This application is well amazing!  It installs as a little application on your toolbar and is always running when you run Windows.  You can set it up to automatically load when Windows does.  This little guy finally manages to keep Firefox from hoarding all your memory.  It does slow down FF a little but nothing that is too bad and it is worth the memory savings.  Lately I have been noticing that FF has been taking up on average 445MB of ram on my computer.  After this application is running it shrinks FF down to an amazing 1K.  I am sold!

I know the FF3 is supposed to solve this issue and I have listed a few fixes before.  But until FF3 is in a stable state or at least supports all my plugin’s this will have to do.

  I have added a few things to my Firefox lately, so here are some of the icons that are sitting on the toolbar

 Stylish.  This plugin works very similarly to Grease Monkey, I am using this right now because they have an awesome redesign for Gmail which allows me to use Gtalk and AIM from work through Gtalk. 

 Meebo.  This one adds little notifications (similar to guifications for PIDGIN) to Firefox for Meebo which makes Meebo just that much better, this way you know when you get IM’s regardless if you are focused on Firefox or not.

 IE Tab. nothing new been using this one for a while

 Foxmarks.  This one is amazing because it syncs all my computers Firefox’s bookmarks making bookmarks actually something that I use. 

 Fast Video Download.  This allows you to download any YouTube video with the click of a button.  It downloads the file a .FLV

Autocopy.  Nothing new here have been using this one for a while.

I have finally found a new theme that I can live with.  This one is very clean and nice to use.  I made some very very small tweaks to userChrome.css to fix a few things but other than that this is a great new look for Firefox.

Download: iAqua

As with Google Reader there is a plugin for making Gmail look better and function better as well.  It is called Better Gmail 2.  Today I also found an application called Gmail Redesigned which gives you a nice skin to throw onto Gmail.  I don’t use Gmail a lot as I usually use Yahoo to do my web mailing but one thing Gmail does do is it allows me to spoof the email I am sending from so I can email from my school email account straight from Google.  This is a lot easier then logging into my school email account.  Lifehacker says that they are going to update Better Gmail soon so that it has skins but until then using Stylish and this script Gmail is much prettier now!

This plugin is one of the best plugin’s I am using for Firefox these days.  This one fixes it so that little screen that pops up after you click an RSS feed link that lets you choose Google reader or iGoogle goes away and defaults to Google Reader.  It also allows you to skin the reader with a few different choices.  I am a fan of the OSX theme (yes I hate Macs but their color schemes are usually the best) this theme is very clean and gives Google Reader a new look.  Also it allows you open the link in the RSS feed right into the browser making it much cleaner and easier to use.

The code is written by our good friends over at Lifehacker, I also like it because I am not a big fan of using Grease Monkey scripts and that used to be the only way to change the look of Google Reader but now this is just a stand alone plugin.  Click the picture to get the plugin.

Mozilla released the new version of Firefox in beta today.  If you are interested in what exactly is in the release they have a full listing at Mozilla.  Some of the nice new features include:

• Added security including phishing filters and Anti-Virus integration
• Easier password management
• Easier add-on installation
• Resume-able Downloading
• Full Page Zoom
• Faster
• Less Memory
• Ability to star items and dynamic favorites menu is automatically created as your browse
• Improved graphics and font rendering

For your average user they may not spot these updates immediately but just playing around with it for a while I noticed that there was a significant pickup in speed and its nice to see some of the options that drive me nuts be addressed (password management)

Some tweaks for the Firefox userchrome.css file for some nice tweaks:

/* Remove Edit menu (if you already use all the keyboard shortcuts) */
#helpMenu, #edit-menu { display: none !important; }

/* Remove Back button when there’s nothing to go Back to */
#back-button[disabled="true"] { display: none; }

/* Remove Forward button when there’s nothing to go Forward to */
#forward-button[disabled="true"] { display: none; }

/* Remove Stop button when there’s nothing to Stop */
#stop-button[disabled="true"] { display: none; }

/* Remove Home button (never use it) */
#home-button { display: none; }

/* Remove Go button from address bar */
#go-button-stack, .search-go-button-stack { display: none !important; }

/*Remove magnifying glass button from search box*/
.search-go-button-stack { display: none !important; }

/* Eliminate the throbber and its annoying movement: */
#throbber-box { display: none !important; }

/* Show keyword input box when adding a bookmark */
#keywordRow { display: -moz-grid-line !important; }

/* Make the active tab wider */
tab[selected="true"] { min-width: 200px !important; }

The only theme that I am tied to is Fusion Alternative 2

I found it is the best do to the tab layout and backdrop as well as the buttons and the integration and space use.

Alright here is a list of the plug-ins I live and die by on Firefox:

1-click weather
I like this better than forecasterfox

adblock plus
Keep all those pop-ups and banner ads hidden automatically updates with new bad stuff

User Agent Switcher
This allows you to change what the webserver sees your browser as this helps you with those sites that block Firefox.

Auto Copy
Just select the text and it gets copied to the clip board

autoHideStatusbar
Auto Hides the status bar to give you more room

Copy Plain Text
Works with Auto Copy so that when the text is selected it just copies the text not the formatting

Download Statusbar
Clean up that damn download menu and makes it a nice toolbar on the bottom auto hides when not in use

FireFTP
Nicely integrated FTP client

Fission
Adds the loading bar as the background to the address bar. (Safari thing)

MediaPlayerConnectivity
Lets you choose the media player to play rich content (great for linux)

Mouse Gestures
Turns your two button mouse into a super navigator

Tab Mix Plus
Adds tab features and options

Tiny Menu
Shirks menu bar to just one link so you can consolidate everything to one line

TinyURL Creator
Right click and create tiny URLs to links or current pages great for compacting long URLs for emailing the fam or anyone

IE Tab
Of course IE Tab for those sites that have issues with firefox

To completely disable the yellow plugin bar that tells you that you’re missing plugins, in about:config set the preference plugin.default_plugin_disabled to false. There is currently no way to disable the bar for only certain plugins or for certain sites.