Useful Firefox Extensions

Installing Extensions:

From the Web:

Using Firefox, go to the web page for the extension and LEFT CLICK on the link marked " Install". It will install the appropriate extension. The installation will not be fully complete until you restart Firefox. (No need to restart Windows - just the program). Many will have some options you can set. You can do this within Firefox by going to Tools - Extensions and scrolling down and highlighting the extension you want and clicking the OPTIONS button at the bottom of the "Extensions" window.

From a disk:

1) Start up Firefox 2) Click on File - Open File 3) Browse to CD drive and go down to the directory where the extension is (you are looking for files with an extension of xpi) 4) Click on file name of extension to highlight it; then click on Open (or simply double click file name) 5) At Software installation box; click on Install Now 6) Extensions box will pop up and say that it will be installed after you restart firefox 7) Repeat steps 4 and 5 for any additional extensions 8) Close and restart Firefox and your extension/s will be installed.

Extensions for General Use:

These extensions are useful for Public machines as well as Staff ones.

 
	Accessibar - General accessibility options.  Useful for EVERYONE. Lets you 
        change colors of background and text when you come across difficult to read 
        pages. Requires additional software for full functionality!
	
	Copy Plain Text - Lets you copy just the text without the formatting.
		
	Enhanced History Manager - Makes managing history on PCs easier. Useful to 
        have on Public PCs if you want to be able to view the history. Immensely better 
        than the default history.
		
	IEView - Adds a choice to the context menu (right click menu) of "View this 
        page in IE". Fires up IE and displays THAT page. Useful for pages that only 
        work in IE.
		
	Image Show-Hide - Lets you toggle showing images on or off. NOT NEEDED if 
        you have accessibar installed.  
	
	MR_Tech_About:About - Adds a few "abouts" to the tools menu displaying 
        extensions, plugins, etc. Useful  for staff to be able to see what's installed 
        where.
		
	Open long url -adds an option to your File menu that allows you to open 
        URLs that span several lines.
		
	PDF Download - Gives you a choice of downloading or viewing PDF files.
		
	Search Button - adds a "Search" button directly to the right of the Search 
        box on the toolbar.
		
	Session Saver - Remembers loaded tabs and their history items when Firefox 
        is manually closed, then restores the tabs and history items when next started. 
		
	Show IP -shows the IP Address of the current page in the browser's status bar
	(Possibly useful for security: phishing, etc. - a better  general choice would 
         probably be Spoofstick.)
		
	Spoofstick - tells you what domain you're REALLY on. Anti-phishing tool. It 
        takes up toolbar space.	(IE version also available -- A MUST HAVE for IE!)
	
	Stop-or-reload button - Shows reload button except when loading a page when 
        stop shows.
		
	TabBin - adds a toolbar button (labelled 'Closed Tabs') which lets you 
        retrieve the five most-recently closed tabs via a pull-down menu.  
	
	TargetAlert - Shows you what kind of file a link goes to, if not another web page.
		
	Text Plain -Treats selected plain text urls, and email addresses as links and 
        adds options to the context menu on how to use these. 
	
	Translate Page - passes the current page to Google's Translation Service
		
	User Agent Switcher - Basically it "lies" to the web site about what browser 
        you're using. Can be useful for websites optimized for particular browsers.
		
	Verify URL - an alternative to Spoofstick that adds an item to the context 
        (right click) menu and pops up a box with the actual website you're on. An 
         anti-phishing tool.
		
	Zoomy - provides toolbar buttons to increase, decrease and reset the text size 
        (for the current tab). They function like the equivalent items on the View 
         menu. NOT needed if you have Accessibar.

Extensions for Staff Use:

These are probably more useful for staff than on public machines, though you might opt to include some on your public machines depending on how they are used.

 
	Bandwidth Tester - When you get complaints that the Internet is slow, this will 
	give you an idea of your download speed by attempting to download files of 
	various sizes.
		
	FireFtp - Great little FTP program that works in Firefox. Can run in a new window 
	or in a tab. Supports Binary and ASCII. Also supports resuming. Look and operation 
	is similar to FileZilla and SSH Secure Client.
		
	Named Anchors - adds a new tab to Page Info with information about the named 
	anchors in the current document.  
		
	Switch Proxy  - gives you a toolbar for whenever you need to turn proxy 
        on and off quickly. Could be useful for staff testing and as an alternative 
        way to provide unfiltered access to adult users.  
		
	Things They Left Out - adds additional configuration options to Firefox for 
	things that are	not easily otherwise configured. 
		
	URN Support - extension for supporting URN. If the link refers to an URN 
	('urn:isbn:4-385-12183-4', etc.), then the browser redirects it to an equivalent 
         URL
		
	View Cookies -lets you view the cookies a website leaves on your computer. 
	You can also delete them.  
	
	View Rendered Source - A neccessary step in troubleshooting dynamically 
	generated HTML content is to be able to view what is being spit out by your 
	script. This output is known as "Rendered Source". This extension shows the 
	source code generated dynamically by the scripts.
		
	WML Browser - View WML (Wireless Markup Language) pages in Mozilla or Mozilla 
	Firefox


For additional useful files, see also:

	My Browser Add-ons Page
	My Misc. Useful Programs Page