7 Must-Have Firefox Addons

Post written by Steve Otto. Follow me on Twitter.

One of the best features of the free opensource web browser called Firefox is the ability to install ‘addons’. Simply click Tools -> Addons to find a link to Mozilla’s vast library of addons. It’s worth browsing through just to get an idea of what you can change or add to the browser. Here is a list of my top most useful addons.

WOT – Stands for Web of Trust
WOT is a great little tool that shows you a color coded rating for every website listed in your google search. Know what websites are safe to visit before you click on them. Sites are rated on Trustworthiness, Vendor Reliability, Privacy, and Child Safety.

Twitterfox – Keep up with your twitter feed right in your Firefox browser. Twitterfox sits in the bottom right hand corner of your Firefox window and with a quick click you can view your the recent tweets of who you are following or post your own.

Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks) – This is probably my favorite addon. It keeps all of your bookmarks synchronized. If you use Firefox at work and home, just add a bookmark at work and when you get home you’ll see it there too. It works as a great bookmark backup solution as well. Also, click on the Xmarks logo in your address bar to find similar sites. Awesome tool!

Morning Coffee – If you always open up the same websites each morning then this is the perfect addon for you. Just click on the coffee cup icon, and all of your favorite websites come up in their own tab. Even customize it by day of the week.

TinyUrl Creator – If you are not familiar with TinyUrl, it’s a website that allows you to take a rather long website address and shrink it down into a very short one. Very handy for twitter or even sharing through email. TinyUrl Creator builds this feature right into Firefox, giving you a menu option to easily create a tinyurl whenever you need.

Video Download Helper – The easy way to download and convert Web videos from hundreds of YouTube-like sites.
This works also for audio and picture galleries.

Cooliris – Full-Screen, 3D — Cooliris is simply the fastest and most stunning way to browse photos and videos from the Web or your desktop. Effortlessly scroll a “3D Wall” of your content from Facebook, Google Images, YouTube, Flickr, and hundreds more. If you haven’t already read my full review of Cooliris, check it out here.

2 Bonus Addons for Web Developers: If you do any sort of web development you’ll love these next two.

Firebug – Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

Web Developer – Another great set of tools for the web developer including html and css tools that allow you to view or even edit on the fly any websites html or css code.

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