Newly Discovered: Firefox Extensions

[Editor's Note: I think since this is the third, I can officially call Newly Discovered a frequent section of the site that discusses the new stuff I'm finding all the time that I think is cool.]

This week's Newly Discovered is going to highlight a slew of Firefox extensions that I've recently found. If you're not a Firefox user yet, go download it. If you already use Firefox and don't know what an extension is, it's just a little program that you can install to add functionality to Firefox. (Check out the official Firefox extensions page.) Since my Firefox 101 post went over so well, this seemed like a natural thing to write about this week. The only problem is where to start.

1. WebmailCompose

This one's got one simple, but incredibly useful function. What it does is take those "mailto:" links and automatically redirect them to your webmail. That means no more opening outlook express when you click someone's email. It works with virtually every webmail out there (including the big 3: Gmail, Yahoo! and Hotmail). I've been waiting for this option for a while, glad I finally found it.

2. Bugmenot

For anyone who's never used Bugmenot, what it does is provide you with a username and password for all those news sites that require registration. This extension just makes the process that much simpler by allowing you to simply right click (or CTRL+Click for Mac users) and it automatically fills in the fields you need.

3. Google Pagerank Status

This extension adds a little notification in the corner of the screen that lets you know the Google Pagerank of the site you're on. For those that aren't up on Googlespeak, essentially the higher the Pagerank, the higher the site appears in searches. There's no real use for this, but it's sometimes interesting to look at.

4. delicious

This extension, as you might have guessed, integrates everybody's favorite social bookmarks depository, del.icio.us, right into Firefox. It adds right click post options and creates a popup that works quite nicely (and even works with the new experimental posting options). What may be the coolest part of this extension, though, is that it can handle multiple usernames, which is something I've been considering doing for a while.

Oh, and if haven't tried it yet . . .