Firefox Extensions

EPUB is a standard format for ebooks used by many programs and devices (like the Barnes & Noble NOOK). There are millions of books available in epub format -- many of them free from Google Books, Project Gutenburg, and many other locations. Until now you had to download them and read them in a special program. If you have an ebook reader, this probably is not an issue as you probably want to transfer the epub file to your ebook reader so you would have to download it. However if you are going to be reading the ebook on your computer, it would be nice to be able to read it in your browser like you can PDF files. If you use Firefox (version 3 or 4) and install the EPUBReader extension.

.CHM files are the "compiled HTML" files used for most Windows Help files. If you use Windows, they are easy to read. If you use Linux, it is not so easy. While there are several programs that will read and display CHM files, none of the work all that well for me. So I was very happy to discover CHM Reader for Firefox today.

While nothing can replace parental supervision, a filtering program can help prevent stumbling across content unsuitable for your child. You can pay money for a content filter and often have little control over what it filters -- some commercial filters protect from political and religious sites that upset their corporate leaders as well as from p*rn, for example.

FoxFilter is a free content filter extension for the Firefox browser that you control.

FireBug is a must-have Firefox extension for anyone interested in web site design. It allows you to explore web pages (your own to debug or others to learn from) an an intuitive and very useful way. FireBug's author describes the extension like this:

FireBug lets you explore the far corners of the DOM by keyboard or mouse. All of the tools you need to poke, prod, and monitor your JavaScript, CSS, HTML and Ajax are brought together into one seamless experience, including a debugger, an error console, command line, and a variety of fun inspectors.

Mozilla Firefox 2.0 is out. While it is not the major upgrade IE 7 was, it is still getting good reviews and is reportedly worth the download. I haven't downloaded it yet because one of my must have extensions, Tab Mix Plus, has not been updated for Firefox 2.0 yet (although the author is hard at work on it). One of the problems with major upgrades to Firefox is that they often break a number of your favorite extensions.