Mozilla’s Firefox 3, giving you a chance to download the latest browser and dress up its totally clean slate with your choice of extensions, toolbars and themes.
One of Firefox’s most unique and powerful assets is its ability to install third-party add-ons. When Mozilla vice president of engineering Mike Schroepfer visited us in May, he addressed the critical balance between a fast and light browser and a slow but feature-rich one by claiming Firefox 3’s extension system enabled his team to take a hands-off approach. In other words, the company invites users to decide how to enhance the browser themselves, and by how much.
DIY functionality proves to be a boon for internet development, and it has caused many to race to keep up with the latest version of the popular browser before launch. Some trendsetting browser features have originated from Mozilla’s development community. Chances are, features available in other browsers, and many more that aren’t, are available by download.
But how many features do you add? Which ones are ready? Here are our picks, chosen by “coolness,” popularity and readiness for Firefox 3.
User Interface
AdBlock Plus
Firefox was the first browser to restrict those annoying advertising pop-ups. AdBlock Plus took the feature a step further by removing all ads from any web page. It effectively cleans up the web page, displaying only its bare content. You’ll be surprised at how pleasant surfing the internet can be without being bombarded by ads.
DownThemAll
DownThemAll saves you from trying to painstakingly download all files from a page of links or images. It will download all links or images in a single click. Better yet, it claims to speed up downloads by up to 400 percent.
Toolbars
Del.icio.us Toolbar
Del.icio.us’ toolbar adds buttons enabling you to search, browse, tag and add to your online bookmarks. Import your Firefox bookmarks to the site and access them anywhere through the Del.icio.us website.
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon adapts quickly to the latest widgets, add-ons and toolbars. Its Firefox 3-enabled toolbar is no exception. The toolbar lets you randomly surf entertaining videos and web pages and rate them.
Google and Yahoo Toolbars
If you use Google products as much as we do, Google’s toolbar could prove pretty handy. The search bar is less useful for its search box (Google search is Awesome Bar’s default search engine) than for the ability to set file defaults to automatically open in Gmail and Google Docs. It also has some online bookmark functionality similar to, but not as “killer” as, Del.icio.us. Privacy pundits might wag a finger — if you don’t opt out of “usage statistics,” Google anonymously tracks your traffic and not so anonymously tracks your search behavior if you don’t opt out online. Yahoo! Toolbar is an obvious alternative if Yahoo is your favorite search engine and e-mail provider.
Themes
The Mozilla crew heard users saying that Firefox 2 didn’t look and feel like it was an application native to their operating systems. The team digested that feedback and made separate skins to match the distinct styles of Linux, Mac OS, Windows XP and Vista operating systems. The skins appear as the default user interfaces in their respective versions. If your OS style doesn’t fit your personality, there are a couple alternative themes for Firefox 3:
- Aero Fox 3.0.1 A popular jet-black theme with glossy buttons and menus
- NASA Night Launch is a black and silver theme set against the backdrop of space shuttle photos
Hackity-Hack
Chickenfoot and Greasemonkey
Chickenfoot and Greasemonkey are extremely easy tools for devastating site code with your own hacks. They’re both pretty useful, even if you don’t know how to code. Prewritten scripts can be downloaded and run for convenience. Lifehacker’s Better Gmail 2 and Better GReader are both good collections of popular Greasemonkey scripts.
Firebug
Firebug is a life saver for web developers. It allows you under-the-hood access to the browser’s DOM, XHTML, JavaScript and CSS using debugging tools straight from the browser’s sidebar.
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