Firefox & Thunderbird Extensions and Themes - FREE and Recommended

[nChrist]

Brothers and Sisters,

I know that quite a few of us use Firefox, and I also know that some might not know about all of the outstanding extras that can be added to it completely FREE. SO, I thought it might be nice to share information about various Mozilla (Firefox - Thunderbird) extensions and themes that are favorites and highly recommended by various users here.

First, I'll tell you that I use Firefox as a browser and Thunderbird as my email program. They are designed to work together, and I'm very happy with both of them. I know that ratings of safety go up and down with various threats that are currently on the Internet, but I would have to say that I generally think that both of them are much safer to use than Microsoft Internet Explorer and Outlook or Outlook Express.

So, overall safety and functions for various programs are obviously going to be a matter of opinion. At the present, Firefox and Thunderbird have the highest ratings by several well-known reviewers. Most generally, here are the comments:

1 - Smaller, more efficient, and faster program use.

2 - Safer to use.

3 - Many more options to choose from because of hundreds of extensions and themes that are made available by programmers who want to contribute to FREE, Open Source programs.

I must say that I agree with the reviews, and that would simply be my opinion. I know that I have experienced less problems with my computer since I started using them. I also know there is a huge Mozilla Community that handles security issues quickly, so there are regular updates to Firefox and Thunderbird that continue to make both programs faster, safer, and have more features. I must add that the growing number of extensions and themes add many choices for users that are simply not available with anything else. Let me first give a small explanation of what extensions and themes are:

Extensions - add-ons for Firefox and Thunderbird that add functions not available to the programs. If you get these from the official Mozilla site, they are approved by a large number of programmers and rated by a huge number of users. For these reasons, I never use themes or extensions except from the official Mozilla site. There are literally hundreds of choices, and many things can be done with Firefox and Thunderbird that can't be done with any other browser or email program.

https://addons.mozilla.org/

Themes - changes to the appearance of the program - colors - styles - menus - etc. Many of the themes are very functional and involve much more than just appearance. As an example, they make themes for people with poor or failing eyesight who really enjoy larger fonts, buttons, and menus. There are styles to make the younger folks happy and styles to make the older folks happy. Each theme may also have different kinds of buttons and icons to suit the individual person's tastes. I think this is a great idea because you aren't stuck with a one size fits all type approach. Again, they are approved by the programmers and rated by huge numbers of people if you get them from the official Mozilla site.

So, I guess this first one can be a recommendation from me that Firefox and Thunderbird are excellent programs - in my opinion. YES, I do think they are far superior to other browsers and email clients, AND THEY ARE FREE. I must add that the support for the programs is MASSIVE and involves many languages around the world.

Please feel free to list your favorite extensions and themes here. I'm not aware of any extensions or themes that cost money, but this is only for completely FREE extensions and themes.

Love In Christ,
Tom

[nChrist]

Brothers and Sisters,

Here's a little post to help those of you who are thinking about switching to Firefox and Thunderbird. OR, maybe you just want more information, check out resources for additional information, or get news about what's in the works.

I did mention in the previous post that the Mozilla Community is huge, and many programmers are working on making Firefox and Thunderbird better by the day. As of this moment, the latest and greatest of both programs in what they call the full and stable releases are at version 1.5.0.7. In the background, programmers are working on versions up to 3.0, but the builds in between are for folks who are pros and enjoy working the bugs out of new releases. I would not recommend this unless you truly do know a lot about computers and have a background in programing.

Here are the two links that I use for the latest and greatest STABLE releases designed for the public:

Firefox Browser
http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

Thunderbird Email Program
http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/

If you feel that you really know what you're doing and want to work with the developers on the cutting edge products, you will need to sign up with the developers. You should easily find links for that on the above pages, but be ready for some work if you do. The same is true for the Mozilla add-ons. You should find links to sign up as a developer for extensions and themes at the following two links:

Firefox Extensions and Themes
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/

Thunderbird Extensions and Themes
https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/

Regular folks use these same links to get already approved themes and extensions for Firefox and Thunderbird, but they do have huge numbers of people involved in making better themes and extensions or new themes and extensions.

Love In Christ,
Tom

[nChrist]

I really am interested to hear what everyone likes, and that's one of the reasons why I wanted to get this started. I look forward to hearing about your favorites, what they do, and why you recommend them.

So, here's a start for my most favorite extension for Firefox:  Scrapbook.

ScrapBook

I've been using ScrapBook almost as long as I have been using Firefox. It's a very unique tool that adds some real power to what you can save, catalog, and retrieve later on.

You simply highlight an area of a web page with your mouse, right click, and give the save as name you want for the portion of the web site you want to store and retrieve. I started out using it for Bible studies and quickly learned that it was good for just about any piece of a web site that you want to name, store, and retrieve later. One of the interesting things is that it saves the portion of the web site in exactly the same format on the page, so what you store looks exactly like it did on the web site.

One doesn't have to be very creative to come up with a working file type system that helps you retrieve things quickly. ScrapBook will search and retrieve by anything (names, dates, subject, web page, portions of names, etc., etc.). I started making folders with general subject areas to save my clips in, and that really helps a lot when it comes time to finding something. The ironic thing is that the ScrapBook would still work just fine without any kind of a filing system at all. ScrapBook will also search in the body of whatever you saved, so you could quickly find anything except pictures. YES - it does an outstanding job of saving pictures, but there is no text to search inside the picture, so you need to use a little more common sense in the name you give it or the comments that you assign to it. YES - there is also a comment field you can fill in for those things that would be extremely difficult to find without it.

ScrapBook has had consistently high ratings just about from the beginning, and it is used by all kinds of folks who do research or like to collect bits and pieces of various types of information that can be compiled and retrieved later. ScrapBook actually makes a database of the things that you collect, so you need to remember to hit the "refresh" command from time to time and keep the database completely up to date for the fastest searches. Let's say that you are researching Bible Prophecy on several different sites and you find bits and pieces that you want to study later. Scrapbook is perfect for this and will collect and store only what you want. You can later search by "key word" or literally anything you can think of (i.e. Rapture, Second Coming, Scripture portion, etc.).

Now, here's one of the best parts - you can use the bits and pieces that you save in other programs that will handle that type of content. "HTML" is the primary content you will be working with, so you can actually cut and paste anything you want into an HTML editor. A good example for folks who don't like to spend money is Open Office. You can also retrieve information from ScrapBook on the fly while you're browsing or even composing a message on the forum. ScrapBook opens a window in Firefox and you retrieve the information immediately. In conclusion, ScrapBook is a first class addition to Firefox, and I really enjoy using it for many purposes. It's completely safe, and it doesn't interfere with anything. The menus are really just common sense, so ScrapBook is easy to learn how to use. If you've ever tried to cut and paste information from the Internet into something you can use later, ScrapBook is for you.

Love In Christ,
Tom

[Pizza_Mahal]

My Favorite extensions is
Adblock plus (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1865/)

IE Tab (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1419/)

Tab Mix Plus (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1122/)

FlashGot (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/220/)

Flashblock (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/433/)

And lot more! Thing I just show you are very useful!

[nChrist]

Hello Pizza_AL,

I'm using all of those except tab mix plus and flashblock.

I've already said that my favorite is ScrapBook, and it still is in the new Firefox. I'm trying a few new ones right now that I really like.

Wizz RSS News Reader - I know there are several ways now to get news feeds quick and easy, but the Wizz News Reader adds a ton of power and features that the others don't offer. One of the main things I like about it is being able to set it up in many ways to choose how the feeds are displayed. You can set this one to either automatically update all subscribed feeds at the times that you configure, or you can manually update when you want to. This has so many features that it's hard to believe it's FREE. It's also very fast, even on slow dial-up connections like mine. As far as I know, this extension does not use any system resources at all until it is used, so it doesn't slow your computer down.

CustomizeGoogle - This is great and a real winner. When you do a search, it automatically includes many other top search engines. It also removes advertising, including the XXX stuff that some folks trick the search engines into putting in various search results. Again, as far as I know, this extension does not use any system resources at all until it is used, so it doesn't slow your computer down at all. When you do a search, it returns about 10 times as many results.

Firefox Extension Backup - This one does what the name suggests - it allows you to click and make a backup of all your extensions in case you have a system crash or something else happens to mess up your configurations. Again, no system resources are used until you use it, so it doesn't slow your computer down.

Of the three above, I would say that the Wizz RSS News Reader is the most fun. If you decide to experiment with a News Reader, I highly recommend that you visit the page on Christians Unite for Christian RSS Feeds. Our ADMIN did a ton of work on this, and it's wonderful. You will see a menu item on the left of each forum page called "Christian RSS Feeds". It will save you a ton of time in finding great and completely safe Christian Feeds that the entire family can use.

Love In Christ,
Tom

Psalms 121:7 NASB  The LORD will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul.

[nChrist]

Brothers and Sisters,

I also want to add a few suggestions that might save you a lot of time and frustration.

Firefox and Thunderbird come in a variety of release numbers. Generally, the older releases have a number of 1.0 or below. These are still excellent, but many improvements have been made in the newer releases. Many of those improvements deal with speed, security, and added features, so I suggest that you use the newest releases.

Releases of a number of 1.07 was a major release, but this release is getting pretty old now.

Releases of a number of 1.5.0 and above was also a major release, and tons of very positive changes were made. This is a fairly recent release. This series went up to 1.5.0.7 in the last major release of the Thunderbird Email Program, but the latest release for the Firefox Browser is 2.0. YES - the Firefox 2.0 is a complete release, not a beta or one still in testing. I'm using Firefox 2.0 right now, and it's great. The last full release for the Thunderbird Email Program is still 1.5.0.7, but they are working on newer releases right now.

I mentioned the version numbers of Firefox and Thunderbird because they determine what extensions and themes can be used. You must consider your version before you think about adding an extension or a theme. The release notes for each extension and theme clearly state what that particular extension or theme will work with. If you install an extension or a theme on the wrong program version, it probably won't do anything bad except generate an error message that the extension or theme is not designed to work with that version of the program. Most of the time, the program will simply refuse to install it, but worse things could happen. So, I would highly recommend that you know the version of your installed Firefox and Thunderbird before you shop for extensions and themes.

Just for information, there are a huge number of programmers all over the world working on new versions of Firefox and Thunderbird. As an example, I know that programmers are already working on Firefox and Thunderbird versions of over 3.0 right now. They are obviously beta versions, and an army of people are working on bugs, new features, new speed, new security, new extensions, and new themes. The only reason I can find for all of this effort is to provide outstanding and FREE software. Average people just don't have the money to purchase commercial software these days, so many average people just didn't have many capabilities. I must also add that the Firefox Browser and the Thunderbird Email programs are designed up front for a large variety of add-on programs. Some folks call these add-ons plug-ins, but the Mozilla programmers call them extensions - an extension of the functions of the host program. I must add that the FREE extensions for Firefox and Thunderbird many times replace their commercial equivalents, and many times they are actually better than their commercial equivalents. Take a look at all of the available Firefox and Thunderbird extensions, and you will see many examples of features that elsewhere are only available in commercial programs.

Please don't think that the FREE programs and extensions for Firefox and Thunderbird are lower in quality simply because they are FREE. This simply is NOT true. I mentioned Mozilla above, and some of you might not have heard the company name of "Mozilla". Mozilla is simply the parent company name of several suites of FREE programs. I think that Mozilla currently offers at least three suites of browser and email type programs. Some might be made for platforms other than Windows, but I've never taken the time to find out. One suite of programs is called "Mozilla", and another suite of programs is called "Sea Monkey". I don't know anything about their other groups of programs, but I do know they are very popular. The primary reason they are popular is that they are OUTSTANDING AND FREE! They offer many choices that average people simply can't afford to buy. It's really not ironic that these free programs also receive the highest ratings in software reviews. As an example, Firefox and Thunderbird are both rated NUMBER ONE right now by many independent reviewers.

Love In Christ,
Tom

John 10:11 NASB  "I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.

[Pizza_Mahal]

This is my firefox view
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v512/Pizza_Al/Personal/Desktop%20Theme/2006-10-24_190649.jpg
Yeah I used Wizz RSS News Reader & CustomizeGoogle! Is it ScrapBook is samething to Bookmarks? But I will try anyway.

[nChrist]

Hello Pizza_Al,

Scrapbook is used to collect pictures, text, and just about anything else from various web pages you visit and organize them for later use. You simply highlight what you want with your mouse and give the capture command. You can name what you captured anything you want to, make folders, and store it however you wish. You can view the material again later, use it in your web page, compile things into a collection, etc. I use it for keeping copies of forum messages and Bible studies.

I did look at the picture of your setup, and it looks nice. I can't remember the name of the theme that you're using, but I'm almost sure that I have it to try. I'm currently using the walnut theme.

Love In Christ,
Tom

Galatians 5:22-25 NASB  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.

[Kristi Ann]

Woo Hoo Tom, I use Mozilla FireFox a lot, its the best Browser out there. I use a Kitty Theme YaY! 

[nChrist]

Hello Kristi Ann,

Sister, I think I know which theme you are using. I think there are several color schemes with cats, and they are very pretty. I use the walnut because it's easier for me to see and leaves me more room in the screen area for larger fonts. Using larger fonts is another feature that I really like about Firefox. Folks with weak eyes can set the fonts as big as they want, and Firefox adjusts things in an attractive way. Firefox is just an easy browser to use for most folks, and it has more features than any other browser on the market. Did I say that it's FREE?

Love In Christ,
Tom

John 17:24 NASB  "Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.