If you haven’t already, go ahead and read the 20 must-have Firefox extensions article by ComputerWorld.
Done? So fast? Any ways, let me get on with my post. Now that we are on the same page, I’ll tell you why you shouldn’t gave read it in the first place. Any ways, don’t use all the extensions reviewed in it.
Stuffing twenty extensions will give you a feature-rich but extremely slow Firefox. A clean install of Firefox without any extensions can take up anything between 50-75MB of memory. Imagine what the memory utilization will be if you were to install each of the extensions mention in the above article? Having more RAM might not help because because Firefox is develop-ed in such a way that it uses more memory on systems that have more memory available. So the most viable solution is reduce the number of extensions you equip your Firefox with.
Another issue with this article is that it recommends use extensions that offer features that are now in-built inside Firefox, or are available via other extensions included in this very list .
Chuck Session Manager
The first culprit in this list is the SessionManager extension. The ability to save and restore browser sessions is a regular feature in all Firefox releases since version 2.0. Firefox now offers to restore will offer to restore your session after a crash. It will automatically restore your session after installing updates or on using the restart button from the Add-ons Manager.
This feature is disabled by default, to enable it, choose Tools → Options → Main. In the Startup panel, choose Show my windows and tabs from last time“. Firefox will now restore your tabs and form data to it’s state when it closed.
To be fair to the author, SessionManager allows you to restore multiple sessions.
Bonus Tip: Press Ctrl-Shift-T to restore a tab that you accidentally closed.
Dump ColorZilla & Measure It; Embrace Web Developer
In wonder why the author included the ColorZilla and MeasureIt extensions in a list of must-have extensions for Web developers. These are useful extensions but offer limited features. The only extension than most Web developers would ever need is the Web Developer extension, which figures on this list as well. This extension adds a toolbar full of tools that allow you to highlight images; view and edit CSS; outline captions, validate HTML & CSS, and God knows what not! Before I forget the Web Developer extension also displays the colors used in a Web page (Information → Display Color Information) and measure everything in your browser (Miscellaneous → Display Ruler)
Happy browsing!
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