Keywords speed up searching

Keywords are a power feature that allow quick access to frequently used search sites. To use a keyword you first assign an operation to a keyword and then the next time you type in the keyword in the URL bar the operation is performed. For example I assigned 'g' to invoke a google search and whenever I type 'g sometext' in the URL bar and then hit the enter key Firefox loads up the google.com site with the search results for 'sometext'.

To add a keyword simply right-click over the search text box and then select 'Add a Keyword for this Search...'.

View source with your favorite editor

To change the viewer to another editor visit the about:config page and change the following values (set 'view_source.editor.path' to the path to your editor, mine is gvim).

Disable selecting all when clicking in the URL bar

In windows clicking on the URL bar in Firefox selects the entire URL. You can make Firefox act like it does under Linux where clicking on the URL bar merely places a cursor where you click with this change. Visit the about:config page and change the following value.

Darken Google visited links

The following Stylish extension user style will darken the visited links for Google, making it easier to differentiate (at least for me). Note that I only added support for the google.ca and google.com domains, depending on your country you may want to add more.

Tunnel DNS requests over a SOCKS proxy

If you are using a SOCKS proxy make sure that DNS requests are tunneled using the proxy, otherwise your DNS lookups will occur over the direct network connection. FoxyProxy supports this as an option, yet if you are using the built-in Firefox proxy on its own then you need to set it yourself. To enable tunneled DNS requests over the proxy visit the about:config page and search for the 'network.proxy.socks_remote_dns' config parameter, then double-click to change the value to true.

Blocking ads and other annoyances

Get the uBlock Origin extension and block just about anything from a web page, including those ever-bothersome animated ads.

Real-time weather

Get international weather forecasts from AccuWeather.com, and display it in any toolbar or statusbar with the Forecastfox extension.

Masquerading for fun and profit

The User Agent Switcher extension allows you to alter the user agent string sent to web sites. It is quite useful to get around sites that only properly display for certain unnamed crappy browsers.

The perfect tab extension

The Tab Mix Plus extension adds powerful tab features such as opening closed tabs and a tab session manager that can even restore the state of your tabs after a crash. Make sure to increase the 'max number of closed tabs to remember' from the default of 5 (under the 'tab features' preferences).

Web page saving made easy

The ScrapBook extension helps you to save web pages and easily manage collections. Key features are lightness, speed, accuracy and multi-language support.

Resurrect Pages

The Resurrect Pages extension searches through five page cache/mirrors to 'resurrect' sites that are temporarily down.

Greasemonkey

The Greasemonkey extension allows you to add arbitrary javascript scripts to any page. userscripts.org is a great source for scripts.

Stylish

The Stylish extension allows you to customize the look of a website by modifying the style as it is displayed in Firefox.

NoScript Security Suite

The NoScript Security Suite extension permits you to only allow JavaScript, Java and other executable content to run only from sites you trust.

Flashblock

The Flashblock extension takes a pessimistic approach to dealing with Macromedia Flash content on a webpage and blocks ALL Flash content from loading. It then leaves placeholders on the webpage that allow you to click to download and then view the Flash content.

Flagfox

The Flagfox extension displays a country flag depicting the location of the current website's server and provides quick access to detailed location and webserver information.

DownThemAll!

The DownThemAll! extension lets you download all the links or images contained in a webpage and much more.

FlashGot Mass Downloader

The FlashGot Mass Downloader extension allows you to download all the links, movies and audio clips of a page at the maximum speed with a single click, using the most popular, lightweight and reliable external download managers.

BetterPrivacy

The BetterPrivacy extension is a Super Cookie Safeguard which protects from usually not deletable LSOs (Local Shared Objects). It blocks longterm tracking on Google, YouTube Ebay and many other domains.

ReloadEvery

The ReloadEvery can be used to automatically reload a page.

More extensions!

Visit the Firefox add-ons site to find more useful extensions!

If you are having problems with an extension see the Mozillazine problematic extensions page for a list of known issues with some Firefox extensions. If you do have a problem with an extension you can run firefox in safe mode (which temporarily disables all extensions) so you can disable or remove it.

Favorite themes

Earth from space.