It should be a surprise to nobody that whenever you visit a page on the web, information is gathered from you for the purposes of statistics and advertising. If you are conscious of this and want to keep an eye on, and possibly block, some of the companies capturing your data then the Firefox add-on Ghostery is for you. Ghostery sees the invisible web –...

If you view a lot of pictures online and have wanted to make the preview images larger (or smaller), then a Firefox add-on you might be interested in is the aptly named Image Zoom. From the author’s description: Easily zoom in, zoom out, fit image to screen or set custom zoom on individual images within a web page. All this can be done by using the context...

Both Firefox and KeePass are popular among PCMech readers, so it makes sense that the combination of these two would be a perfect match. So if you want to ditch the integrated Firefox password manager in favor of KeePass, give the KeeFox extension a try. KeeFox is still in beta, but has a pretty nice feature list. There is a bit of configuration required and a...

Whenever a new version of Firefox is released, there is always the possibility that some of your add-ons will not be compatible. When this happens you can either wait for the add-on to be upgraded, not upgrade Firefox or go without the extension. Alternately, you can easily ‘hack’ the add-on to force compatibility. The process is pretty simple: you...

One thing which has been preventing me from upgrading to Firefox 3.6 is the lack of support for IE Tab which, as you may know, allows you to run a site using the IE rendering engine inside of a Firefox tab. I need this for some sites such as Sharepoint and the Virtual Server control panel (so I don’t have to open IE directly). If you are facing the same...

In case you have not heard, there have been several malicious Firefox extensions discovered. File this one under the “it was bound to happen” category. It is important to remember that whenever you install a Firefox add-on, you are installing executable code which can run in conjunction with the browser. Add-ons can access anything Firefox can...

Whenever you visit a web page, there is loads of information available on it from various sources. Is the site known to be malicious? What is the Google Page Rank? Is it safe for kids? All of this information and loads more is available instantly via the LinkExtend Firefox add-on. LinkExtend provides meta-site-ratings for computer safety, child safety, company...

Firefox users who constantly like to make tweaks or experiment with settings will be interested in the PrefBar 4 add-on which allows you to configure a toolbar with these settings available right there. The [...] preferences toolbar was designed to give the user more control over the pages viewed, and to allow the power browser to use mozilla [Firefox] with...

Whenever you have to perform repetitive tasks on a regular basis, a good thing to consider is automating the task via macros. For tasks you perform in your browser, take a look at the iMacros add-on for Firefox. iMacros was designed to automate the most repetitious tasks on the web. If there’s an activity you have to do repeatedly, just record it in iMacros....

Out of the box, Firefox comes Google search ready. Both the default home page and the search strip return the respective Google results, so an add-on which makes improvements to your Firefox Google searches is OptimizeGoogle. OptimizeGoogle is a Firefox extension that enhances Google search results by adding extra information (like links to Yahoo, Ask, MSN etc)...

Probably the most used function in browsers is the back button. Odds are when you are done reading this you will use the back button to return the main page. So the easier it is to invoke the back function, the better. A Firefox add-on which make this about as easily as it gets is Middle Click To Go Back. Functionality is exactly what you would guess, but it...

Out of the box, the Firefox add bookmark interface is very simple/limited (version 3.5 at least). As such, if you have a detailed folder breakdown you have to go through the drop list menu to get the interface where you can organize the new addition. If you do a lot of bookmarking this can be annoying, so to help with this check out the OpenBook add-on. This...

One of the big no-no’s in online security is using the same user name and password for different sites. The reason is simple: if one site gets compromised, your login information for other sites is now “floating around”. While having separate passwords is great in theory, practicing it is another story. To help with this, check out the Firefox...

About a month ago, I wrote a tip on how to clean your internal Firefox database using a manual process. While this method works, a few of our readers commented on an add-on which automates this process (thanks guys). This is a great tool to know about, so I thought I would pass it along. Vacuum Places Improved 1: Defragments your Firefox “Places”...

Unless you are organized and disciplined, over time bookmarks can accumulate to the point where there are so many you don’t know what you have. If this sounds familiar, then you should check out the Firefox add-on Bookmark Duplicate Detector. Detects Duplicate Bookmarks when bookmarks are added and specify where is the previous URL. You can also search and...

Firefox users who frequent YouTube, may be interested in the extension: Better YouTube. [This extension] enhances YouTube with Greasemonkey user scripts, that offer options like the FlowPlayer “doesn’t start till you hit play” viewer, clean “theater” view, and links to download the video automatically. With this add-on installed,...

If you like to take total control over your browsing session which means controlling individual cookies, then a Firefox add-on you need is CookieSafe. This extension will allow you to easily control cookie permissions. It will appear on your statusbar. Just click on the icon to allow, block, or temporarily allow the site to set cookies. You can also view or...

If you frequent websites where the pages are constantly updated and you have to click the refresh button to get the latest information, rather than manually clicking it yourself, check out the ReloadEvery Firefox add-on. Reloads web pages every so many seconds or minutes. The function is accessible via the context menu (menu you get when you right click on a web...