12 Useful Firefox Add-ons For Every Serious Blogger

by Janith

Firefox is one of the most recognized competitors to Microsoft’s horrible Internet Explorer (IE8) because of it’s vast functionality and quite impressive flexibility. Straight out of the box, Firefox is a stable and useful browser, but with a few plugins and themes you can really customise to look and function as par with your heart’s content.

Similarly to pleasing our eyes or making cool buttons; there are some very useful plugins to help us bloggers improve our blogging skills. Today, I want to showcase 12 Firefox Add-ons that every  blogger should have! This is an extension to a previous guest post that had some great Firefox plugins for blogging as well..

Firstly, I want to apologise to all our readers and Alex for my recent yet prolonged absence. I’ve been inactive for about a week due to a series of unfortunate events. However, all is well now and I’m back in the ball-game :)

If you aren’t using Firefox already, you can download it here. The latest stable version is compatible with an array of operating systems and languages. You can choose the one that is applicable for you. After downloading and installing it, return back to this post to super-charge your FireFox/Blogging experience!

12 Firefox Add-ons

1) Brief – RSS Reader

brief_rss_reader Out of the many organised RSS Readers, I find that Brief is the one that stands out. With several nice features such as viewing full articles/headlines or excerpts only, a built-in search function, ability to use keyboard-shortcuts and many more other cool customisations.

> Download!

2) Read It Later

read_it_later Read It Later allows you to do exactly that; read it later. When you browsing the internet; either casually or in search of specific information – how many times have you come across something else that is of interest to you? However,  you don’t really have the time to diverge your attention – but using this tool; you can easily get back to it.This is a very useful tool for the heavy-stumbler.

> Download!

3) AutoPaauto_pagerger

AutoPager is a simple tool that loads the next page, when you reach the end of your current page.  This, as said in the said in the description, is useful when viewing search results on websites such as Google, Yahoo, MSN or anything or search engine. When your near the bottom of the results of one page, AutoPager will automatically load page 2, and so forth.

> Download!

4) FireShot

fireshot FireShot allows you to take screenshots of any website; either of the complete page or a partial-shot. However, this tool also allows you to annotate (make notes) and edit the image in real-time. This makes FireShot superior to most screen-capturing programs because something’s don’t make sense after some time – so chuck in a quick note on the side to help you remember!

> Download!

5) RemindreminderfoxerFox

ReminderFox “displays and manages lists of date-based reminders and ToDo’s” – what else can be said?

The reason why this tool is on this list is because of its simplicity. It’s a simple program that notifies users of previously added dates/events.

> Download!

6) Headup

headup Headup has several key uses but one of the more significant purposes of this tool is the ability to enhance Google Search Results. According to many reviews, and personal experiences – Headup retrieves more targeted results than when running a search on the conventional Google SE.

> Download!

7) Instablogs Submitter

instablog_submitter Instablogs Submitter, which plays on the word “instant”, allows you to submit any website/link/image/anything in fact you find that you might think is newsworthy.

It’s like a Digg or giving something a Stumble but just easier; no logging and all – just Highlight, Right Click and Submit!

> Download!

8) SkewzBar

skewz_bias In the blogosphere – your personal touch to content goes a long way. However, it also has a major down-side too; because your content can get TOO biased; especially on factual posts (doesn’t include personal opinions, stories and/or creative pieces). So, rooting from this comes a community called the Skewz that rates content for its “bias-ness”. You can check how biased is the content your reader is rated by the Skewz community. Pretty cool, IMO.

> Download!

9) Feedly

feedly Feedly allows you to transform your homepage in a magazine-like page, where you can place different excerpts from different sources such as your Twitter profile, Google Reader, Frienfeed, Delicious and YouTube. Its a RSS-dependent tool, and most websites do offer RSS subscription – even Blogussion ;)

> Download!

10) WordPress Helper

wordpress_helper New to WordPress.com? This Firefox addon provides a bunch of very useful tools and help to maximise the functionality of your WordPress.com blog! Not only for beginners but anyone can use this tool to identify if the page you are viewing is of WordPress-based – sometime’s the custom themes can be so good; you won’t even know it’s WordPress!

> Download!

11) Resizeable Textarea

resize_text Ever come across a text-area that you just don’t have enough space to write in? Sure they expand with the “scroller” but sometimes, it can get really annoying. If you can’t see what you typed 2 lines ago – then the web-developer behind that page is pretty.. ignorant to be honest. Well at least small text-areas are a worry of the past.

> Download!

12) Update Scanner

update_scanner Even though RSS Subscription is a recognised feature of modern-day websites; not all of them offer it. Personally; it is pretty sad because a form of subscription is almost compulsory for a web-master’s success. Having said that; there are still many websites out there without any subscription services available. If you know of such a site and want to still subscribe to its updates; this tool will save you the trouble.

> Download!

