Mozilla released version 1.5 of the ever-free Firefox web browser two days ago. You probably know how excited about this.
My favorite things about this new release are:
- Faster page loading (the speeds are, like, two froghairs faster!)
- Improved rendering engine
- Improved Options menu
- Improved tab control
- Support for SVG and the new canvas tag
As for extensions, there are many new ones that do ultra-kewl things previously unavailable in Firefox. Here is what my standard extensions are (for now):
- Nuke Anything Enhanced – Allows you to right-click anything on a web page and hide it. Great for hiding annoying graphics.
- MeasureIt – Draw a box on the screen and get height/width measurements. Great for aligning page elements when designing.
- Web Developer Toolbar – The third most-used tool in my arsenal, only behind Dreamweaver and Photoshop.
- Bookmark Synchronizer – For keeping my 1200+ bookmarks the same between the office, home, and my laptop. Requires an FTP server to act as a go-between.
- Adblock – One of the best extensions ever. This reduces popups and ads on web sites you visit. Includes ability to block pesky Flash overlay ads. Did it miss something? Right-click it and choose “AdBlock This” and poof!
- Adblock Filterset.g Updater – A companion to Adblock, this keeps your list of blockable ads updated behind the scenes. I can’t remember the last time I got a popup ad.
- PDF Download – Lets you choose whether to open or download a PDF when clicked, rather than opening it automatically, which is Firefox’s default behavior.
- Viamatic foXpose – This must be seen to be believed, and is only available in Firefox 1.5. The extension sets up a button that instantly displays screen shots of all of your open tabs on one page, allowing you to click the one you want to jump to.
- Tab Preview – This one displays a little thumbnail of the tab contents when you hover your mouse over an inactive tab. Quite cool.
Know of any other good ones I missed?