There are tons of blogs out there these days that are raving about “50 Firefox addons worth a view”, or something along those lines. Well you know what, whoever wrote those probably never really used all 50 of those addons to make their opinion worth anything. This is one of those quality over quantity things. I think there are really only 3 addons that are actually necessary for regular internet users. Most people don’t need to know about the other 47, so let’s just stick to the basics.
AdBlock Plus
About a month ago we had an article here about ABP, and I want to reiterate a little bit about this. ABP is the first thing I install every time I have a chance to install Firefox on to a clients computer, of course with their permission. ABP simply gets rid of advertisements. Sometimes I really get confused because I wonder how websites like Omegle make money. Omegle is a random-user-chat-room, that’s a different story. I actually had to ask someone how a website like that made money, and they mentioned the ads on the right side of the screen. Then I had remembered that I had ABP installed, and I temporarily allowed ads through. Low and behold.. Google Ads! It is weird because it just becomes part of your daily life, you just slowly adjust and then you don’t even know what advertisements look like anymore. It’s pretty magical. Don’t really worry about how it works, just know that it does, and flawlessly.
Xmarks
There have been several different types of addons for all sorts of different browsers that save your bookmarks on one central server, but I have yet to find one that works as flawlessly and as seamlessly as Xmarks. Originally it was named Foxmarks, because it was only available in Firefox. Times have changed, and now it works in all of the four major browsers: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and of course Safari. That’s right, so even if you are reading this and you don’t have Firefox, you can use Xmarks to sync your bookmarks.
Now that I got the requirements out of the way, let me tell you why exactly this bookmark syncamajig is so handy. It also syncs passwords! This feature is only available in Firefox, which is why its one of the three addons you absolutely need and should not go without. If you have Firefox on your computer in your office, and computer in your home, and you have tons of passwords and bookmarks, what is the best way to keep everything organised? Pen and paper? Come on.
In case you are worried about your passwords getting out, just read this:
To encrypt your passwords, Xmarks uses the current state of the art AES 256-bit encryption algorithm. AES is a United States government standard and is recommended by National Security Administration (NSA) for encrypting classified information. See the AES Wikipedia entry for more details.
AES works by taking data that needs to be encrypted along with a secret PIN of your choosing, and then produces an encrypted result. It is strong enough to virtually guarantee that your encrypted data cannot be decrypted by a third-party, not even Xmarks. The biggest point of weakness is in the strength of the secret PIN that you choose. Xmarks recommends that you choose a PIN that is difficult to guess and contains a wide variety of different characters and numbers.
So your bookmarks, and your passwords are securely kept in one place, and always kept up to date.
You can get Xmarks by clicking here.
StumbleUpon
I kept this one for last because it really isn’t that necessary to have to keep your life going steady with Firefox, it is mainly something that is great for wasting time if you are having a slow day at work, or even if you have a cold and just want to relax with a hot cup of tea. StumbleUpon asks you what types of things you are interested in, and there are hundreds and hundreds of options to chose from so you wont miss something. Then, all you do is click a little button that says “Stumble”. What does this little button do? Well, it randomly goes to a website that you might be interested in that has been previously discovered by someone else! You can also discover websites as well, such as this one.
As you stumble, there are two more buttons that are thumbs up or thumbs down, and obviously those are basically asking if you like it or not. If you don’t like it, it wont display that page ever again and it will work to not show pages like that one ever again. If you do like it, it will work to find more pages just like that so you it brings you more joy.
It’s really simple. For full instructions and how to install it, you can check out StumbleUpon’s website here.
