Favorite Mozilla Plugins

I was sitting talking to a friend, Melanie Paul of GuideStar Accounting & Business Services, yesterday about miscellaneous things while we were meeting to discuss her website. I think I am actually coming down with something as my mind was flipping here and there while we talked.  The meeting probably could have been more productive if my mind WASN’T flipping around as far as getting her website in progress, but the chat DID end up producing some useful information for her! And I think we DID finally get all the information shared and transferred that we needed to start building up her website – though I’m sure I could have been a bit more efficient. Stupid head colds – sorry Melanie 🙁

Somehow I got on the topic of Mozilla plugins as I noticed she used Mozilla while we examined her website.

Here are my top 5 Mozilla plugins.

1. Fire Gestures – This is my number one top favorite plugin. The whole right click “back”, right click “forward” stuff is SOOO Internet Explorerish. I first discovered the gesturing thing using Opera, but have since switched to Firefox and really missed the quick gesture flip between pages. This plugin gives you the ability to move forward or back, open new pages, close pages and much more. A definite MUST!
2. LastPass – RoboForm apparently is similar to this, but I have never tried it. Remembering all the usernames and passwords for even a moderate web user is a neverending battle. Can’t even begin to guess how many times in the past I have had to click that stupid “Forgot your password?” link.  This utility addon remembers all your passwords for you! It is web based so you can use it on ANY browser (including IE) that you happen to be on with a quick vist to lastpass.com. It can generate new strong security passwords for you as needed; autofill logon screens; actually even autologon for you as well; fill in your stored information such as address, email,phone numbers, etc; and just a host of useful things.
3. WebOfTrust (WOT) – This plugin accumulates information on websites and ends up rating it from green (good) to red (bad). When searching from Google, this will place a little colored circle next to the website name indicating it’s relative “trust” value. This is NOT always foolproof. Smaller sites may never get rated due to lower traffic volumes, but higher volume sites do end up ranked. My own site still has a blue circle with a question mark in it… BUT, it’s nice to know right off the bat when searching in Google how a site stands!
4. SearchPreview – This plugin adds a small image of the page returned in your search results right next to the search result. Allows you to see a glimpse of the site. I like it as it helps me determine if a site is just a trash site or some better thought out site. Yes, I DO judge a site by it’s cover!
5. Colorful Tabs – makes differentiating between different tabs MUCH easier! I appear to have 14 tabs open at the moment of this writing. If they were all one color, I’d never find a thing!

There really are some great plugins out there, but these 5? They make my online browsing oh so much easier!