Ok, so I thought, everyone has a post or a write up on this topic and why not, everyone has different opinion’s of what would be a useful extension based on our professions, preferences, habits, hardware, etc. This is the first post in a series of 3, this one being:
ยป Truly Essential
AdBlock Plus: The de facto must have extension; looking at the internet without this simply hurts my eyes. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
AdBlock Plus: Element Hiding Helper: A great little add-on to ABP that allows to block those pesky text ads.
Customize Google: Kills adsense ads, adds links to other engines, kills google tracking links and tons of other useful features. Makes Google more like…Google.
Google Preview: Inserts a preview thumbnail next to Google results.
IE Tab: Quickly open new tabs that use IE or switch to it if you notice a site isn’t playing well with FF. Should be built in at this point.
Download Statusbar: I love the download manager but find its implementation to be a bit clunky. This extension puts it in a small (or somewhat small) area of the status bar and allows for 1 click access to downloads.
Linky: Allows you to open all the links/images on a page in a new tab or window among other features. *EDIT*: There is a specially modified version of this by Arren Lex that sets the link limit to 999 and fixes an issue with trailing slashes.
UnPlug: Quickly save embedded media files (not just flash video, allows you to easily save anything that tries to play within your browser). I prefer this extension to some others because it works great with almost anything you throw at it
URL Fixer: Automatically fixes the common misspellings of .com, .net, .org, etc. Really this works so great, I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve reaped the benefits of having this installed.