Keep away from Firefox 3 Beta 5! The new and "improved" Javascript engine is crap. It crashes Firefox regularly. I've tried removing all my addons + clearing my profile and it doesn't help.

I've been using Firefox 3b5 for a few weeks and have had zero problems. On my Mac, it's far improved from the 2.0.x builds, which would run out of memory after a day or two. On the other hand, I'm not using as many extensions (only AdBlock Plus, and Remember The Milk's Gmail plugin).

Also, for what it's worth, I use AdBlock Plus with a 100% hand-build list. I found that the official lists tended to cause too much collateral damage, particularly at the New York Times. I've even used AdBlock Plus's ability to nuke DOM elements in a few cases, although I suppose other plugins can do that better.

It might be doing something that Vista doesn't like since it dies with a DEP error every so often.

Hey, anyone know the name of the firefox plugin that will time how long your pages are taking to download? Ideally, I'd like to find one that helps me pinpoint which sections or files of a web site are the longest.

By the way, IETab is the business. I just discovered that you can right-click to set it to automatically open certain sites in the IE renderer in case they are chronic offenders. We have some internal development tools that fall into that category, so this is a godsend.

Fasterfox has a basic page-load timer, bottom right of the app window.

Good suggestion, but that's not the one I was thinking of. The one I'm thinking of, that I can't seem to find, was specifically a dev tool for checking the timing of web pages and possibly their subcomponents.

That's the one I was thinking of. I'm going to try that one and Firebug as well. Thanks!

Okay Firebug is THE BUSINESS. Should have been using it all along.

Firebug slows Firefox waaaaay down for me. Every time I open a new tab, it spikes the CPU for like two seconds and hangs during that time. And this is with it configured as "disabled". If I actually disable the whole extension it's fine.

Interesting. I don't get that behavior, so it's clearly not intended to work that way. I'll bet the Firebug people would be interested in seeing what's up with your system that causes it to happen.

I just wanted to chime in with my favorites. Every time I install Firefox on one of my systems, I instantly install the following:

-DownThemAll (IMO, the best extension out there)
-AdBlock (of course)
-FoxMarks (use it for syncing bookmarks on my desktop and laptop computer)
-AutoHideStatusbar and Hide Menubar (I want to maximize the browsing space, especially on my laptop due to a lower resolution. I hide the status bar unless I hover over a link, and I can bring the menu bar up with the Alt key)

FoxMarks is great. It works perfectly, and you can even get to your bookmarks via their web site if you're at someone else's computer. They need to implement a search on that site, though. (Edit: Um. Nevermind. They did.)

Follow up: I think I might be experiencing the spike when *closing* tabs. That's something that's been reported to them based on threads I was reading.

FF3 RC1 is out now.

Does anyone know of an extension that will remember web site usernames but not passwords?

Most, if not all, of the ones I've found (Sxipper, Autofill Forms, Secure Login, PasswordMaker) require that the builtin Firefox password manager be turned on, and they don't seem to have a way to disable password remembrance.

If you want to use this only with Mac OS, you can use 1Password, which contrary to its name, saves a lot more than passwords and can be used to save nearly any form element and exclude the password.

It's a stand-alone application that ties into every browser on the Mac, so its use is fairly transparent.

What is this! addon.mozilla.org is now requiring a log-on to install extensions?

Looks like it is only experimental addons that need you to log in first. Regular ones don't.

Unfortunately, I need to use it on Windows and MacOS (potentially amongst others). Thanks, though.

Follow up: Firefox 3, with the latest beta of Firebug, does not have any slowdowns for me, either opening or closing tabs. I'm in love with Firefox 3 for lots of reasons, but overall speed improvements and better memory usage tops the list.

Thought I'd chime in here with a new extension I tried out today that I fell instantly in love with: ColorfulTabs.

If you configure it so that it bases the tab color on the URL, then that URL will always be that color. You can also assign custom colors directly.

Update: I'm conceding here that I finally switched to Adblock Plus after the Adblock+Filterset.G combination epic-failed on me, by blocking some Flash plugins on some sites in strange situations (even with Adblock disabled). Adblock Plus seems to work fine if I simply subscribe to the first list offered to me, so I'm happy with it now.

Extension update time!

