With over 24% of the global market share, there is no doubt that Mozilla Firefox is the leading alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. No small part of its success and the most important design goal behind Firefox was its minimal feature-set and strong support for extensibility. The intent was to eliminate the “bloat” found in other browsers at the time and allow the Mozilla community to add new features. In this article, we’ll talk about our favorite add-ons.
LastPass. This is an absolute must for anyone with more than a few website user accounts. LastPass can encrypt and store your account information on their servers, and you only have to enter one password (hence the name) to log on with LastPass and gain access to your collection of user accounts. It can then automatically enter your usernames and passwords when you visit a page with a login form.
We think you’ll probably want to change some of the default settings. LastPass should remember your email address, but not your password. This means you’ll need to log into LastPass every time you open Firefox, but it’s the best tradeoff between security and convenience. You’ll likely also want to turn off some of the LastPass notifications (“Save Site” is the most essential). We also recommend against using the “AutoLogon” feature as you won’t always want to log on when a login form is displayed.
Xmarks. This extension both backs up your bookmarks and synchronizes them with your user accounts on other computers. It’s great for syncing your home and work computers and for restoring your bookmarks when moving to a new user profile. Xmarks also offers to store your passwords, but it’s a relatively new feature which isn’t as good as LastPass.
Lazarus. Something that has always plagued web browsers is the loss of text entries due to a session timeout or other problem. Until Firefox incorporates some kind of recovery option, Lazarus is an extension every Firefox user should have. You no longer have to worry whether the website you’re using is saving draft copies of your work.
Web of Trust. Referred to as WOT, this extension allows its community to avoid visiting untrustworthy websites. It’s almost surprising that this service has become popular as a browser add-on and not as an offering from Google or Yahoo, but nevertheless WOT is very useful. Now you can readily tell which links are spam when you search for anti-virus products.
It’s worth pointing out that WOT is meant to help you avoid malware-ridden, fraudulent, and inappropriate sites. It isn’t meant for rating the organization behind the website, but you can sometimes get that information from the “scorecard” on mywot.com from users’ comments.
Summing Up. These four extensions are the best out there now, but there are certainly some very interesting developments coming in Firefox 4. Cloud computing is looming large in the future, and Mozilla’s Weave and Prism projects will likely cause a huge shift in our expectations of modern web browsers.
Some Background. With over 24% of the global market share, there is no doubt that Mozilla Firefox is the leading alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. And because Explorer is bundled with Windows – requiring some effort and skill to choose a different browser – it can also be said that Firefox is the browser of choice among knowledgable users.
The most important design goal behind Firefox was a minimal feature set and strong support for extensibility. The intent was to eliminate the “bloat” found in other browsers at the time and allow the Mozilla community to add new features. Over time, some of the most popular add-on features – such as tabbed browsing – may be incorporated into the browser.
Best of the Best. While everyone may have their own favorites, I believe there are a few add-ons that everyone should have. These provide features that will give you a whole new level of functionality and ease of use.
LastPass [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8542]. This is an absolute must for anyone with more than a few Internet user accounts. Most useful online services require a username and password for authentication, but how do you keep track of them? LastPass is the answer. They store all of your passwords encrypted and you only have to enter one password (hence the name) to gain access to all your account information. From then on, LastPass will automatically enter usernames and passwords when you visit a logon page, and it can even automatically log you in if you want.
This extension saves a lot of time, stores your passwords securely, and is completely free. After installing LastPass, there are a few settings I think you’ll want to change. First, have LastPass remember your email address but do not let it remember your password. This means you’ll need to type in your password every time you open Firefox, and this provides the greatest amount of security with the least inconvenience.
Other things you want to disable are most of the notifications. You can do this in LastPass Preferences, and the only notification you really need is ‘Save Site,’ but you’ll probably want to disable the others one by one after seeing what they do. You can configure for each site whether LastPass automatically logs you in after inputting the account info, but I recommend leaving this turned off for most sites because you may not always want to log in when you visit a site.
Xmarks [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2410]. This extension both backs up your bookmarks and synchronizes them with your other computers. It’s great for syncing your home and work computers and for restoring your bookmarks when moving to a new user profile. Xmarks also offers to store your passwords, but it’s a relatively new feature and LastPass provides much greater functionality.
Lazarus [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6984]. Something that has always plagued web browsers is the loss of text entries due to a system crash or other problem. Until Firefox incorporates some kind of recovery option, Lazarus is an extension every Firefox user should have. You no longer have to worry whether the website your own is saving draft copies of what you’re writing.
Web of Trust [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3456]. This extension, often called WOT, allows its users to warn each other of untrustworthy websites. I’m surprised that Google or Yahoo hasn’t implemented something like this already, but it’s very helpful in warning you before you click on a link whether it’s a “good” or “bad” site.
While the ratings WOT shows you are typically accurate, I do want to point out that only the site is being rated and not the business entity behind it. WOT is not the BBB, and it’s goal is to help users avoid malware-ridden, fraudulent, and inappropriate sites.
However, you can get more information by viewing the “scorecard” on mywot.com. Take Paypal for example. They are widely known for their online payment system and low customer satisfaction. Consequently, Paypal.com has a good rating from WOT, but you can see on the Scorecard there are 135 reports of “bad customer experiences” on paypal.com next to 195 reports of good experiences.
Conclusion. These four extensions are the best out there now, but there are certainly some very interesting developments coming in Firefox 4. Cloud computing is looming in the future, and Mozilla’s Weave and Prism projects will change how we look at browsers.
