There are plenty of Firefox add-ons out there to install, but which ones are the best? Here are the ones I use on a day to day basis.

Adblock Plus

Adblock Plus: It's so easy This is amazing. It blocks every ad out there, even some in flash games. That's pretty impressive. And there's no fiddling around with little text files or right clicking on ads all the time to block them manually. It's so easy. Another thing I like about it is that it lets content flow into the places that the ads used to be. Now that's clever. It makes it look like they were never there in the first place!

And to top it all off, it can save you bandwidth. If you have a cap on bandwidth (I certainly do. I have never gone over, but since I've started download HD television shows - legal mind you - and BBC iPlayer going HD this month, maybe the next, I probably will...) it might save you some precious pennies

Firebug

Firebug: Ever so helpfulTheir slogan "Web development evolved" really fits the bill here. It certainly is so much easier to be able to fiddle around with CSS and HTML (and JavaScript, but I don't understand any of that!) live on the page. No, it doesn't save the changes to the web server or file (that would be really cool ) but you can change and fiddle around with the code to your heart's content to make it how you want. And when you're finished, you can save the changes from your favourite text editor to wherever you want. No more of this:

*finds bug in webpage*
Oh no! This is all wrong!
Ok first I've got to do...
*edits CSS/HTML file*
*goes into FTP client, uploads edited file*
Ok, hope this works...
Result: The bug is even more messed up! Back to editing...

There is a long loop of this, which can waste valuable time. Firebug makes it easy. Where would I be without it?

Download YouTube Videos in HD and MP4

YouTube vidoes: Right and save asOk, so the name of it talks for itself. Basically, this add-on adds links below the description of a video on YouTube where you can download it in MP4 or 720p HD (if available). Works very simple. Saves you time going on alternative websites which may have slower loading times, and could be dodgy. Great for me especially, because when I want to play HD video on YouTube, it lags like crazy. Probably because of the Flash player on Linux. But my laptop is perfectly capable of playing HD video! When I download it, the video plays fine, with no lag or choppiness whatsoever. This is also a lot better than the RealPlayer (not really available on Linux. The Linux version is stripped down and really old...) plugin on Windows which can let you download YouTube videos into RealPlayer. Personally, I wouldn't like to be associated with the media player that invented the horrible *.rm format *shudder*.

DownThemAll

DownThemAll: Amazing download acceleratorA great download accelerator which can integrate itself into Firefox. It can give you a speed increase of up to 400% according to their website. Notice the "up to". Personally, I have never gotten any faster than 500kb/s. I only get that fast when I'm lucky. My regular speed is around 350kb/s. Doesn't look like 400% to me, or anything even close to that! Hmm...400% would be 1400kb/s. I have never gotten anything close to that in my life! That would be pretty nice. And we may be getting something like that soon, as I hear BT will be putting fibre optic internet all across the UK. Me likes

This download accelerator, coupled with the above add-on is great

FlashGot

FlashGotHave you ever found a website with links to loads of great things - it could be images, music or videos. Maybe something like a clipart website or Last.fm or something. You want to download a list of files, but you don't want to right click, save as every single file because that would take forever. And it can't be good for you. Introducing FlashGot! It can do all of this for you in just a few clicks. I would say "a single click" but most of the time this isn't true. You normally have to press "Yes" on the "Are you sure?" box...aha! Now it's not one click!

Anyway, this has save me so much time. All you have to do is select the list of files you want to download, then right click. Then click FlashGot selection. This is the easiest way to do it. Obviously there are other ways to do it, but I'll let you figure those out for yourself

Another great thing about this add-on is that you can use it with an exteral download manager that you trust. You can also use DownThemAll, but when Firefox crashes, so does that, so be careful. But of couse, DownThemAll has a pause feature, so if it gets interrupted, it can be easily resumed.

Fast Dial

Yes, I know, this sounds a lot like Speed Dial in Opera. Trust me, this is so much better. You can have up to nine different websites. Now get this. You can choose the picture on there. Sure, you can have a thumbnail of the website if you want, but I like it like this.

Fast Dial: Now this is Web 2.0!

It looks great. I have it as my homepage so I can very easily go to my favourite websites in a single click. Yes, this time it really is a single click! You can choose your favourite image from this website called UserLogos.org. There's pretty much every logo out there on there.

There is also a sort function. You can sort it alphabetically, by how many visits it has, or you can let it do it automatically. You can also change the theme, change the amount of tiles there are, and more. Now it's a lot better than Speed Dial!