• /Find Bar/ 1.0.1
• Adblock Plus 1.1.1
• AFOM Addon 2.0
• BugMeNot 2.2
• CookieMan Context 2.1
• CookieSafe 3.0.5
• Custom Buttons 0.0.4.4
• Download Statusbar 0.9.6.5
• DownThemAll! 1.1.6
• Firebug 1.4.3
• Firefox Throttle 1.1
• FireShot 0.78
• Fission 1.0.9
• FoxyProxy 2.14
• FxIF 0.3
• Google Redesigned 0.3.5
• Greasefire 1.0.4
• Greasemonkey 0.8.20090920.2
• gTranslate 0.5.1
• Hide Find Bar 1.3.1
• IE Tab 1.5.20090525
• It's All Text 1.3.1
• Java Quick Starter 1.0
• keyconfig 20080929
• LastPass 1.51.4
• Lazarus: Form Recovery 2.0.4
• Live HTTP headers 0.15
• Menu Editor 1.2.6
• Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant 1.0
• Move Media Player 1.0.0.07103010
• MR Tech Toolkit 6.0.3.4
• myTimeZone for eBay 1.7
• NoScript 1.9.9.01
• NoUn Buttons 1.1.3
• OPML Support 1.5.4
• PDF Download 2.2.0.2
• Platypus 0.81
• ReloadEvery 3.5.1
• Resurrect Pages 2.0.4
• RetailMeNot 2.3
• Stylish 1.0.6
• Tabhunter 0.8.6
• Tabs Menu 1.4.8
• TooManyTabs 1.0.0
• translator 1.0.4.4
• Tree Style Tab 0.8.2009090201
• UrlbarExt 1.6
• Xmarks 3.3.2

Significant new ones since last time:

• /Find Bar/: Lets me use regular expressions in Ctrl-F search
• AFOM: Windows only, but dramatically reduces memory footprint. How? No idea.
• Custom Buttons: You can add your own toolbar buttons that run javascript code
• Firefox Throttle: bandwidth throttler, so when I download a big file at work, I don't kill everyone else, or, more accurately, they don't kill me.
• FxIF: Puts EXIF data in image properties dialog
• Greasefire: shows userscripts for currently loaded page
• gTranslate: Translations in context menu; no need to load another page
• Hide Find Bar: makes the find bar go away on its own after a period of time
• It's All Text: allows you to open textareas in an external editor
• keyconfig: define your own keyboard accelerators
• LastPass: the best form filler I've found; too bad it's closed source
• Lazarus: remembers data entered in forms, for a period of time, so a browser crash or a poorly designed site doesn't eat that essay you wrote
• Menu Editor: Organize your menu items. Great for the Tools menu when you have this many extensions loaded
• NoScript: Can selectively disable JavaScript, Flash, Java, etc. Often kind of overbearing, though
• NoUn Buttons: get rid of the stupid unified forward/backward/history buttons in Firefox 3
• Tabhunter: search for and select tabs with the keyboard. ("Under no circumstances should this software be confused with Tab Hunter, an actor best known for his work in the mid-20th century.")
• UrlbarExt: adds little icons in the URL bar next to the bookmark star for things like tinyurl, go up a level, etc.

When I saw that list I thought you were nuts. Then I started reading what those last extensions do and I can honestly say that most of them sound very handy.

But that's still a shite-load of extensions. Wow.

I'm not so demanding with Safari thankfully. I'd just love a simple prompting pop-up blocker.

I might give Firefox another try when it hits 4.0. 3.x still seems like a bit of a pig to me.

Bitt, your semi-regular updates to this thread are awesome! I have this thread bookmarked and refer back to it pretty regularly. Thanks for doing this!

I assume you have 3.0 still? I can't seem to find an installation link for /Find Bar/ on 3.5.x...

Thanks again!

Jim

Nice list, there Bitt. I will be trying a few of those out.

I personally don't like NoScript, as it's too intrusive and makes many web sites stop functioning properly. Everything that I'd want done with NoScript is handled already by AdBlock Plus.

My own addition: I giggled when I saw Filler Item yesterday. Don't know if I'll ever make actual use of it, but once you install the Firefox extension, it's easy to use. Brilliant idea.

No, I'm on 3.5.4.

MR Tech allows you to force install unupdated extensions. It won't necessarily make them work, but more often that not, it's just the metadata doesn't include the version you're running.

In general, I agree, but my work computer is underpowered enough that a lot of pointless javascripts were consuming enough CPU time to make the computer … less useful. It's a pain, but now I just use NoScript to turn them on for the one web site when I need them right then. There are a good number of sites that I've told it to allow by default.

As a side note, it's fascinating to see how many different javascripts are loaded on some web pages. I've seen a few that are loading, like, thirty of them.

Wow! That is a super impressive list! I think you give Firefox users everywhere hope when it comes to running more than a half-dozen extensions. I had pared mine down, but I might look at installing some more now

I simply can't switch to another browser now. I don't care if Safari or Chrome or Opera loads my homepage 1.5 seconds faster from launch. What I care about are my extensions. I wouldn't be able to function without X-Marks, the Better Google extensions, and AdBlock, among others.