9 Incredibly Useful Firefox Add-ons You Can’t Live Without

With all the buzz surrounding the new and improved Firefox 3, its worth talking about Firefox’s Add-ons. For those of you who don’t know, Firefox’s add-ons are small web applications that integrate with Firefox to add or change functionality. They are easy to install, incredibly useful and convenient. Moreover, some of them will just make you wonder how you used to live without them. No kidding.

I have generated a list of the most popular and recommended add-ons out there that you should know about. However, there plenty other very cool extensions so make sure to check the Firefox Add-ons webpage to find out more about them.

1. StumbleUpon

Arguably the best toolbar around. With StumbleUpon you can discover websites based on your interest and on what other people have “Stumbled.” The awesome thing about this is that by clicking the “stumble” button you will end up browsing very interesting and cool sites that you would have never been able to find without it. On the other hand, you can also use StumbleUpon to look up popular pages from within specific sites such as YouTube, CNN, Wikipedia and Wired. You can also use this toolbar to bookmark sites that you like and later be able to look at them from any computer. WARNING: Be ready to spend many hours using this tool. It is very addictive.

2. PicLens

PicLens is a visually impressive 3D application that lets you find online photos on popular sites. Not only does this application looks stunning, but it’s actually very useful. For example, lets say you are searching for an specific picture in Google. After you type your search, you can access PicLens by clicking on any picture in the result. The application will then show all pictures of your search result in a 3D grid format, which is very effective since you don’t have to worry about clicking any “next” buttons to look at more photos or having to load up a new page to look at full size pictures.

3. DownloadHelper

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could download any video you want from YouTube-like sites and store them on you computer? Well, now you can with DownloadHelper. While surfing on sites like YouTube, Myspace or iFilm, an icon from DownloadHelper gets animated, letting you know there are videos in the webpage that can be downloaded. Just click the icon and it will start downloading. As simple as that.

4. DownThemAll!

As far as download extensions, DownThemAll! is right on top. This neat tool allows you to download all images and links in a webpage with a single click. It also increases your download speed to up 400% according to their site, and you can pause and resume downloads at any time.

5. Forecastfox

Forecastfox is an application that displays weather forecast from AccuWeather.com in Firefox’s status bar or in any toolbar. It constantly gives weather updates and severe weather alerts. Good option if you check weather consistently and want to save time.

6. Adblock Plus

Tire of those annoying ads and banners on the internet? With Adblock Plus you can easily get rid of them by selecting a filter subscription when the add-on is installing or you can simply right click a banner and it won’t be showed again. One of the most popular extensions out there, a definite must have.

7. Firebug

If you are planning on learning HTML and CSS, or even if you are already a web developer, you will definitely want to have Firebug. Firebug is the most complete web development tool out there; it integrates with Firefox to edit, debug and look at JavaScript, HTML and CSS files in any web page. You can also use it to download background design images that you would normally have to get by painfully going through by following all sorts of likes through different source code and CSS files. For beginner web developers, the tool comes very handy if you want to learn how the website was designed and what developing techniques were used.

Oh I forgot to mention, you can also play jokes on your friends with it. Look here

8. FoxyTunes

FoxyTunes is great for any music lover. It lets you control media players, look up lyrics from songs currently playing in your computer, search fro covers, music videos, bios and updated news from your favorite artists. All with just a couple of clicks from your browser.

9. Firefox Showcase

Firefox Showcase is simply impressive and totally useful management tool. Its ability to view tabs as thumbnails is absolutely priceless. Not only that, but its has also been worked on for years making bug-free and packaged with all sorts of great additions. For example, you can resize your thumbnails and zoom in on one in particular, change key shortcuts with KeyConfig, use the “find” tool across all tabs in your browser, view the thumbs in a tab, a floating window, or the sidebar, use “alt + scroll” to preview the thumbnail, and much more.