My 14 Favorite Firefox ExtensionsMy 14 Favorite Firefox Extensions

Firefox is a basic, no-frills Web browser.

And that's intentional. The Firefox designers set out, from the beginning, to build a bare-bones, lean-as-possible Web browser that would provide only the basic Web browsing functions. Then they created hooks that allowed developers to write extensions to Firefox that would customize the browser to the users' tastes.

That customization is part of the genius of Firefox. I wish all personal-productivity application developers took the same approach. Imagine how much less bloated Microsoft Word would be if Microsoft just provided a half-dozen essential formatting tools -- just enough to write a business letter or school paper -- and then provided downloadable add-ons to do all the other things that people use Word for. This is part of the reason that Firefox is part of my roster of essential free and cheap Windows tools ( which includes one tool that's not so cheap: X1 Desktop Search.

I've been using Firefox for about a year now, since well before its Version 1 release in November. In that time, I've accumulated a stack of 14 extensions that I consider essential to using Firefox: