Firefox 2.0 Must Have Add-ons

In the wake of the final release of Internet Explorer 7, I made available a must-have add-ons list. Then and there, it became obvious to me that Firefox 2.0 deserved no less of a treatment. Mozilla Foundation's open source browser was finalized and then released with less of a fanfare than Internet Explorer 7, and understandably so. But with a market share estimated at 12.46%, Mozilla is hardly a case worth ignoring or a discriminatory treatment. Therefore? Firefox 2.0 must have add-ons. An exaggeration? Maybe in some cases, but the benefits far surpass the installation and management troubles. Can Firefox function without them? Perfectly! The add-ons add not color or taste to the browser, but simply nuances. I invite you to enhance Firefox 2.0 and for this we are making all the add-ons presented herein available right here on Softpedia.

Starting at the beginning is not as easy a task as it might seem, since I have compelled a list of no less than 16 add-ons. So I am going to start by recommending the truly must have add-ons.

Download Statusbar will get the sometimes annoying Firefox download window out of the way of your browsing and enable download management via a compact status bar, enhancing the standard download window.

And since we are on the subject, what about DownThemAll!, a download manager/accelerator built inside Firefox delivering, on top of the administrative capabilities, an increased speed, up to 400%?

Do you want fast, easy and intuitive access to FTP servers? Then FireFTP is the add-on for you. Its capabilities are not limited to file transfer, also permitting directory comparison, syncing directories while navigating, SSL encryption, file hashing.

FlashGot manages single and massive downloads via an array of supported external Download Managers for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD. "FlashGot offers also a Build Gallery functionality which helps to synthesize full media galleries in one page from serial contents scattered on several pages, for easy and fast download all," informs its maker, Giorgio Maone.

For an account with jeteye.com, you can benefit from packaging, sharing, viewing, organizing, interacting and communicating on the World Wide Web via Jeteye.

The Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer makes your Firefox bookmarks machine independent while keeping them synchronized.

It delivers support for Winamp, iTunes, Yahoo Music Engine, Pandora, Foobar2000, Windows Media Player, Xbox Media Center, Musicmatch, Quintessential, J. River, jetAudio, XMPlay, MediaMonkey, Media Player Classic, Sonique, wxMusik, Real Player, XMMS, Noatun, Juk, Amarok, Music Player Daemon, Rhythmbox and a plethora of other players. FoxyTunes enables you to listen to your favorite tunes while you surf the web.

del.icio.us Bookmarks integrates Firefox 2.0 with del.icio.us, the social bookmarking service.

JAJAH - Web-Activated Telephony integrates call functionality into Firefox 2.0 combining phone communications with web browsing.

StumbleUpon enables you to channelsurf the best-reviewed websites.

Yoono, on top of synchronizing your favorites across computers, it also suggests websites gathered from users with similar web navigation behavior.

Pronto aims to be the most comprehensive online product search, centralizing data about 47 million products.

Performancing is a blog editor designed to be integrated with Firefox 2.0 while Sage is a RSS and Atom feed aggregator add-on.

Blueorganizer is a personalization extension for Firefox 2.0

And if you are a web developer, you simply mustn't do without Web Developer.