I have been using Firefox for quite sometime. It has its own problems which as a as FF user have learnt how to handle them. But no browser comes close to Firefox in terms of performance and expandability thanks to Mozilla’s large community which constantly adding new cool extensions and plugins.

Over the past 1 year of blogging, i have played with many extensions, some made my blogging hell of a lot easier but few were nothing less then a bad joke. Previously I put up an article on how to improve Firefox performance. Today I wanna list my top 10 favorite extensions that improved my productivity and blogging experience. Here goes the list.

1. del.icio.us Bookmarks:

When it comes to bookmarking websites nothing beats delicious. The main reason is the extension not only replaces the usual Firefox bookmark manager allowing you to manage everything online. Also you don’t have to fear of loosing your bookmarks if your pc crashes, all bookmarks are saved online when you use delicious extension. You can also keep your bookmarks organized with tags, share them with friends. Even import your existing Firefox bookmarks and many countless features that make it my favorite bookmark management extension. Just make sure you have a delicious account.

2. Firebug:

I’m a blogger cum webmaster that’s why i constantly need to monitor the site performance and make the website bug free. Thou I’m not an expert at coding still i know enough to run a website. This is where firebug extension saves to day for me. Firebug integrates with Firefox seamlessly presenting me with almost all web developments tools that any webmaster would be proud of. The coolest feature I guess is live non destructive editing, debugging, and monitoring of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. Don’t be afraid it just mimics the differences on a layer top of the original webpage. Other features include tracking of load times of scripts, images, CSS etc. All in all Firebug is a must have extension for any webmaster worth his salt.

3. SearchStatus:

SearchStatus is a extension for Firefox that integrates whole lot of website information related to Google PageRank, Google Category, Alexa popularity ranking, Compete.com ranking, Alexa incoming links, Alexa related links and backward links from Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Mostly this plugin works well for online advertisers that can grab extensive traffic data before planning an ad campaign on a particular website or a category. I personally use it because it gives me almost all info webmaster would want about a website without having to install whole lot of plugins.

4. Restart Firefox

I’m addicted to tab browsing but Firefox isn’t memory friendly due to still not solved memory leak issue. I always need to restart firefox to improve its performance, but what about my tabs i don’t want to start them right from the beginning; this is where Restart Firefox comes to the rescue. It restarts firefox without having to loose the tabs you were working on. It’s very handy if you need to change themes or extensions quickly. I wonder why this isn’t a standard feature on firefox.

5. Adblock Plus and Adblock Filterset.G Updater

As the extension says. It blocks ads. Have you ever been to Myspace, CNN, and few news and social networks? You will start getting annoyed of few minutes of surfing this sites with all the flashy stuffs going on the sides and tops. The plugin is very basic it blocks ads using a filiter list which is constantly updated. It does a amazing job of making the webpages clean from ads- the pages load much faster after ads are gone. But if the filter set misses some ads you can right-click on the particular banned and choose “Adblock” from the context menu — the advert won’t show again. I highly recommend it to everyone as it really helps create a better browser experience. Make sure you download the Adblock Filterset.G Updater companion as it automatically downloads the latest version of ad filters every 4-7 days.

6. FireFTP

God knows from i have use Filezilla to maintain my entire website. But wouldn’t it be cool and useful to have a FTP program integrate straight to your favorite Firefox browser. I came across FireFTP. FireFTP seamlessly integrates directly into Firefox, making a extremely option to upload and download via FTP. Its interface is simple for anyone to understand, files on the left and your site FTP on the right. I feel like home when using FireFTP. You can easily drag and drop files from your local directories to the server. You can choose to operate in Binary Mode, ASCII Mode or Automatic Mode. If you love FTPing nothing beats FireFTP.

7. Flashgot/DownThemAll

Firefox default download manager is quite good considering it’s just built in. But as a power user I love to have control on downloads. This is where Flashgot or DownThemAll comes in handy. Flashgot doesn’t does anything, it just handles handle single and massive (”all” and “selection”) downloads with several external Download Managers. You need to have a download manager (such as GetRight or FlashGet). On the other side DownThemAll is a extremely efficient feature rich download manager. It lets you download in just one click all the links or images, files etc. The only complaint I have is that some sites don’t support download managers, but most sites do. I’d hang on with Flashgot for the time being but I recommend trying at least one of them.

8. GreaseMonkey - Fed up of gmail’s plain white theme or want to send multiple scraps at once to your orkut friends. Greasmonkey is great extension that installs user scripts which can change the behavior of any web page or website. You will find scripts for most website as the development community has made thousands of unique scripts tailored to a large number of sites free of charge. Greasemonkey helps you customize your online experience further than you ever thought was possible. Another must have for me.

9. Sage

Another useful addon is the Sage Feed reader. Sage supports both Atom and RSS (1.0 and 2.0) feed formats, so there hasn’t been a site format I haven’t been able to find. * Reads RSS (2.0, 1.0, 0.9x) and Atom feeds. It even discovers new feeds for you. Also it integrates with the Live Bookmarks. One thing i like about Sage is the learning curve. A newbie can easily get it to work while a geek can easily customize it to his needs.

10. Firefox Itself

Theirs isn’t my 10th most favorite addon. Firefox itself is a great addon for any sensible internet users. I love Firefox because of the expandability using extensions. Not only they give the browser a new life it makes my workspace a lot easier. Besides i don’t have to deal with the phishing, activex, spywares etc that often then i would have to deal with a browser like Internet Explorer.

Hopefully you liked my article on Top 10 productivity tools for a webmaster and blogger. In coming days and weeks I’ll like to add more stuff about Firefox. Now people leave a comment or use my contact page to give me some tips which i can use to compile more helpful tutorials. Please tell us about your favorite productivity-enhancing Firefox extension in the comments.