19 Best Firefox Extensions for Students

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Everyone hates a cluttered desktop, but everyone loves downloading… This brings a solution, by putting all of your download information onto the status bar. A must for serial downloaders.

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Why inconvenience yourself whilst you are disturbing neighbours (not something we encourage). FoxyTunes puts all of your controls for most available media players directly in the Firefox windows. Skip forward and backwards, whilst also being able to view album artwork, and other information.

WebsiteWOT, Web of Trust, warns you about risky websites that try to scam visitors, deliver malware or send spam. Protect your computer against online threats by using WOT as your front-line layer of protection when browsing or searching in unfamiliar territory. WOT’s color-coded icons show you ratings for 20 million websites – green to go, yellow for caution and red to stop – helping you avoid the dangerous sites. Surf safer and add WOT to your Firefox now.

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Unfortunately, some websites still do not fully support firefox. Examples of these are windows update, and some internal network pages. This plugin builds Internet Explorer into the firefox window, and can be setup so that certain pages open magically in Internet Explorer. Why inconvenience yourself, because someone cant be bothers to code for one of the best browsers?

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We know that some of you have multiple computers, ussually a desktop and a laptop. We also understand how annoying it can be when you have a bookmark on your computer, but are at your laptop and cant for the life of you remember that site. This extension synchronises your bookmarks over any number of devices, allowing you to make sure you can always remember that address.

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Many of you may not have heard of Stumbleupon, but let me assure you it is one of the best time wasters on the net. IT does this through recommending websites for you to visit, from popularity and looking at what you browse for. Who needs facebook, when the whole web is at your random fingertips.

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When writing an essay the last thing on your mind should be having to organise all your citations and resources. Zotero takes this over for you, keeping a track of the websites and fules you have used for you, whilst running in the background in Firefox. Who thought a browser could help you with your assignments?

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Scrapbook carries on from Zotero. It allows you to store web pages, and snippets of web pages, and categorise and organise them in the same way as bookmarks. There is also a built in search function to make life easier.

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Read It Later allows you to save pages of interest to read later. It eliminates cluttering of bookmarks with sites that are merely of a one-time interest. We can vouch for it’s usefulness, as research for articles often leads us through hundreds of websites and pages.

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This extension lets you rapidly fill up a bookmark folder and go through its contents one site at a time. Emphasis is on adding and removing with ease.

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Who needs to press ctrl+c to copy text? Losers… Nah, we kid. But this extension automatically copies selected next to the clipboard, removing extra effort when having to transfer data from one window to another.

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Wired-Marker is a permanent (indelible) highlighter that you use on Web pages. The highlighter, which comes in various colors and styles, is a kind of electronic bookmark that serves as a guide when you revisit a Web page. The highlighted content is automatically recorded in a scrapbook and saved.

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Ever got to a page, just to be confused by a word. By pressing Ctrl and clicking on a word with this extension, a small window pops up giving further information. You may never need to use a dictionary again.

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Everyone gets annoyed by adverts, especially when they fully invade web pages. Adblock Plus removes this nuisance by killing all of the adverts on web pages.

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(Requires a www.toodledo.com login) Everyone loves lists (apparently), and To Do lists have always been the mainstay of student organisation. This extension allows you to quickly and easily add to and view your toodledo To Do list, speeding up things.

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The internet is full of distractions, and we know bitcolumns can be one of them, which can easily get you away from your hard work. Leechblock allows you to set up to 6 lists of websites, and times they are available, so that you can help block out these distractions. And hey, if it helps you pass your degree, we dont mind you adding bitcolumns to one of those.

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I have to admit that Cooliris is probably my favourite of the list. It overlays a simple icon on images on supported websites (such as google and facebook). A click of this icon turns all images into a 3D interface which displays all images and can be easily manipulated. Makes looking for that perfect image a lot easier, and funkier.

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This may seema a bit counter to our earlier extensions, but we know that a lot of students nowadays are using facebook to communicate with their friends. You can search facebook, see all of your friends in a sorted sidebar, and even share your current webpage with certain friends online (just be careful what site you are on when you click this).

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Gmail has gained a cult following since it’s introduction earlier this decade. Whilst competitors were offering 2MB of online storage, Gmail was offering 2 Gigabytes. It’s ease of use, and large number of users and features, makes it an ideal solution for e-mail. Some of you may even have one of the much coveted @gmail.com addresses that were given out before the change to @googlemail.com. This extension integrates Gmail with Firefox, giving you a message when you recieve new mail, allowing you to surf on without having to worry about missing that vital e-mail from a colleague or lecturer.

Got an extension you think we should have had on the list, or do you think we chose summit wrong? Tell us and everyone else.