5 must-have addons for your Firefox fresh install

For many years I used Opera as my browser. As Opera Software decided to kill their very own desktop browser and replaced it with a featureless Chrome-based clone, I switched to Mozilla Firefox. Out of the box, Firefox is not perfect for me, but installing a few add-ons changes the situation. I have hand-picked 5 must-have add-ons which improve the Firefox experience. Add-ons are the real power of Firefox and have been for a long time. Today, I would like to share with you this list of my favorite add-ons, and who knows, maybe you will find them useful too!

1 Adblock Edge

The best ad blocking extension leads the pack of my favorite add-ons. Actually, I have nothing against ads because I understand that they allow the site owner to support his website and pay for the hosting. However, there are lots of weird sites which open full screen ads, unwanted JavaScript popups and even adult sites in the background. This is very annoying. Adblock Edge is a fork of the Adblock Plus add-on which resolves all these issues with ads.

It is very easy to configure the add-on, as it has a very intuitive user interface and just works out of the box.

2 Tab Mix Plus

Yet another add-on I can't live without. It adds features such as multirow tabs, tab coloring and sorting, easy access to accidentally closed tabs, ability to duplicate the opened tab and lots of other features. Tab Mix Plus is one of the most feature-rich extensions I have installed in my Firefox. I discovered it when I was in search of a multirow tabs solution:

Tip: How to show tabs on multiple rows in Mozilla Firefox.

3 Redirect Cleaner

Redirect Cleaner is a very simple extension which allows you to improve your browsing experience by removing some unnecessary parts of links. For example, Google displays its search results with some intermediate URL which will redirect you to the target page. Again, some weird sites have such intermediate pages which force you to wait X seconds and watch ads before you are redirected to the desired location.

Redirect Cleaner will convert the following link:

http://site.com/go.php?http://targetsite.com

to:

http://targetsite.com

This is really awesome.

4 Snap Links Plus

Snap Links Plus is a very useful add-on which allows you to perform various actions with a group of links. Depending on the add-on's settings, you can select a region of the opened page and copy all links from there to the clipboard, open them in background tabs or in new foreground tabs/new windows, bookmark the selected links or download their content.

The Snap Links Plus add-on allows you to customize the way you select the link, for example, you can enable the link selection by click-and-hold of the right mouse button. Instead of pre-defined action, you can set it to ask you to show the list of actions which can be performed on the selected links.

5 Imgur Uploader

And the last add-on I consider as must-have is Imgur Uploader, the official extension of the Imgur.com website. It allows you to upload any image from the opened page to imgur.com. Also, it is possible to take a screenshot of the opened page.

This is extremely handy if you need to upload some image quickly or just take a screenshot of the opened page and upload it to the free image hosting site, Imgur, to share it.

To install any of these add-ons, click the orange 'Firefox' button, click Add-ons, and type their name into the search box.

Alternatively, use the following links:

• Adblock Edge
• Tab Mix Plus
• Redirect Cleaner
• Snap Links Plus
• Imgur Uploader

What are your must-have add-ons? Share them with us in the comments!