I made the painful switch about a month ago from IE6 to FF 2.0.0.14 (Main reason being SEN)
I really didn't get what the big deal was until I started digging into the wonderful world of add-ons(Tabs are also nice, but I miss alt+tab ).

So far I've snatched up:
Adblock Plus - Yay! Dail-up is bearable again! This is really the best thing ever.

DownloadHelper - Yay! I don't have to reDL youtube videos everytime I want to see them again!

DownLoadThemAll! - Just dled this. I really should have gotten this sooner, but it took me a while to see that Fx kinda sucks dling stuff on it's own, I mean it doesn't even ask me where I want to put stuff!

Gmail Space - Just got this too. Very easy to use and works. I can sleep better at night knowing that my CrazyIdeas.doc is still out there somwhere even if I lose my lappy to terrorists.

FoxyProxy & Greasemonkey - Don't really know what either of these do, but everyone else had them so I was like "LOL INSTALL!" They just sit in my status bar, glaring at me with their monkey/fox eyes. I am always sure to close my laptop if my back must be turned to them.

These are the only things I saw that I thought could only add to my web experience. Anything I'm missing that you guys who have been using Fx much longer could not live w/o?


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Actually, I didn't really start this topic just to talk about add-ons. Really, I have a few gripes with Fx:

First, when I disable an add-on in the add-on manager, the add-on doesn't seem to really give a fuck. I'd rather it did. No serious problems have resulted from this so far.


IE6 with it's multiple browsers open cluttering the task bar probably ate up a lot more system resources, but it was worth it being able to alt-tab across to any of my viewing sites. Sure I could do the same thing and just not use tabs, but why even bother with firefox when I'm not even going to use it's tabbing thing? I just wish I could alt-tab through the tabs.
The help contents says the short-cut key to do just that is ctrl+left/right. But's a fucking liar and it's not. I'm someone out there must know.... Ah! It's cntrl + tab! HAZZAH! Fuck you If you think I'm just going to delete that whole paragraph I put my precious time into writing. I hope you didn't waste too much of your precious time reading it.


OK! The #1 thing I really wanted to discuss here about Firefox, that no 'add-on' is going to fix. WHY THE HELL DOESN'T IT STORE FREQUENTED PAGE IMAGES?! As fucked up as SEN was on IE6 atleast it had the common sense to store the banner at the top to my local cache and then just access from their everytime after the first, instead of re-downloading the who fucking thing every single time. It's like this with every website! Hey Mozilla, it's called the Temporary Internet folder, learn to use it. Honestly, if it weren't for adblock plus saving me from dling half the stuff from sites, everything else good about Fx wouldn't be worth it. And the thing is Fx touts itself as the ultimate customizable browser, but when it's equivalent to IE6's 'Internet Options' gives me less to choose from and less to configure, I call BS. There really should be something in there that let's me adjust how I want to deal with temporary internet files other than cookies, if IE can do it Fx should too.

Uh, it does cache images. I don't know what you're talking about.

Anyways, 3 extensions I use that you do not have listed that I think are really useful are:

Noscript - Probably the only one you'll find useful out of the 3. It blocks all scripting (javascript, flash, etc) from websites unless you whitelist them (either for the session or forever). This raises the security majorly as anyone who sends you joke links, links with potential malware, and so on, can't touch you. It also removes a lot of the more annoying javascript things that may be on a website. It's the ultimate security for your browser.

Fireftp - I use this to upload new things to SEN/Latova. It's just an FTP client built into the browser. Its really useful if you do website development and need to upload changes.

Web Developer Toolbar - Another website development tool. Allows you to many, many options. I use it to see what my site looks like in other resolutions, check for w3 compliance, different little quirks, and so on. Very useful tool.

PicLens is cool, just not on mac. They created a bug in the mac code that allows for a memory leak, but on windows it works really well. Coolest addon ever.

And it could be that images are getting deleted when you quit. Check the privacy settings.

I also really like McAfee site advisor, when you google something it has a little image beside each link, telling you if it is safe or not, and why.

I also have FasterFox, apparently it optimizes firefox, but I'm not sure if it is actually doing anything.

I also use User Agent Switcher for those sites that are picky and tell you you need to use a specific browser. It also has some hacking potential. At one point using it you could disguise Fx as a Wii's opera browser, and thus look in to what was coming out on the virtual console in coming weeks (unannounced titles, it was pretty cool).

You can tell it to ask you where to put stuff, it's in Tools -> Options -> Main Tab -> Downloads
But yeah, DownThemAll pretty much improves Firefox's download experience.

FoxyProxy is well, a proxy?
Greasemonkey is for scripting and stuff. You can get scripts here LOL, AWESUM
I got a cool script which bypasses the Megaupload country slot limit You should be careful though. It's rumored that some scripts disguise as useful ones but instead steals information somewhat like a tracking cookie.

QUEER claims that it blocks Rickrolls, but I haven't checked it out.

Oh and welcome to the world of Firefox. Enjoy your stay. Because you won't be switching anymore.

Realplayer 11 had this really nice plugin that installs on firefox and you can get videos from like anywhere

Realplayer also sucks. Why? Because its so da-- BUFFERING....

( "Fx" is, by the way, the official abbreviation )

I don't have much experience with IE...
but you also just said...
If IE doesn't support these--not to mention the option to completely rewrite the browser, in just about any way you like, provided you know how--then I don't think that there's really much argument about Fx's superior personalizational capabilities. >_>

Ya, "no 'add-on is going to fix." that because you... should just stop clearing your cache, or fix whatever's wrong with your computer/Fx installation? ;P

Eww. I just tried that, and it's just as bad as alt+tabbing around. D:
In case you didn't know, ctrl+numrow will automatically go to some tab, based on how they're ordered. 9 will always skip to the farthest-right opened one, also.


Aaanyways, as for plug-ins... I've got a lot.
Some of the ones I use more often, however -- "Screen a grab", "StumbleUpon," "Text Shadow," "Router Status," "PicLens," "MeasureIt," "Long Titles," "Internote," "DownThemAll!," "Downloads in Tab," "Calculator," and "Adblock Plus."

I wrote a Greasemonkey rick roll remover a while back

Also, I have a bit too many extensions

I have a greasemonkey script that gives me realtime stats on my yahoo fantasy baseball team without having to buy the stupid livestats thing they offer.

Besides making sure that option for automatically clearing private data is disabled, you could try increasing the size of your browser cache. It is on the network tab of the advanced options. I think the default is 50 MB (also the default on IE7), where IE6 and lower have a default that is much higher.

IE Tab - I used to have to use this if I wanted any sort of image loading from a lot of sites. I don't anymore because I found out the pictures weren't loading because the site didn't support the multi-threading tweak I made, so they'd just not load. I could get rid of this now, but it's nice to keep in case a site requires IE (I've seen them...)

Long Tiles - Used mainly for the XKCD alt text, it doesn't cut short long alt texts, so I can see them all.

PicLens - There's a topic here on this one... Great tool.

I need this.

EDIT: And now I has. Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention.