As a Firefox fan from the start, I have been using it since v1.0. However, I only started using extensions a few months ago, and since then have been much more happy with my browsing experience.
A word of caution, however – at some point, I started to notice that Firefox took forever to load compared to IE. It took me a while to figure it out – it was the 6+ extensions that I had running. Once I disabled them, suddenly Firefox was spry and quick to load again. So, my advice: use as few extensions as you have to at any one time, and look for the change in load times for Firefox and new webpages when browsing from before and after you load the extension. With that, a list of my favorites:
AutoHide (website) - direct link to their download
This makes the F11 key eliminate everything UI-wise except for the website and a scrollbar if the page needs it. If you move your mouse up to the top, the address bar and tabs will pop down, so you aren’t totally stranded in this mode. Lightweight, and no recogznizable slow-down.
Reveal (website) – direct link to their download
Creates thumbnails of each webpage and pops them up in a scrolling bar in the middle of the screen on the press of F2. It’s hard to describe – just try it out. It’s really neat! This will tend to slow down you computer if there’s any special plug-ins running on a webpage, such as a lot of embedded quicktime movies, or even if you just have a lot of tabs open. If you’ve got the memory and processing power to spare though, this is an awesome productivity tool, not to mention some darn nice eye candy.
Deepest Sender (website) – direct link to download
I have to confess, I didn’t do a whole lot of shopping for a blogging extension. Deepest Sender does the job, it’s clean and simple, and it supports lots of different formats (LiveJournal, WordPress, Blogger, to name the big ones). There’s both a WYSIWYG editor tab, source code editing tab, and a preview tab to see what the end result will really look like.
2006-10-23 Update: I actually got around to shopping for a decent blogging client. I found one that I like pretty well – BlogDesk. It is simple, uses a clean interface, loads quickly w/out requiring a log-in, and when I upload posts they actually format correctly with paragraph breaks, bullets, etc. : a vast improvement over Deepest Sender and the WYSIWYG provided by WordPress.com’s website. I recommend this to anyone who wants a lightweight client that can do almost anything without makin a fuss.
StumbleUpon (website)
Easily the most distracting and entertaining piece of software you’ll ever run across. Sign up for an account at StumbleUpon’s website, choose general categories you’re interested, and when you click the stumbleupon button in your firefox browser, it takes you to a page that was recommended by another SU user. You can rate it yourself, add tags and comments to pages, and recommend pages to be put into the database. I sure hope the website never dies, cuz this is an awesome extension for social browsing.
This plug-in is pretty much useless without the account, so I’m not providing a direct link to the .xpi download.
There are a few other extensions that I use on an on-and-off basis as well, but I won’t profile them here since they’re fairly common (GreaseMonkey, MediaBrowser, etc.) and have several analogues. If you’d like to explore more of the Firefox Extensions world, check out this website.
