Mozilla Firefox celebrates its 17th birthday in September this year and is used by around one in ten users worldwide. These twelve Firefox extensions will make using it much easier.
1. Onetab or: Who will save me from the many browser tabs?
Anyone who works on the web knows it: After a certain amount of time, there are lots of tabs open, the browser becomes slower and it becomes difficult to see what’s going on. Many people seriously intend to minimize the number of open tabs, but in reality this is just as successful as the Inbox Zero project for emails.
The expansion Onetab can help combat the flood of tabs. As soon as it is called up, all open browser tabs are displayed on a single subpage as a list in an HTML document. From here you can then access or remove the individual websites or bookmarks.
If you open additional tabs and then click the Onetab button again, they will be saved as an additional list under the current date, as shown in the screenshot.
2. Feedbro: RSS reader for Firefox
If you want to keep an eye on many sources, you can’t avoid RSS feeds. Feedbro is an RSS reader that integrates well into the browser. Appearance, fonts and much more can be customized; in addition, the RSS reader can be set to the classic three-window view.
In the left column you will find the individual sources, in the middle all feed entries of the selected page and on the right the respective article, as shown in the screenshot above. Importing OPML files is quick and smooth. Not only are all feed subscriptions, but also the folder structure cleanly imported.
3. Textarea Cache: Your text memory
Who hasn’t experienced this? You write a long message in a contact form or a post in a forum, send it off – and there is a script error or the browser crashes and your text is gone. In such and similar cases, it helps to bite the edge of the table or Textarea Cache to use. The second is much more effective.
This extension saves the contents of text boxes in the background, so you can submit articles and comments much more quietly. The content from editors, such as those in WordPress, is also covered. Of course, exceptions can be defined where Textarea Cache does not create a copy. This is useful where auto-saving works reliably, for example with Google Docs.
4. Font Finder: Which font is this?
If you want to know which font and which CSS rules are used on a website, you should take a closer look at the Font Finder:
By right-clicking on a section of text in the browser, you will see all relevant information.
5. Google Search Link Fix: Copy the correct URL
Google has the nasty habit of changing the URL of the sources on the search results page, so that you cannot copy the real URL from there via the context menu (right click). Let’s say you google “t3n” and copy the first result by right clicking. But instead of the actual URL, you copied the following:
If you want the correct URL – in our example “ – to be cached on the search results page, the extension Google Search Link Fix.
6. Google Keep Notes: Notes in the sidebar
About the expansion Google Keep Notes There’s not much to say. It connects to the note-taking service Google Keep and displays your notes and lists in the Firefox sidebar.
7. Share Backported: Recommend links
Firefox 57 removed the sharing function because it used an unofficial API. Share Backported brings the function back with the familiar symbol. The following services are supported: Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Reddit, Tumblr, Gmail, Diaspora, Telegram, Vkontakte, Outlook, Pinboard, Yahoo, Weibo, Shaarli, Mastodon and Mewe. Services that are not wanted or used can be hidden.
8. Tomato Clock: Pomodoro-Timer im Browser
Tomato Clock is a timer that works according to the Pomodoro technique. The work is divided into 25-minute sections, followed by a short break of five minutes. After four such cycles, a longer break of 15 to 20 minutes follows.
9. Emoji Cheatsheet: When you need a 🤓
Emojis are becoming increasingly popular in communication in social networks, chats and other channels. Emoji Cheatsheet You have direct access to hundreds of emojis in Firefox.
10. Facebook Container: Facebook doesn’t have to know everything
The add-on Facebook Container puts your Facebook identity in a separate container. This makes it harder for Facebook to track your visits to other websites that use third-party cookies.
11. Clippings: Text snippets always at hand
Clippings is a really useful extension for Firefox. The add-on manages frequently used characters and also longer text sections. You can then insert these text fragments into all forms with just a few clicks: including the blog editor and a forum editor.
12. Highlighter: Mark sections on pages
With Textmarker you can mark sections of a page and add meta information. This means that the information is immediately available when you visit the page later. The highlights can also serve as a bookmark collection. If you click, you not only go to the page, but the browser scrolls to the marker.
Which essential addon have we missed? Let us know in the comments!
More on the subject: 30 practical extensions for the Chrome browser