Firefox and Thunderbird Extensions
by Doug Anger, Technology Columnist

Most people are familiar with the Firefox web browser as a free alternative to Internet Explorer. Slightly less popular, but still well-known is the Thunderbird email client. Unfortunately, many users of both Firefox and Thunderbird are unaware of the power and flexibility that can be gained through the use of freely available extensions made by other users of the software. This weeks column explains how to install these extensions and reviews (in brief) a few of the more useful ones.

Installing extensions into Firefox is relatively simple. First, go to any web page that offers Firefox extensions. (The official site for this is http://addons.mozilla.org/.) After you find the extension you want, click on the install button. You should get a warning telling you that the site is attempting to install software onto your computer. Click OK and Firefox will handle the rest.
Installing extensions into Thunderbird is a two-step process. First download the extension (again, start by visiting http://addons.mozilla.org/) to your computer. Then open Thunderbird and choose Tools > Extensions > Install from the menu bar and browse to the file you just downloaded.

So, which extensions should you download? There is no one-size-fits-all answer to that question, but a few useful extensions are reviewed here in brief.

Laptop users may be interested in Scrapbook. After installation, Scrapbook is accessible from the Tools menu in Firefox and, when invoked, appears alongside whatever website you are viewing. Selected text, pictures, web pages, PDFs, and even certain types of movies and music can be dragged into the scrapbook for safekeeping and offline viewing. These scraps of information can be organized into folders, renamed, deleted, and even edited without ever leaving the web browser.

For online shoppers, BetterShopper displays price comparisons between major online bookstores alongside product views in Amazon.com and converts prices into US currency (or any other currency of your choice).

People with multiple computers can use Google Browser Sync (http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/) to make sure their bookmarks and settings are consistent between two or more computers.

For those interested in privacy and security, NoScript, and CookieSafe allow the user to deny untrusted sites the permission to store information (in cookies) or run potentially malicious scripts on their computer. Users of proxy servers can use FoxyProxy to define different proxy settings for different websites. Thunderbird users can secure their email with the Enigmail extension that allows them to encrypt their email with GPG encryption software (http://www.gnupg.org/). 

There are literally thousands of extensions available for free. Firefox and Thunderbird can be downloaded for free from http://www.mozilla.com/.
