Top 10 Firefox Web 2.0 Add-ons
With
all this talk of the Web as
a platform, it's worth taking a closer look at what web apps are using Firefox as their platform. Firefox is regarded
as the best Web browser in terms of extensions - i.e. small browser add-ons which modify
or add to existing functionality. It has hundreds of add-ons, which can be downloaded from here. But which are
the best 'web 2.0' add-ons for Firefox? And I'm using the term 'web 2.0' very broadly
here, to mean any add-on that has a social Web aspect to it.
Based on Mozilla's list of recommended extensions, AdaptiveBlue's Alex Iskold and I have generated a top 10 list of Firefox Web 2.0 add-ons. As always, let us know your own favorite add-ons in the comments.
Smart Browsing / Personal Productivity
Browster
Browster is a very cool add-on that enhances your
browsing experience - for example mousing over a link gives you a preview of the website.
It enables you to speed up your browsing experience and can save a lot of clicks in the
long run. It does this by automatically pre-fetching links. It's a free add-on for both
IE and Firefox - and hopes to make a profit by putting ads in the pop-up previews.
Answers
Answers is an add-on that promises to "instantly deliver the information you are looking for". It comes from answers.com, which is a popular online dictionary and Wikipedia syndication site. Alex says this is a "perfect example of smart integration with a service in the browser". The Answers add-on works like this:
"Just point at any word, hold the Alt key and click. Upon letting go, an AnswerTip in the form of a pop-up "information bubble" appears on the screen explaining the term."
blueorganizer
The blueorganizer smart browsing extension for Firefox
is developed by Alex's company adaptiveblue. This extension drives productivity by
building smarts and semantics into the browser. The blueorganizer integrates with many
popular sites and services - including Amazon, Flickr, YouTube, iTunes, Odeo and Netflix.
It utilizes Amazon's S3 storage service, as well as being run from the Firefox browser -
so it is using the Web as a platform in many ways. SolutionWatch has
a great review of blueorganizer, if you want to find out more.
Bookmarking / Social Bookmarking
delicious
The del.icio.us extension for Firefox allows you to easily bookmark webpages in del.icio.us, from within the Firefox browser. It integrates with the Firefox toolbar and provides extra options such as right-click menu and highlight text to add notes.
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is an increasingly popular bookmarking
tool - indeed in my recent post about the Turkey
market, we discovered that StumbleUpon is a very popular app in Turkey. The StumbleUpon add-on is described as
"collaborative surfing tool", because you can browse websites according to what other
people recommend.
ClipMarks
ClipMarks is an early pioneer in the clipping space.
Users clip pieces out of web pages and share these bits with each other. They can also
tag and lookup the clips, but not much more can be done since the information is not
structured. The Clipmarks Firefox
add-on integrates this with the browser.
Google Notebook
Google Notebook is very similar to
Clipmarks, but has better Firefox integration. It also works in IE6. As with Clipmarks, the user manually extracts text and images out of the
page - but this information is unstructured. Google
Notebook has had mixed reviews so far, but we think Google is currently putting in resources
to improve it.
Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer
FoxMarks Bookmark Synchronizer is an easy way to sync your Firefox bookmarks, if you use Firefox on more than one computer. It is very simple, but does its job nicely and has been well received by Firefox users.
RSS Readers
Unfortunately, we are not aware of a really great RSS Reader for Firefox. If you know of one, please mention it in the comments section. In our opinion the best reader in a Mozilla-based browser is the one which comes with Flock. It would be great if someone got inspired, extracted it and released it for Firefox - since Flock is also open source.
There are however two RSS readers that most Firefox users rely on:
Sage
Sage is a basic and lightweight RSS Reader, although you need to be a techie to use it. It leverages Firefox bookmarks to store feeds - and it does the job pretty well.
Wizz RSS News Reader
Wizz RSS is a fancier reader that works well. It supports OPML import and export, plus has advanced features like filtering news items on words and/or phrases. But it is still not as smooth in terms of usability and options as the Reader that is built into Flock.
