extensions

Shazou is a free Firefox add-on that maps and displays server information for the Web site you are currently visiting. Though its findings weren't always reliable, we still found it useful to have around.

The add-on places a tiny shortcut icon on your status bar. As you're browsing the Web, one click is all it takes to pull up the Web site's server location and domain owner, along with a MapQuest map of the location. The server location information includes the server name, IP address, organization, country, and city. The domain owner information includes the name and … Read more

Save time when you surf with this smart add-on that offers further recommendations based on your searches. We found its recommendations very helpful.

The program's Options menu allows you to enable specific search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Craigslist. You can also choose the maximum number of recommendations (up to five) for the program to fetch. A tiny bull's-eye icon appears next to each search result and it leads to a list of recommendations. Each recommendation was valid and relevant to the test searches we conducted. We could even drill down within the recommendations to keep … Read more

If you're a keyboard shortcut junkie in Google Reader, Gmail and Google Docs you might have noticed Google.com, the mother of all Google services, is a bit lacking in the keyboard shortcuts department. There is currently an official Google-sanctioned experimental keyboard shortcuts program you can opt into, although there's the slight chance that the company may one day kill it off. That and it won't remember to give you the shortcut keys the next time you search if you're not signed in to your Google account.

If both of these things are holding you back … Read more

It's free and lets you easily manage a proxy list from Firefox, but you'll need to install another program to use everything that ProxySel has to offer.

ProxySel fits snugly into your Firefox menu bar and features a drop-down menu for editing, sorting, and importing proxy lists. There is also a feature for easily adjusting your browser anonymity settings. Your proxy list also is displayed in a drop-down menu. Each proxy has a star-based rating system, with one star being OK, and four stars being superior. You can add your own rating to each proxy server. Beyond that, … Read more

It wasn't foolproof, but this unique Firefox add-on filters and hides specific kinds of comments posted on YouTube.

YouTube Comment Snob is easily set through its Options menu. Using check boxes, you can apply filters for comment content you want to hide. The options include comments that contain no capital letters or only capital letters, as well as excessive punctuation. You can also specify how many misspellings you are willing to accept. The option to hide comments with excessive capitalization was too similar to the option that hides comments with only capital letters, and we didn't think both … Read more

The unobtrusive design of this free Firefox add-on to read Live Bookmarks scored points with us, as did RSS Ticker's easy customization.

The program adds a slender feed bar right below your status bar, but through the Options menu you can choose to place it below your bookmarks toolbar. The Options menu also lets you change the feed update frequency, and the ticker speed. The black on white text was easy to read, and didn't interfere with our Web viewing. Likewise, the scrolling headlines were inconspicuous. We were able to easily add and remove feeds by simply selecting … Read more

Users of the Linux-based operating system Ubuntu can get quick access to its community forum with this free Firefox add-on.

The options that come with Ubuntu Forums Menu are few, and they simply give you the choice of displaying the links as a toolbar or accessing options in your context menu. A shortcut button would have been a more convenient option. But either way, another menu opens with quick links that take you to the forum's home page and subscribed threads. From the menu, you can also select from a list of support categories, various community discussions, and go … Read more

This handy little add-on falls under the category of tools you never knew you needed, but find extremely useful once you try it. Tab Scope conveniently lets you navigate all of your tabs without having to click back and forth between them.

When you hover your mouse over a tab, Tab Scope displays a small preview window that represents the tab's current Web page. Just like a browser, the preview window contains navigational buttons for moving forward and backward, refreshing the page, zooming in, and stopping the page load. The Options menu gives you control over the window size, … Read more

Yes, it is a one-trick pony, but this free Firefox add-on performs its single function well, allowing you to quickly resize your browser window with a click of a mouse button.

Yet Another Window Resizer operates via your context menu, giving you four preset dimension options, or letting you easily customize your own through the Options menu. In our tests, the browser window was instantly resized to our specifications with only a couple of clicks.

The functionality is limited, but this freeware provides a helpful service, it's easy to use, and it doesn't take up much space. We … Read more