Migrating from Opera to Firefox (part 2)

So, in Part 1, I discussed how to make Firefox work a bit more like Opera. Here’s how to make it work better using Extensions that add genuine functionality.

1. Web Developer: Amazingly useful for web designers. Edit stylesheets on-the-fly. Display all sort of block-info, id/class and more…The Primary Reason I Switched.
2. Adblock: Essential in the post-popup world of cluttered pages. Ok, so clicky-ads are the business model for many site, but no need for huge flashing banners. This extension allows you to selectively block content from ad-servers with a simple click function, and using wildcards for whole servers. Fantastic.
3. BugMeNot : Do you really want a barrage of spam just to read one article on a page? This uses bugmenot.com to view sites using generic logins. Handy.
4. Download Statusbar: Less cludgy download manager. Pleasing.
5. ForecastFox: Slightly Gimmicky, but displays weather info in the status bar. Useful in Canada.
6. Google-extensions::
   Gcache:Google Cache of Current Page
   Google Images Re-Linker: Changes the links on Google images to go straight to the full-size image
   Google Pagerank Status: Displays pagerank for current page.
   GooglePreview: Adds the Alexa thumbnail of a website into Google results
7. Other Things:
   ieview: adds ‘open in IE’ to context menu. Still sadly needed sometimes.
   Nuke Anything: remove any item from a web page. Fun, but also useful for development.
   Wayback: Displays the Wayback Machine archive of current page. Interesting.
   Disable Targets For Downloads: Stops exe/avi/mpg/pdf files etc. spawning a window when downloading. Mildly useful
   ChromEdit: Edit the Firefox appearance etc. easily.

This list will no doubt grow greatly, but as it is, I am already liking the browsing part of Firefox better than Opera, with a few minor exceptions (back/forward are marginally less responsive, the whole thing is fractionally slower). The next things I will be testdriving are the POP mail client (Thunderbird), and trialling RSS aggregators and IRC clients. Opera’s M2 mail client is going to be hard to live up to, but I reckon chances are good that it will be reasonable. If not, there are always Thunderbird extensions……tbc

Related posts:

1. Migrating from Opera to Firefox (Part 1)

You should probably follow me on Twitter @tomwalsham

Tags: Email, Extensions, Firefox, M2, Opera