Conclusion
Firefox is currently one of the best platforms for building a new breed of web applications, on top of the emerging Web Platform. Given its native support for JavaScript and excellent extension API, we expect to see more complex and more tightly integrated web apps built on Firefox in the near future.
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Have you seen allpeers (allpeers.com) which uses BitTorrent to let you share files with friends? It came out last week and already in the list of the top 10 downloaded extensions. It's a very big extension. More in the likes of SOngBird as it is more a fully fledge application (even though it is an early beta) than just a simple extension.
I have not had the chance to take allpeers for a spin, but I am very excited about it, based on the previous reviews.
Alex
I can't believe you left out diigo (http://www.diigo.com/).
In addition to this Google Browser Sync for Synchronizing yr bookmarks from one pc to another. Like home pc bookmarks to work pc. Its really handy.
It recovers from even if yr browser crashes or closed by mistake.
Vishal
You know you are right about the RSS Feed reader. Sage and wiz work ok if you have a few feeds say 30 for the average user. In fact I prefer Sage. It still baffles me that there is not a single Feed reader extension as cool as Feed demon or the Flock RSS reader. I mean I have 100 plus Feeds and sage is just not suitable to handle it.
Diigo is nice, has lots of cool features and is pretty popular according to alexa. Notably, it allows you to repost your bookmarks to 9 other places including del.icio.us and my web. You can also clip and annotate things and post to blogs.
Alex
We have plans to develop RSS reader for Firefox at adaptiveblue, but other things keep popping up. This is a pretty serious project of course. If anyone would like to cooperate/contribute please drop me an email.
Alex
alex.iskold@adaptiveblue.com
infoRSS is a nice extension as it displays RSS feeds randomly in the status (or menu) bar. It is a non intrusive RSS reader.
2 weaks: it's not so easy to configure and there is no folder view.
I love Diigo, it should be on the list
I dont think there is a need for a RSS reader extension. Personal start up pages like Netvibes do the job so well.
I once found a method for creating categories for blogger using the del.icio.us extension.
http://risenphoenix.wordpress.com/2006/04/02/
categories-for-blogger-using-delicious-updated-again/
Excellent article. And I have to say that I love Stumbleupon. Other extensions and bookmarklets that I find especially interesting are:
Extensions:
Codetch, a code editor https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1002/
Bookmarklets:
http://toread.cc/ send you via email a copy of the website you are visiting
http://co.mments.com/ keeps track of your conversations in all the blogs you visit
Great collection
Browster sucks. Why on earth would I want my browser replaced with an advert ridden popup window? Surely people know how to use Firefox tabs by now. Click that middle mouse wheel on links to get a preview in a shiny new Firefox tab!
I don't think you need an RSS reader for Firefox. There are plenty of great web readers, of which Rojo is my favorite.
Great list of Web 2.0 extensions for Firefox.
This post kind of looks familiar.
Top 10 Firefox Super Extensions - Extensions that could be their own application.
Very useful list,Thanks so much ;)
Just wanted to say thank you for including clipmarks in your list!
This is a very good list and possibly the first such list to focus on web 2.0. I found these 50 best extensions list also very good.
More props for Diigo:
http://www.diigo.com
you need to check out www.folkd.com - it combines the best of the stumbleupon and del.icio.us plugins
Maybe this is a bit propellerhead, but the XRay extension is a lifesaver. Being able to see the markup on the actual page is great for working out what's gone wrong...
FlickrFox which displays current Photos from your Flickr Contacts & Groups in your Sidebar is very very Cool!
http://philmccluskey.com/projects/flickrfox/
;))
really should have included Diigo - it beats google notebook, clipmarks, delicious, hand-down. More powerful than these three put together
Browster is pure evil. It speeds up browsing on your local machine at the expenense of everyone else.
Link prefetching was a stupid idea in Web 2.0 and an even dumber idea now.
Kevin
Awesome addons! Thanks!