Downloaders Anonymous: 14 More Firefox Essentials

When I posted my 15 Essential Firefox Add-ons I was hoping to get some feedback from our enthusiastic readers, and I wasn't disappointed. You came up with a bunch of great add-ons that I neglected, and a few I didn't even know about. Here are some highlights:

Eliminate annoyances:
Reader Alex Dante recommends NoScript, which furnishes "site-specific control over Java, JavaScript & Flash." In the same vein, our own Ryan Carter recommends Flashblock, which "blocks flash-based content from cluttering your browser, and allows per-site white-listing so you can easily exempt yourself from having to click the button every time." Perfect companions to my pick, AdBlock Plus.

Improve navigation:
Reader Jared and our own Jason Clarke both recommended add-ons that give you insight into the type of link you're about to click on. Link Alert and Smart-Cursor change your cursor depending on what kind of link you're hovering over--JavaScript, new window, PDF, email, and so on. Link Alert looks to have a few more features.

Both Andrew and Rivetto put in votes for gesture-based browsing with All-in-One Gestures and Mouse Gestures, both of which allow you to perform browser tasks with specific mouse motions.

Readers The Tick and Phil point us to Linkification and Fetch Text URL, respectively, which help you cope with those pesky text URLs that aren't linked. Linkification just turns them into links, whereas Fetch Text URL adds options to your right-click menu to open the URL in a new tab or window.

Downloading:
Both Haseeb A and Bryant were concerned with easily downloading videos from YouTube and other video sites. Haseeb recommendeds Ook? Video Ook! which lives in Firefox's statusbar and has features like DownThemAll! integrations, and Bryant points us to Video Downloader.

For general-purpose downloading, Ryan, The Tick, and Phil all recommended Download Statusbar, which puts information about currently-downloading files right at your fingertips.

Improve tabbed browsing:
As wonderful as Firefox's tabbed browsing is, there's always room for improvement. Gary Z suggests Colorful Tabs, which color-codes your tabs to make them easy to distinguish from one another (and makes your tab bar looks like a bowl of lucky charms). Jared recommends Tab History, which lets you take the current tab's history with you when you open a link in a new tab.

Finally, readers Chad and The Tick gave props to perennial favorite Tab Mix Plus, which furnishes control over dozens of previously hidden or unavailable tabbed browsing features.

Thanks to Alex, Andrew, Bryant, Chad, Gary, Haseeb, Jared, Jason, Phil, Rivetto, Ryan, and The Tick for their great suggestions, as well as everyone else who commented the first time around! If you still haven't told us about your favorite Firefox add-on yet, there's still plenty of room in the comments.

Tags: browsertips, freeware, opensource