Upgrade Firefox

With all its fantastic extensions, Firefox has become an all-round genius. CHIP has tracked down the 25 best add-ons for you—and packed them on the issue DVD.

The latest stable release of Firefox, version 3, has been out for over a month now. CHIP gives you the latest extensions that add all the functions you need to make your Web surfing experience stress-free and fulfilling. With version 3, Firefox has fully embraced the add-ons experience. The Add-ons dialog box, accessible from ‘Tools | Add-ons’ now comes with a ‘Get Add-ons’ tab, such that users no longer have to navigate to the website (addons.mozilla.org) to get them. It even has a handy search field.  

Complete comfort

To ensure that you surf more comfortably and make the Fox fit for the Internet of the future and hassle-proof, the first thing to do is to check out the following add-ons.

Sometimes, it is really annoying to click on countless links while searching on the Internet. With ‘Interclue’, you need not go through this unnecessary step—hover your cursor over a link, and a small icon will appear next to it. When you hover over that icon, it opens up a pop-up window that shows a preview of that website. You can enlarge the window as desired, or send the links directly via mail or even save them as bookmarks. An alternative to ‘Interclue’ is ‘Cooliris’. While ‘Cooliris’ is merely a pop-up window, ‘Interclue’ has the advantage of notifying the user about potentially harmful websites that contain malicious content or are phishing scams. However, while the ‘Cooliris’ preview displays the Web page as it will appear on your Web browser, the ‘Interclue’ preview displays only the bare basics—text, images and links. Which add-on will best suit your purposes is up to you, depending on your preferences.

‘All-in-One Sidebar’ gives you a good overview of all the features in Firefox—the extension opens a toolbar on the left of the screen which lists information on the integrated forms, links and the security certificates of the websites you are looking at; it also allows direct access to the browser configuration settings and arranges your downloads and history in an easy-to-understand way.

Firefox’s default download manager is not ideal when you download data from the Internet regularly—should the Web connection disconnect before the download is complete, then all files will be lost. To solve this problem, you can use the ‘DownThemAll!’ manager. With this add-on, not only can you can recover downloads that get stopped abruptly, but the downloading process is accelerated and goes on comfortably. You can save all the elements on a web page, or thanks to the numerous filters, any data can be downloaded selectively, for instance, images or text.

Not all websites are displayed properly in Firefox, mainly because they have been written exclusively for Internet Explorer. But now, instead of opening IE in a separate window, with ‘IE tab’ you can harness the functionality of Microsoft’s Web browser in Firefox itself. It embeds the IE engine in Firefox—to open a Web page in IE, simply right-click a link and select the option ‘Open Link in IE Tab’. 

Security on the Web

Firefox developers patch security loopholes in the browser regularly. However, hackers always find new leaks in no time. Use security tools for this purpose and protect the fox from all those dangers yourself.

JavaScript presents an enormous security loophole. The problem is when you deactivate these functions, most websites will not be displayed correctly any more, especially in the age of interactive Web 2.0. With ‘No-Script’, you can determine the websites on which scripts may run—namely which websites should always display scripts and which are supposed to be blocked.

Apart from this, to make all those advertisement banners and pop-ups disappear, ‘Adblock Plus’ is just the right tool for you. The add-on uses various filters to block undesirable elements. However, if an advertisement is still displayed, add the field of the advertisement to the ‘Adblock’ filter with the press of a button. You can also exclude individual Internet sites as exceptions to the rules.

Script and ad-blockers already protect your PC quite well, but in spite of them, every visit to the Internet will leave traces—and in extreme cases, data spies can use this confidential information to steal your bank details or passwords. In order to protect yourself from Web criminals, there are various tools that will hide your IP address. Like most such programs, ‘FoxyProxy’ uses the Tor and Privoxy global router networks for encryption. Unlike its competitors however, this add-on offers lots of additional information for experienced users and it also provides various options as well.

If you combine the three extensions, you have an almost perfect and unique browser. However, even the best security settings are of no use if you set insecure passwords and leave them unprotected. The standard password manager in Firefox is no doubt useful, but not really safe. If you don’t want to give up control of your passwords to Firefox, it is better to use ‘Secure Login’. The tool uses the password manager, but extends it with useful functions—you can, for instance, determine for yourself whether to log in automatically or on demand, and whether to activate JavaScript protection or not. On top of that, ‘Secure Login’ offers a phishing filter that compares second-level domains and raises an alarm in case of websites with fake credentials. The actual key management, however, is carried out by the password manager from Firefox.

