Many of my Click articles end up with me banging on about how good Firefox is and how all my readers should consider using it as their main browser over Internet Explorer which is bundled free with Microsoft Windows. Since one of the main arguments I use is the large amount of third party add-ons that are available I thought this week I should probably corroborate that thinking by naming a few of them.
Add-ons (otherwise known as extensions or plug-ins) aren´t pieces of software in their own right but rather small bits of code designed to integrate with an existing application in order to extend its capabilities in one way or another. Firefox like many other browsers on the market encourage users to take advantage of this facility so that they can extend their browser in a way that suits them.
I´ve picked a few of the most popular plug-ins available, all of which are available free of charge by going to `Tools´ and `Extensions´ from within Firefox.
Adblock Plus - Whilst Firefox itself stops the majority of pop-ups you can still find some pages have intrusive adverts which Adblock Plus aims to stop. Install it into Firefox and immediately banner ads and other intrusive adverts will be removed from your browsing experience resulting in less interruptions and faster download times.
FlashGot - FlashGot is used to download entire sites quickly and easily which can be useful for offline browsing as it removes the necessary to save pages to disk one page at a time. It also includes a build gallery function so you can download and store every image from a site quickly and easily.
Video Downloader - Watching videos on the Internet is certainly handy but often if the video is embedded into the page it is difficult to save it on to your hard disk. If you install this add-in you will be able to click one button to save it to your computer permanently.
Tab Mix Plus - This extension improves the tab capabilities of Firefox to include features such as duplicating tabs, reopen closed tabs and a session manager which can save and restore combinations of tab windows should Firefox run in to trouble.