Yes, it's true, porn addicts may have somewhat 'specialist' tastes. But when it comes to Firefox, they want much the same as the rest of us: great search tools, professional security, faster and easier downloads, and improved browsing privacy. They really just need these 10 top Firefox extensions, in fact - and so do you.
1. Protect your PC from malware
You don't have to visit the seedy side of the web to pick up a virus - even the best social networking sites regularly host all kinds of malware. But you can reduce the chance of infection by installing NoScript. This handy add-on blocks Javascript, Java, Flash and other executable content from running unless you explicitly allow it, and is a great way to keep yourself safe online.
2. Speedily search for images
Browse Google images and your results are split into blocks of 21. But use CoolIris and you'll get all your results displayed on a 3D photo wall, a much faster and easier way to find the images you need. It only works with some sites, unfortunately, but as these include Google, Flickr, Picasa, Yahoo!, Photobucket, Facebook and MySpace then you'll still have plenty to browse. Especially as it searches and displays YouTube videos, too. Give it a try.
3. Easily open multiple links
Sometimes your image searches will lead you to forums or websites with large thumbnail galleries. You could do the right-click "open link in new tab" thing for every thumbnail, but it's much easier to use Linky. Just select the thumbnails you want to view, right-click an empty part of the page, and click Linky > Open All Image Links In Tabs to open them automatically. A real time-saver.
4. Watch videos in your sidebar
Organising your images is easy. Videos? That's more of a challenge, but YouPlayer can help, at least with the big sites (YouTube, Google Video, MySpace and Metacafe). Drag and drop video links into the playlist and you can play them in your sidebar, without having to revisit the original site each time. It can download videos, too, but if that's your main interest then we'd recommend a more specialist tool like Video DownloadHelper.
5. Keep your bookmarks online
If others make use of your PC occasionally then you might not want them to see your more, hmm, specialist bookmarks. Use StartAid and you can save your favourite sites online, instead. The service imports your existing bookmarks so it's easy to get started, and you can then access them from any convenient PC.
6. Block annoying ads
Porn sites used to be renowned for bombarding you with popups and banner ads, but now it's common practice just about everywhere. Fortunately Adblock Plus will block just about everything, saving you time and ensuring you only download the content you need. It can take a little while to set this extension up to suit your requirements, though, so it pays to spend a few minutes reading the documentation at adblockplus.org before you start.
7. At-a-glance download monitoring
When you're downloading several large files then it can be annoying to keep switching to the download window to see how they're progressing. But there is another way. Install the Download Status Bar and every download generates a new button on the status bar, so it's visible whatever tab you happen to be using. Each button includes a progress bar for easy download monitoring, and you can right-click the button for options to pause or cancel the download.
8. Free up valuable screen space
If you're spending all this time viewing images and videos then you'll want to display them at the highest possible screen resolution. And that's where Tiny Menu comes in. It replaces the menu bar with a tiny pop-up menu that appears just before the navigation buttons, saving a surprising amount of real estate and letting you squeeze more images onto the screen.
9. Download everything. Now
If you just want to quickly download all the links, movies or audio clips on a page, and at the maximum possible speed, then give FlashGot a try. It's also able to grab video clips while they're playing, and integrates with all the most popular download accelerators (and plenty of obscure ones, too).
10. Maintain your browsing privacy
It's always the same. No sooner are you checking out a website you really shouldn't, when your boss/ partner/ some other random annoying person turns up and shows great interest in exactly what you're doing. The solution? Install hideBad. Press the customisable hotkey and it'll close your current tabs, then optionally delete your history, cookies and more. But don't worry - once they've gone the previous tabs may be recovered and you can carry on where you left off.
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Now read The 10 lamest Firefox add-ons
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