer is YouTube videos: enter a search term on the site, click the PicLens button and you'll see hundreds of video previews that start playing almost the instant you zoom in. Simply astounding.

2. ScrapBook
www.pcpro.co.uk/links/167scrapbook
ScrapBook saves copies of web pages to your hard drive, allowing you to highlight text, make annotations and even remove annoying intrusions such as banner ads. And because the files are saved locally, you don't need a net connection to read them later.

3. IE Tab
www.pcpro.co.uk/links/167ietab
Despite the fact that Firefox now has almost 20% of the browser market (higher than that among PC Pro readers), there are still sites that refuse to work properly with anything but Internet Explorer. IE Tab allows you to render a misbehaving site in IE from within a Firefox window. Simple and effective.

4. Foxmarks
www.pcpro.co.uk/links/167foxmarks
The wonderfully autonomous Foxmarks synchronises your bookmarks across all your computers, ensuring that earmarked sites aren't stuck at the office while you're working from home, and vice versa. You can even get access to your bookmarks from a strange PC by logging in at Foxmarks.com. It includes support for the new bookmark tags, saving you from the tedium of re-entering them on each PC.

5. Clippings
www.pcpro.co.uk/links/167clippings
An essential utility for anyone who regularly blogs, uses form-based email systems such as Gmail, and online document editors. Clippings allows you to organise segments of text or code you use repeatedly, such as email signatures, and access them with a simple right-click. You can also assign clippings to shortcut keys.

6. Sage-Too
www.pcpro.co.uk/links/167sage
One for all the control freaks out there, Sage-Too is an RSS and Atom feed reader with a difference. In its vanilla form it doesn't look like much, but dig deeper and you'll find you can format everything, from headings to body copy, using your own personal CSS stylesheets. Plus it integrates neatly with Firefox's own Bookmarks tools.

7. Gmail Manager
www.pcpro.co.uk/links/167gmail
Don't bother adding another resource-hogging app to the system tray to keep on top of your Gmail. Gmail Manager keeps a discrete eye on your Google webmail inbox(es) from the bottom right-hand corner of the browser window. Drag your cursor over the account name and a pop-up box appears with a small preview of each unread message, allowing you to decide whether or not it's worth opening in full - and one click's all that's required to go straight to the inbox.

8. iMacros for Firefox
www.pcpro.co.uk/links/167imacros
iMacros is an effective way of replacing browser tasks with a single click. Checking visitor stats on a Typepad blog, for example, normally involves typing in the service's URL, entering your login and password, selecting your blog and finally clicking the stats button: simply record the process once with iMacros and next time it will automatically unfold before your eyes.