10. Facebook Toolbar

Facebook Toolbar integrates your Facebook life into your browser. You can set your status right in the toolbar. It also gives notifications about your friends. This is a must have for Facebook junkies.

9. GooglePreview

GooglePreview is a simple addon that enhances your Google searches. It adds a thumbnail picture next to each search result. This gives you a clue about the website you are clicking on.

8. Hyperwords(tm)

Hyperwords let’s you select any text on any webpage and quickly choose from a few powerful commands. You can do a Google search, wiki search, or even translate the word into a number of languages. This is a great addon for college students, or anyone who does a lot of online research. I did have to change it’s annoying auto pop-up feature. It would automatically pop-up its context menu every time I selected text. Instead, I preferred to get to the context menu by right clicking on the selection.

7. Web Developer

Web Developer is a great addon for anyone doing web development. It gives tools to edit css, quickly re-size your browser to a set size, view information on just about any element, and much more. One of my favorite tools is a ruler that will measure pixel distances on a webpage. This is an extremely useful addon. Web Developer does add a toolbar that I quickly removed. You can still get to all of the functionality of the toolbar by right clicking on the page.

6. DownloadHelper

DownloadHelper is a great tool to get media content that is already downloading in the background. It can be used to download videos from just about any YouTube like site. It now comes with file conversion! Great for getting music videos off of YouTube and onto your iPod.

5. IE Tab

IE tab is another very useful addon for developers. With a single click, you can view your current page in Internet Explorer. The great thing is that it opens Internet Explorer within a FireFox tab. This is great to see how a page looks in both IE and FireFox. You could also use it to have two Gmail accounts open at the same time.

4. Cooliris

Cooliris is a very cool addon that transforms just about any webpage with photos or videos on it, into a beautiful full-screen 3D wall. Cooliris is integrated with many big-name sites like Facebook, Flicker, GoogleImages, and even YouTube. This is how surfing the Internet should be!

3. FireGestures

FireGestures allows you to execute many commands with mouse gestures. You can open tabs, close tabs, reload pages, and much more all by right-clicking and preforming a simple mouse gesture. With a little practice you will wish this functionality was built into your operating system. I now find myself trying to close non-FireFox windows with mouse gestures. This addon has quickly ran up my list of favorites!

2. Firebug

Web development is impossible without Firebug! Easily inspect the source of any webpage, change it, and see your results. View any element’s css, then change it right there. Amazingly useful. You can even use it to step through your javascript code. I would refuse to do web development without it!

1. Adblock Plus

I can’t stress enough how great Adblock Plus is. I haven’t seen an Internet ad in three years thanks to Adblock Plus! If you don’t have it yet, go get it! Be sure to subscribe to a filter subscription. I subscribe to “Easy Element+Easy List.” This is a must have addon. Definitely my #1.

There you have my top ten FireFox addons. What do you think? Did I miss any? Let me know in the comments.