I am going to the dark side...

[M_Lyons10]

Remember maxthon comes with the best ad blocker pre-installed.

I find firefox sluggish once a few tab are loaded and I was spoiled with maxthon having 40 tabs open when i'm checking out pics etc. I couldn't dare do that with firefox.

Hm... I haven't had that problem. I regularly have 30 tabs or more open and speed hasn't been an issue. Were you using a skin? I did notice some speed hits with certain skins...

[LOC Veteran]

I used to love Firefox (though I'm not one of those people who bash IE or Opera etc because of it, come on they are browsers people).

Now Firefox to me is way to bloated even out of the box. I use K-Meleon almost exlusively as my main browser on Vista, with Chrome and Opera (and Maxthon 3, TheWorld 3 and others) as well.

You don't have to use Firefox because it isn't the only browser out there as competition for IE you know :)

[Eice]

ForecastFox: http://forecastfox.mozdev.org/

* This allows you to easily view the weather information in your toolbar. It refreshes automatically, and allows you to have several different profiles should you travel or wish to check the weather for other locations.

Available in IE8 as Web Slices from many popular weather sites.

Firefox Showcase: http://showcase.uworks.net/

* This allows you to easily see a thumbnail and manipulate all of your tabs in one window. REALLY helpful.

Built into IE7/8 as the Quick Tabs feature.

Personas for Firefox: http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/

* This allows you to really easily change the appearance of Firefox without the use of clunky skins (Which can be slow). I like this a lot.

No IE equivalent, lol.

Search WP: http://legege.com/mozilla/

* This allows you to have words typed in the search box highlighted in the current page so that you can easily find them. There are several add ons that do this, but this one is by far the best I've tried.

Not particularly sure how useful this is, but IE8 includes find-as-you-type built-in, as well as a count of how many times the search string appears on the current page.

Tabs Open Relative: http://jomel.me.uk/software/firefox/tabsopenrelative/

* Rather than open new tabs at the end of the tab list, this inserts the new tab right after the selected tab. It makes navigation easier, especially with a lot of tabs open.

Available in IE8 as the Tab Groups feature, which is much better than this extension IMHO.

TinyUrl Creator: http://mozmonkey.com/

* Easily create TinyUrl's from the current page.

http://www.ieaddons.com/en/details/bookmar...RL_Accelerator/

[Lannister]

I just moved away from Firefox to Chrome, on Linux and Windows. If you can live without adblock type plug ins, then definitely give Chrome a go.

[pdmcmahon]

ForecastFox: http://forecastfox.mozdev.org/

* This allows you to easily view the weather information in your toolbar. It refreshes automatically, and allows you to have several different profiles should you travel or wish to check the weather for other locations.

+1,000,000

That is the only extension I use. The downside to running too many is that it adds to load time. Also, you are dinged for updates more often.

[Smashing Pumpkin]

For Firefox definitely Firegestures, adblock, autopager, unsure what else, Web of Trust, Down them All, So many good extensions.

But Firefox kept crashing for me, so I moved to Chrome, yeah it's difficult with the lack of extensions but it's so lightweight, fast and fluid, it's great, it just works.

[jbarcus81]

I'm honestly torn between Chrome and Firefox. I have recently jumped on board and have been using Chrome nightly's.. I dunno, can't make up my mind, as usual. Use what you want and what feels right to you.. the plugins and extensions folks are suggesting are wonderful to add in Firefox..

[vincent]

Plugin wise, I'd say Flash, Silverlight and the Adobe PDF reader.

For Extensions, I'd say Greasemonkey and Stylish, those are the only 2 real web modifying extensions I use.

Don't forget irc

[anarkhy]

the good of chrome is its looks, the bad is that it is still not full functional, still in development. but you can have the clean look of chrome on firefox. and the good of firefox is the customization, dont be lazy, look at the addons and make then work for you.

here is something to check

chromium

adblock plus

linkification

personal menu

location bar

firefox with the chromium addon

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Don't forget irc

Nah, I use a native client for that.

My client embeds WebKit though, so half points (although, WebKit only does simple text rendering, so maybe not)

[i_was_here]

If you need ideas on extensions I suggest a forum search:

https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=795706

https://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/08/16/n...nt-live-without

https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=790852

[Growled Member]

I don't use Chrome any more. It fast but Firefox extensions leaves it in the dust.

[Sir Topham Hatt]

I am the same. I used to slate Firefox until I actually found some of the addons useful.

Now let's face the facts here, I would suggest over 90% of the addons are useless. I don't mean to put others down, I am well aware that one extension may be useful to one person, but not to another; seriously though, a weather report? In your web browser?

Don't get addon happy and add loads, it will just bloat Firefox out and steer it away from being an INTERNET browser.

Plugins:

They seem to have just added themselves. I am sure I didn't add any of them! :p

I use the following:

Chromifox - Theme.

Ad Block Plus

Sits there doing things but it's not obvious it is doing anything.

Bug 447571 Workaround

Expand bookmarks toolbar help. Obviously installed as I had a problem!

Download Status Bar

I have my colours set so if it's downloading really slow, it's red, okay is yellow, good is green, really good (very fast) is bright green!

Extended Status Bar

This shows me how a page is loading like in Opera.

Video Download Helper

Good for getting HQ videos from YouTube if I want to watch them at another time. Not just YouTube either!

Download Them All

I used to use DAP (Download Accelerator Plus), then changed to FlashGet when using Internet Explorer. This does the same thing.

Grease Monkey

This confused me to what it actually was, but it basically enhances websites. I use Deviantart, so it adds a toolbar to make it look like the forum when replying to messages (so I can bold text, add pictures and such).

Also the INVALUABLE RapidShare downloader. When using Rapidshare, it will automatically downoad the files for me one after another, so I set 20 or so over night and in the morning, they are all downloaded.

No Script

Although on the whole it is good, there are a lot of sites that it automatically stops Javascript running on. It's still a good way of only letting some scripts run rather than not knowing what wants to run in a web page.

Open Download

Similar to IE's "Open / Run" dialog. Although this has been broken by the latest firefox update. Even though it is disabled, I am sure it's running :s

Organize Statusbar

Allows you to change the status bar, what is displayed and where.

Personal Menu

Allows you to change the File, Edit, View, Help menus to ONLY display the items you want. In fact, I have mine all hidden in one nice button (the wrench at the top left).

Smart Bookmarks Toolbar

Makes my bookmarks (or favourites for IE) only show the icons, no text. See the right hand side with all the icons.

Smooth Wheel

I have problems when scholling on some websites, so I used this to control scrolling speeds.

I know that's quite a few, but pretty much all of them, once you set them up, that's it. I love my layout, a love having bookmarks (or faves) right there for me to click and my internet browser shows me the things I need to know, not other information that I am interested in (like the weather as i have that as a desktop widget!).

I did have the New Tab Button Position installed but this has been broken by the last update of firefox and doesn't seem to even exist anymore?

Here's a shot of my browser: