Boost Firefox
What to do
- If you’ve got the Firefox Browser (if you don’t, read our Firefox Explained Article)
Let us show you a couple of free extensions that will enhance your Firefox experience. If you are not viewing this page with the Firefox browser, please do so before you continue on.
- Here are some great extensions for Firefox (all free). Extensions are add-ons which enhance the features of browser. For each extension, click on the name of the extension below to go that extension’s home page. On each page, click on the Install Now button. A pop-up window will emerge - wait for the countdown to end and then click on the install button. Once the plug-in is installed, a message will say that you need to restart the browser - but we recommend not restarting the browser until you’ve installed all the extensions:
Colorful Tabs Tab Mix Plus PDF Download IE Tab Scrapbook FasterFox
- Once you have installed all of the extensions, restart your browser.
A little more
Ok here’s a quick explanation of what each extension does. You should know that these extensions add a LOT of features to your browser, but we are going to highlight the most important, and provide you with links if you want to find out more information.
Colorful Tabs
Colorful Tabs makes your tabs different colors, now making it easier for you to differentiate between tabs.
To learn more about Colorful Tabs, click here.
Tab Mix Plus
Tab Mix Plus adds a lot of value to Firefox - notably, it puts the small red ‘x’ on each individual tab, so you can now close tabs by clicking on them.
To learn more about Tab Mix Plus, click here. The help document available is a PDF file.
PDF Download
PDF Download allows you to choose to open PDF files from the web in a separate tab, or to download them easily.
To learn more about PDF Download, click here.
IE Tab
There may be times when you want to open a link in Internet Explorer. With IE Tab, you can do so without leaving Firefox. Simple right click on the desired link, and select ‘Open in IE tab’ to mimic viewing the page through Internet Explorer.
You can learn more about IE Tab here.
Scrapbook
Have you ever wanted to save a webpage (as opposed to bookmarking it?). With Scrapbook, you can. Simply visit the page you want to save, and then click on the Scrapbook menu at the top of your Firefox browser. Select Capture Page and a copy of the page will be saved to your hard drive. To view the page in the future, simply click on the Scrapbook Menu and open up the page - the saved page will open in your Firefox browser. A great way to save those news stories you always wanted to keep for the future…think of Scrapbook as a way to take snapshots of webpages.
Scrapbook is pretty powerful, and has a lot of features. To learn more about what Scrapbook can do, click here. There is a PDF tutorial located near the bottom of the page.
Fasterfox
You know those flash ads that move across some webpages, and don’t stay in one place on a website? One of the many attributes of Fasterfox is that it blocks many of these ‘pop-up’ moving flash ads. Fasterfox also optimizes your browsing experience for some web pages - making some sites load faster.
To learn more about Fasterfox, click here.
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