I highly recommend one of the plugins on this list, "Google/Yandex search link fix". It rewrites Google's tracking URLs in search results on the fly.
This to me is offers both convenience and privacy benefits - (a) I can right-click and copy actual URLs from a Google search instead of gibberish, and (b) Google does not get to know which links I'm clicking on from its search results.
I was wondering when someone would make a comment like this. I don't have a problem with Google tracking me, but I do have a problem with not being able to right click and copy links from a search results page.
I made a Firefox add-on recently [1], and it was horrible. The API is underdocumented and obtuse, and the dev enviornment is annoying to get set up. On top of that, AMO review times are on the scale of months. Writing the equivalent Chrome extension [2] was a considerably better experience.
Hugely different experience here. I wrote one extension[1] on a Sunday a couple of weeks ago. I had never touched Firefox development or extension development before, so I was a bit overwhelmed when trying to go through the documentation. After I got Jetpack[2] running, though, development was a breeze. Good docs, reasonable develop/reload cycle.
I only requested the preliminary review at AMO so far, and that took about 24h.
Very different experience here while developing a Firefox add-on [1] with the Add-on SDK [2]: I think that the API is nice and well documented, the development environment - based on virtualenv - is very easy to set up (I work under Ubuntu), and AMO review times are in the order of weeks - not months.
Did you write a similiar extension for Chrome? My opinions may be made skewed by my experience with the Chrome extension. Chrome extension development is sublime, the APIs are great and well-documented, and the enviornment couldn't be better.
I switched back to Firefox from Chrome last week and I'm loving it! It may be the SSD I recently upgraded from a traditional hard drive, but it feels really really snappy. Unfortunately, I don't find use for any of the addons mentioned here or in their top lists. I just don't need 'em. I only have Adblock Plus for most websites which I disable on websites I use regularly.
A lot of the addons in this list just seem like bloatware to me, trying to create a problem that allows their fix to exist.
Regarding #1: Even without the plugin you can drag a highlighted URL to a new tab and presto it opens.
Regarding Video Resumer: I watch a lot of longer video lectures online, and being able to resume where I left off is a great feature. Why the dudes at Google haven't added this themselves is beyond me--it's how TiVo worked since 1999. Maybe a patent issue?
It's an on-the-page look up and translation extension, I believe it was the first of it's kind when I made it and didn't use any JS framework but pure JS. I am kind of proud of it.
Still have users regularly asking me to implement it for Chrome :)
If you use Firefox in a corporate environment that requires you to change an LDAP password every couple months, the "Mass Password Reset" add-on lets you change multiple saved passwords at the same time:
" ... status bar was removed in Firefox 4.0. ... Status-4-Evar aims to bring back (some of) the old status bar items, give you more control over the built-in Firefox features, and provide new alternatives."
There are so many Chrome options for the same thing. Hoverzoom was the original, but became commercial-fied and was forked to create Hover Free. The Hover Free devs were recently impressed with a couple other guys' great work on a competing add-on, Imagus, and abandoned their own work to help on Imagus. I have to say, Imagus is pretty awesome -- it even lets you page through (arrow buttons) imgur galleries inside the popup.
The functionality is pretty basic for now, but we're slowly rolling out much cooler features like deep links, multiple screens and Greplin like cloud search.
I've been enjoying Ghostery. Nicer / cleaner than most privacy plugins, and it speeds up pages noticeably (same as adblock, mostly through killing iframed social things).
Unfortunately, not all of those are appropriate for everyday users. HTTPS Everywhere breaks several sites, possibly due to misconfiguration, and can trigger switches to a server's self-signed HTTPS certificate which, in Firefox, makes it look like the site got hacked. Noscript is really only for techies and breaks all kinds of sites since there's not much reason to build or test for browsers without JavaScript anymore.
On Firefox, if Disconnect is the first blocking extension you install, then Disconnect will work even if you subsequently install other blocking extensions. On Chrome, Safari, and Opera, it's the opposite: in order for Disconnect to work on these browsers, it must be the most recent blocking extension installed.
Do you know what effect this has on extensions like Adblock Plus and NoScript? If I install Disconnect first, are those addons going to do less for me?
This is the first I've heard about installation order affecting how well the addons work. I'd like to make sure I've got the right info before informing others.
If you install Disconnect first on Firefox then install other filtering add-ons (ABP et al.), you should get faster overall performance. The reason is Disconnect filters faster, so requests that Disconnect blocks won't have to be processed by your other add-ons. All other requests will still be processed by them.
All of these, plus Self-Destructing Cookies (featured on Mozilla's list).
I love plugins like this that just quietly get on with their job without bothering me with too much noise, allow me to easily override their functioning when I need to and just work smart.
Hackernews OP here: I am so glad I shared this on hacker news. I think this is great because you guys put time into listing things you use and provide food feedback, way better than some of the review feedback one would find in an addon.
No mention of GreaseMonkey? I'd put it at number one, simply because it gives you a way to write extensions that run on every browser with a *Monkey compatibility layer. Half the stuff I use is just userscripts.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/findbar-tweak... replicates the scrollbar find result highlights you see in Chrome and IDEA
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mozilla-archi... saves pages to .mht or .maff format, with a reasonable pre-filled filename. Also reads .mht files.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/autopager/ loads all pages of paginated content in the current tab. This also works great with Mozilla Archive Format for saving entire forum threads/articles/user comments.