Firefox Extensions 1

Posted by JD 01/31/2011 at 23:45

I use Firefox – whatever version that Ubuntu 10.04 LTS pushes. I don’t do beta testing – that is for the younger crowd.

Today, I found another extension that I’ll probably enable for shopping, but disable the rest of the time.

InvisibleHand

InvisibleHand is a browser extension that watches as you shop on 20-100 websites and suggests alternative, cheaper places to purchase the same item. When you finally get to a specific item page, it looks for that same item on all those other websites and show you where you can find it cheaper. It isn’t perfect, but WOW! For some items, you’ll see over 50% savings and for others, just a few dollars. Some of the suggested cheaper websites are not places that I’ve shopped before and for a few dollars, I’d probably go to NewEgg or Amazon first. Still, when Amazon isn’t priced right, seeing a $30 savings another company I’ve heard of before is nice. I found that most of the time, the alternative was exactly the same item, however, once it suggested the wrong model device, so definitely check that the suggested alternative really is what you want.

Other Favorite Extensions

  1. NoScript – Selectively blocks Java, JavaScript, Flash …
  2. AdBlock Plus – block almost all ads that waste bandwidth
  3. TabKit – wide screen friendly tabs
  4. Read-It-Later – cache a webpage to read later instead of leaving all those tabs open
  5. Sage – Nice RSS reader
  6. InvisibleHand – price comparison tool

Those are it in my system today.

I like to use a few Firefox extensions to help improve security, block ads and speed up my browsing. I’m loath to have too many extensions since they introduce bloat, reduce stability and probably provide the extension author with more personal data than I’d like. Still, there are a few extensions that are worth it for me.

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  1. JD 01/21/2012 at 17:49

    InvisibleHand is an extension that is only enabled while shopping. Definitely turn this off when you are doing anything else.