There WE GO! These are just some of the plugins avaible for Firefox – you can find many more over at Mozzilla’s Addon Showcase, specifically the Blogging Category. Do you use any other Firefox plugins for blogging? Not only Firefox, there are plugins for other browsers too – share them if you please in the comments below :)

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YingHang June 19, 2009 at 10:03 am

Hey Janith,
A double thumbs up post but guess what, FireFox lags like hell on my computer. Had to settle with Safari instead.
.-= YingHang´s last blog ..What Really Drive Sales? =-.

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Janith June 20, 2009 at 4:55 am

Hey YingHang,
Thank you for dropping by and leaving a comment :)

Firefox is more memory-intensive that most browsers and there’s no denial there. You can actually speed it up quite a few ways; I might cover that in another post soon. I’ll see what I can do with it.

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URL Masking June 19, 2009 at 10:31 am

Hey Janith, thanks for sharing your ultimate Firefox addon artillery. I am a huge FF user and fan, I have lots of addons I find useful for day to day work, will definitely add these addons you enumerated here. Thanks mate! :)

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Janith June 20, 2009 at 4:56 am

No worries man, glad you find them useful. These are just some of the plugins found in just ONE category over at the FireFox Addon website; there’s just so many.

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Vitaly June 19, 2009 at 3:14 pm

Some good items on the list, although I wouldn’t agree that all of those…skewz for example…are “must have.”

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Janith June 20, 2009 at 4:57 am

None of these are “must have” but they are useful IMO. Most of these aren’t absolutely vital as you’ve said but they can so easily add a whole new dimension to your blogging experience :)

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Richael | Domain Marvelous June 19, 2009 at 5:26 pm

Thanks for the follow up post of “Firefox Makes Blogging Easier”, from where I managed to install a hell lot of helper addons to enhance my blogging experience. I find headup an extremely useful plugin, but will need time to test all others.

Great post, once again :)
.-= Richael | Domain Marvelous´s last blog ..Can .sex (or the new gTLDs) finally dethrone .com? =-.

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Alex June 19, 2009 at 10:15 pm

I think I am going to look through the list as well. But my Firefox is already really slow, so I will have to budget. :/

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Janith June 20, 2009 at 5:00 am

Headup is a very useful tool indeed, it has many useful features within it. I really like their “enhanced Search Results” because they’ve actually returned some very informative sites and delivered the content I was specifically searching for :)

Thank you for the appraisal Richael, appreciate it dearly :)

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xphunt3r June 20, 2009 at 2:55 am

its a great collection.These tools really help me a lot for blogging
.-= xphunt3r´s last blog ..TUTORIAL: Creating A Simple, Nice Looking Animal Portrait In Photoshop CS4 =-.

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Abdul June 20, 2009 at 7:04 am

#2 has the same link to the #1 plugin. Thanks to this list, I’ve installed #9 and #2 :) Should make my life alittle easier since I’m news-aholic :)
.-= Abdul´s last blog ..How To Build Backlinks Through Blog Commenting =-.

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Janith June 20, 2009 at 8:05 am

Thanks Abdul, I’ve changed to point to the right URL. That’s just carelessness on my part :P
PS: #9 Feedly is awesome; really brings all your news sources together.

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Abdul June 20, 2009 at 8:15 am

No problem; and yeah #9 is brilliant, I’m setting it up right now too. I made a category with blogs in the same niche as mine so that way I can comment on new blog posts to get a link-back, and of-course stay up to date with the industry without having to spend endless hours browsing :)
.-= Abdul´s last blog ..How To Build Backlinks Through Blog Commenting =-.

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Mida June 28, 2009 at 1:51 pm

Very nice list, actually these add ons should save you more time, thanks
.-= Mida´s last blog ..How To Convert dmg To iso with dmg2iso =-.

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Phaoloo July 4, 2009 at 8:07 am

Thanks for the great list.
I find Read It Later is awesome. I usually copy the url and paste it in a text file so that I can read them later. But it’s so uncomfortable.
.-= Phaoloo´s last blog ..TimeLeft – Manage Your Time The Smarter Way =-.

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Rahul Jadhav July 4, 2009 at 2:21 pm

Nice list. Testing Instablogs now
.-= Rahul Jadhav´s last blog ..Twitter Ad On Television =-.

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V.C July 6, 2009 at 11:17 pm

When I just started browsing net, I’m used to use firefox. And I still use it like the best browser that I’ve ever use.
I just need some tips and trick to make it faster and faster :)
.-= V.C´s last blog ..Daily Horoscopes for July 7, 2009 =-.

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Lucas Tadeu August 18, 2009 at 2:35 pm

Great set of tool, thanks for sharing.
.-= Lucas Tadeu´s last blog ..lucast182: @synchroniah oiii doruuuuuuuu =D. Tá chovendo aí também? *meu mouse quebrou D:* =-.

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Wolf92 October 22, 2009 at 8:05 am

For information on relevant state laws, consult an attorney. ,

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saurabh gautam July 23, 2010 at 9:33 am

woh its very impotant pics and detail and very useful knoeledge

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