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In this decade's version of "The Browser Wars," the clear winner is Firefox, if for no other reason than the myriad of extensions available to customize and enhance one's browsing experience.
Because I am a bit of an add-ons Junkie, I'm listing my favorites below: the add-ons and extensions I use on a daily basis without which I would not be as happy as I am. Many of these are handy because if the nature of my job (managing and developing web-based content), but many are simply handy and wonderful additions that save me time navigating to other sites, opening other applications, etc.
- Adblock Plus blocks annoying ads and banners on most web sites. You'll also want the You should use this in conjunction with the Adblock Filterset.G Updater, which is a weekly updated definition file of nasty ads. Note that this extension CAN cause some pages to load oddly, and if you are using it and see oddness when a page loads, you can disable it for the domain you are on using the ABP Button it installs on your Firefox Toolbar
- All-in-One-Sidebar adds a configurable toolbar to the right or left of the browser window, giving you more real estate for the various buttons and other doodads you want to add to the browser.
- Autocomplete Manager is an extension that supercharges the address autocomplete component in Firefox.
- BugMeNot lets you use.. ummm... 'recycled' usernames/passwords for those pesky "Free (compulsory) Registration" sites like imdb, washingtonpost, etc.
- Codetch is an inline code editing program that opens in a new browser tab. It is very similar to Dreamweaver, only free.
- ColorfulTabs turns all the Firefox tabs a different color, making them a lot easier to see and differentiate between
- Ctrl Tab Preview pops a thumbnail of each tab you have open as you use Ctrl+Tab (Cmd+Option+Tab on Mac) to cycle through them, sorta Vista style
- DOM Inspector shows you all elements of the web page you are looking at
- Dummy Lipsum is an add on that allows you to generate "lorem ipsum" filler text and specify how much you want in paragraphs, words, bytes, or lists. Really handy for testing minimum and maximum field lengths in applications
- DownThemAll! lets you download all the links or images on a web page and adds an accelerator to make things much mas rapido
- Firebug is an editor/debugger for CSS, HTML, and JavaScript and really handy for spotting issues with host-based projects you're working on.
- FireFTP is an embedded FTP client that openes in a new browser tab. The tinfoil hat crowd will be convinced it sends your password to phishers in Romania.
- Foxmarks lets you synchronize bookmarksbetween browsers on multiple machines
- FoxyTunes adds controls for more than 30 media players (iTunes, WinAmp, Windows Media Player, etc.) to the Firefox interface, allowing you to do all your music listening and browsing within one application.
- Forecastfox Enhanced is a weather forecaster that includes live animated doppler radar and a buncha other coolness.
- Google Browser Sync syncs your browser settings across multiple computers
- Googlepedia shows Wikipedia articles alongside search results
- Google Preview inserts thumbs of site results into Google and Yahoo searches
- HTML Validator is a priceless tool for web developers that validates pages' code, pointing out errors in syntax, deprecated code, etc.
- IE Tab lets you open any page using the IE rendering engine on your machine without having to load the internet Explorer application (Windows only)
- Inline Google Definitions show definitions for selected words
- Link Alert changes your cursor to indicate the target type of a link (e.g., script, doc, new window, etc.)
- MR Tech Local install allows you to manage extensions and add-ons locally as well as overriding the install countdown, bypassing version compatibility checks, etc.
- PopupSound plays a sound when a pop-up window is blocked or any other event you want to define
- ReminderFox displays and manages a list of date-based reminders and to-do lists that can be shared between multiple browsers
- ScribeFire is billed as a blog editor, and it works great in that capacity. What I use it for, though, is a text/html editor that lives within the browser form which you can copy and paste nicely formated HTML (I am using ScribeFire to write this post)
- Server Switcher lets you switch between staging and production (e.g., between mysite.com and stagingarea.myusername.mysite.com) domains in a single click
- StumbleUpon is a toolbar lets you discover new sites based on user ratings, including your own
- UnPlug lets you save audio and video embedded on web sites
- Web Developer adds a toolbar that lets you browse and manipulate almost all aspects of a web page: CSS, forms, images, scripts, etc.
- User Agent Switcher lets you switch the user agent of your browser (handy for bypassing detects/redirects based on user agent)
