This is my list of extensions that are probably useful for the non-geek. Where I’ve not provided a link, you can find it by googling the extension name plus ‘firefox extension’

• IE Tab (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1419/) - Sometimes you go to a site that refuses to talk to Firefox. This extension lets you open a tab in *Firefox* that contains *IE*. You can manually open a site in IE Tab, and you can also give it a list of sites to always open with IE Tab.
• Scrapbook (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/427/) - Sometimes you go to a web page and you bookmark it, and you come back later and it is gone. Scrapbook provides a convenient way to save the page you are looking at, with higher fidelity results than using File/Save.
• Book Burro - adds a panel to Amazon pages, with a list of prices at other bookstores.
• Showcase - it's like Expose' on the Mac. If you don't know about Expose', when you have eleventeen tabs open in your browser, and you want to go to one, this gives you thumbnails of all the tab contents and you click on the one you want to see. It doesn't sound terribly important, but once you get in the habit of using it, you'll never look back.
• Greasemonkey - Wow. Where do I begin? Greasemonkey is an 'enabler.' There are many useful gadgets for Firefox that run only if you have Greasemonkey. Greasemonkey allows one to mess with a page after it is received but before it is displayed. Suppose you go to a web site that always puts white text on a black background and you hate that -- a few lines of Greasemonkey script later, that site now shows up as black text on a white background in your Firefox. Userscripts.org has thousands of Greasemonkey scripts. Here are a few that may be useful:
  • Keen University Library Lookup for Amazon (http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/LibraryLookup.user.js) - When you're looking at an Amazon book, it tells you if the book is in the Keen U. library. Why would you care? Because a little tinkering and you can make it check with *your* library system -- assuming that your library system is online. OK, this is geeky to do, but non-geeky in use. If you find out how to use your library's online card catalog, I can help you get this to work for your library system. I've got a DeKalb County edition I created months ago.
  • dejalicious - If you use del.icio.us to bookmark things, this is major handy. I wrote it. It is listed at http://www.firefoxfacts.com/2006/08/15/the-best-greasemonkey-scripts
  • Google Suggest - Adds Google Suggest dropdown to normal Google search
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  • Download Statusbar -- gets rid of the dumb downloading file dialog, and gives you color-coded download status bars at the bottom of your browser.
  • Tab Mix Plus -- tweaks the way tabs work. I use it to save a collection of tabs on a particular topic.
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