LostInTechnology

Five Firefox Add-ons to Improve Your Browsing Experience

Posted on 29. May, 2009 by srikanth in Internet Tools, Software

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In a world of inter-connectivity and interaction with web-delivered content, the role of a browser is much more than just displaying a web page.  Switching from IE to Firefox was the first step in making my browsing experience better.

The second was installing a few great add-ons to really increase the usefulness of Firefox.  Here we present five Firefox add-ons that improve your browsing experience.

PDF Download

PDF Download is a cross platform, cross browser add-on that lets you save, share, print or archive any PDF file from the Internet. It allows you to choose what to do when you click on a PDF file link. You have the option of downloading, viewing in an external viewer, viewing it as HTML or just letting Firefox handle it in the normal method. It also avoids PDF plug-in related browser crashes.

You can also save or email the page you are viewing as a PDF. A simple icon in the toolbar allows you to change the default settings of the add-on, such as the default action, default PDF viewer, and more!

PDF Download Add-on

Smarter Fox

Smarter Fox, initially called, Smarter Wikipedia, adds a “related articles” box in Wikipedia. It helps navigate around an article by adding relevant articles in the box. It also searches Wikipedia for the highlighted term by showing a pop-up bubble, which when clicked redirects to the Wikipedia topic related to the highlighted text.

You can also search Google for the highlighted term by selecting from the context menu.

Download Smarter Fox

gTranslate

gTranslate allows you to translate any text in a page by the simple action of selection and right-click. The translated text appears in the context menu under, Translate text menu. It uses the Google translation module to translate the text and includes many popular languages.

You can also replace the typed text with the translated text from the same context menu. This feature is useful while using text boxes in Google, Facebook or other such pages.

Download gTranslate

AdblockPlus

Adblock, the most famous add-on since its release, is fairly simple add-on and blocks almost any kind of annoying banner. You can create your own adblocking rules for sites which are not listed in the Easylist repository, by using the context menu.

It also has the option of filter exception. A list of blockable items in a site can be opened by cliking the navigation bar icon. The selection of any item from this list flashes the border of that object to let you know which object is selected.

The best feature is the support of wildcard characters to block banners from similar addresses or domains. It also allows you to block specific type of elements like script, image, background, object, document and more.

With this add-on, ads were (truly) yesterday!

Download AdblockPlus

Video DownloadHelper

This add-on helps users to download media such as video, audio and picture from any site. It is most popularly used with Youtube. The feature recognizes embedded media and animates the navigation bar icon and lists the media that can be downloaded.

Apart from downloading, you can also download and convert a video into the required format.

Download Video DownloadHelper

By Srikanth AD,  see his Blog Firefox Ninjas or follow him on Twitter for more information.

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Tags: adblock plus, addon, extensions, Firefox, gTranslate, pdf download, Smarter Fox, Video DownloadHelper