I want to take a detailed look at turbo-charging the Firefox browser with an elite selection of Google utilities. Firefox has its critics and its failings, but it has now been downloaded in excess of 400 million times: and as they say “what flies eat, they can’t all be wrong!” Firefox is pretty good out of the box, but everyone knows that the functionality of Firefox is extended massively by the simple addition of extensions, security issues nothwithstanding.

In this article I will talk about how to extend Firefox so that it plays better with Google.

My selection of those Google utilities enabled via extensions is of course an entirely personal one, chosen on the basis of my own needs and preferences whilst browsing. My choice? Gmail, GSpace, Better Gmail, Better Gcal, Customise Google, Gmail Notifier, Minimap Sidebar. Phew, that should be enough to be going on with!

A Google disclaimer

When Google start talking messianically about what they call their 300 year mission they start to sound like a cross between James T Kirk and John the Baptist and I start to worry that the “don’t be evil” mantra has morphed into the evil empire of Microsoft. When they start talking about linking everyone to everyone and everything else, I can see Richard Stallman scratching his Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. I start to have hallucinations that Google will extend it’s reach to extensions called Google Murder, Google Blackmail and Google Torture.

Larry Page and Sergy Brin may not be Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates, the Ronnie and Reggie Kray of the computer world, (a right pair of diamond geezers and no bleeding mistake) but a spat with Ebay, the Great Firewall of China and general concerns about personal security when using Google utilities has somewhat tarnished our view of the great search-engine Behemoth. Yet, at least Google has been relatively GNU/Linux friendly. Think Picasa and Google Earth for starters and their sponsoring of the Summer of Code too. Doubtless, they have their commmercial reasons too but at least they have not entered into a duplicitous unanimity with Microsoft on patents—but they are pretty secretive.

However, this didn’t stop me from testing these Firefox extensions.

A note on installing extensions

In this article, I will cover several extensions. In case you are new to extensions, there are three ways to install them:

1. simply click on the install now icon and everything will run automatically

2. right click on the icon, choose save link as from the menu and save the extension to a folder of choice. Then, click on the File drop-down menu and select Open File, navigate to the xpi file extension and install. (I’ll bet not too many of you will be taking that circuitous route!)

3. drag and drop the xpi file onto a running Firefox and it will do its business.

In this article I will provide direct links to the extensions from the official repositories, and a link to the project’s home page when available. Keep in mind that downloading and installing extensions from the official secure website at Mozilla will minimise the possibility of a man-in-the-middle attack.