Love it or hate it, FireFox has single-handedly rekindled the flames from the dying embers of the browser wars. With its customizability, FireFox leaves Opera playing catch-up and Internet Explorer dead on the floor. Whether you’re new to Firefox or an old hand, you might find this run-down of essential Firefox extensions useful the next time you step out on the Internet.
1. FlashGot
FlashGot is a download helper for FireFox. It’s not a download manager in itself, it simply passes download requests through to a download manager. FlashGot allows you to download one link, a group of selected links or every link on a given page with a single click or keystroke. FlashGot also supports a ‘Build Gallery’ function allowing you to generate your own customized TGP^H^H^Hmedia gallery based upon filters.
FlashGot supports over 20 different download managers on Windows alone, making it compatible with pretty much any download manager you prefer to use, ranging from the popular FlashGet, GetRight, LeechGet and Free Download Manager through to the more obscure like Thunder and Ukrainian Download Master.
2. AdBlock
AdBlock is an Ad Filtering plugin that does exactly that. Find an advert you don’t like? Right-click, adblock and never see it again. AdBlock also supports regular expressions to avoid blocking things unnecessarily. Just don’t use it here 
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3. FasterFox
Once you’ve got all your extensions and themes up and running, you might notice that things may be running a little slow. FasterFox is a nice and easy to use way of tweaking FireFox settings to get the best responses. Firefox uses a number of techniques, ranging from prefetching links, pipelining tweaks and network level gubbins through to rendering enhancements to make the on-screen experience smoother. The options (in the main options panel rather than the extensions one) provide four different settings ranging from default to ‘Turbo-Charged’ and a custom option for you mass de-tweakers (fnar!) out there.
4. StumbleUpon
Isn’t it strange how the best things ever can also be some of the most life-wrecking? StumbleUpon is one of those things. It’ll entertain you, help you learn more useless knowledge than you ever thought possible and quite possibly be a contributing factor in any relationship breakup you may have. StumbleUpon allows you to visit semi-random sites, then you can rate them and StumbleUpon will learn whether or not you like that type of site and tailor itself accordingly. What actually happens is that as you stumble more and more, the signal to noise ratio improves, and your life quality decreases accordingly. Dangerous, yet no-one should be without it.
5. SwitchProxy
SwitchProxy one of those extensions that at first you might not think is that useful, but proves itself within about 5 minutes of using it. Essential for anyone using Firefox on a laptop used at work and at home, but also useful for other reasons. I have a Tor gateway set up at home (if anyone wants me to document how I set it up, then post a comment) for anonymous browsing and using SwitchProxy I can flick between Torified and regular browsing with a couple of clicks. If you ever have a need for anonymous browsing (and in this day and age most people do, even if they don’t know it yet) then this is one extension you can’t do without.
Of course, there are many more FireFox extensions out there, but if you were faced with someone making the switch, what 5 extensions would you recommend?
“FireFox leaves Opera playing catch-up” um i’m sorry but opera has had all of the features that firefox has had for longer than firefox has existed, and most of them are better implimented than in firefox.
My top 5:
1) Greasemonkey – The extension that does whatever you want it to!
2) downTHEMall – Download any/all files on a page based on file-types.
3) ColorZilla – Beats taking a screenshot just to gank a colour from a page.
4) ForecastFox – I can’t believe how many people keep that bloaty (and spyware-installing) WeatherBug in their system tray instead of ForecastFox.
5) TabbrowserPreferences – Adds extra tabbed browsing preferences to the Options dialog.
Undisclosedpower: In which case, would you like to tell us which features from Opera that Firefox is lacking?
Rob, there’s definately some gold in your list. ColorZilla’s a new one, and definately one I’m going to give a try.
Firefox has many great extensions. I’ve tested a suite of FF extensions that work well together. Check out my site for more great FF extensions!
http://mightyjoefirefox.blogspot.com/
the tor setup would cool to see as a guide.