Jam-packed Multimedia

Listening to music, viewing pictures and storing videos—all these multimedia functions can be undertaken by Firefox effortlessly with the right add-ons.

With ‘FoxyTunes’, you can upgrade your Web browser to include a slim audio player. The tool uses any player installed on the PC for playing and can even access Internet services such as last.fm. With different skins available from the manufacturer’s homepage and diverse setting options like cover artwork display, ‘FoxyTunes’ is a very flexible tool to use.

To optimize the browser for images, ‘PicLens’ is the right choice—the add-on shows images from portals and searchable databases such as Flickr, Facebook and Google in a stylish 3D view, and controls slideshows in full screen mode.

If you want to use graphics from the Web for your presentations, then the ‘FireShot’ tool is sure to help you out. This tool creates screenshots and allows you to enhance pictures immediately with your own comments, info bars and graphics.

Many videos on the Web do not allow you to download them. But with ‘Video DownloadHelper’, this restriction doesn’t apply any more as it displays videos from every website and downloads them with a single click. The automatic search is a brilliant tool as well—a click on the program button and the add-on will give you a list with hundreds of video portals.

If you do not want to use a separate storage space for the clips that you have  downloaded, you can arrange for a hard drive online—with ‘Gspace’, you can use a Google mail account as a normal hard disk partition and save on offline storage space.

Community tools

The world of social networking survives exclusively on community spirit, and people who actively participate in blogs and forums. The only problem is that the number of such sites has grown immensely in the past few years—and new ones are being added each day.

It is barely possible to get an overview of all the activities on such sites. In order to make searching for the latest news easier, we have helpful tools like ‘BlogRovR’. If you store interesting websites, sorted according to topics of your choice, it will gather news and comments automatically. Besides, the extension can also be used as a track-back display.

If you come across any interesting presentations while surfing the Internet, you can make schedules in the browser and coordinate them with friends, thanks to ‘ReminderFox’. The tool also integrates data from external services like ‘Google Calendar’. Additionally, it also serves as a ‘to-do’ list manager.

Personal contacts go a long way in making chatting faster. The instant messengers ‘ChatZilla’ and ‘SamePlace’ are perfect for this purpose—‘ChatZilla’ is a small client that uses the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) system. Nevertheless, if you use services like Google talk, msn or AIM, then ‘SamePlace’ is the best instant messenger  that you can have. This tool is not only great for chatting, but can also be used to exchange pictures or to play games like chess as well.

Finding addresses with ‘Locator’ is child’s play—you just need to select an address and then a right click will open a pop-up window with all the important information from ‘Google Maps’. 

Extensions for developers

Specialized web programs are a must if you want to tinker about with homepages or work with servers. Luckily, there are extensions for Firefox which makes the working a lot easier.

The extensive add-on ‘Firebug’ is available for analyzing websites. No action on a site will ever go unnoticed by this tool; Firebug lists hidden processes as well. If you want, it can also change the entire look of a website for you. There is a special add-on for this purpose though—with ‘Stylish’, you can edit the look of any site with the help of CSS. Alternatively, it is possible to download ready scripts from the manufacturer’s website.

The ‘Web Developer’ package is indispensable for hobbyists—the toolbar contains all the tools required by professionals for testing. However, even inexperienced users can gain a lot from the tool collection. This is because multiple options increase security as well. You can, for instance, deactivate form fields, Java as well as JavaScript easily and delete all private data with a single click.

‘FireFTP’ and ‘SQLite’ Manager top off the developer package—‘FireFTP’ is a slick, functional FTP client, with which it is easy to download data, manage servers and websites. And with the ‘SQLite Manager’, your databases can be kept under control.

Use all the 25 add-ons and you have the perfect browser for every purpose. We have put all of them on the CHIP DVD so you have an easy-to-use package ready for immediate use.

Firefox add-on packages

ComforT: All-in-one sidebar, DownThemAll, Interclue, Cooliris, IE Tab.

Security: Adblock Plus, FoxyProxy, NoScript, Secure Login.

Multimedia: FireShot, FoxyTunes, Gspace, PicLens, Video DownloadHelper.

Community: BlogRovR, ChatZilla, Locator, ReminderFox, SamePlace.

Professional: Firebug, FireFTP, Stylish, SQLite Manager, Web Developer, Greasemonkey.