Download the Flash Plugin Switcher extension for Firefox

First (and most obvious) is the MXNA extension for viewing the latest news, information and weblog posts from Macromedia, developed my Mike Chambers (which I have already posted about before).

Although the MXNA extension is at the top of my list, the one I get the most use out of is the Web Developer Extension by Chris Pederick. If your work depends on web development and you don't have this extension, you are missing out. The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools including the ability to disable just about anything (JavaScript, Cookies, Style Sheets, images, etc..); allows you to edit the css file right there in the browser and see your changes; add your own css, place borders around elements (perfect for debugging css issues); clear cache, history and sessions; and tons of other goodies that will save you countless hours of debugging and testing. Check out the User Agent Switcher extension by the same author. The User Agent Switcher extension adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser so you can see what your page looks/acts like in IE, Netscape, and Opera right there inside Firefox.

Another genius extension is the PDF Download extension"that you can use if you are annoyed to click on a link and then discover that Firefox is loading the Adobe or other PDF plug-in (very heavy) and is trying to show a PDF file directly inside your browser." If you hate the 5 minute power down while your browser starts the Acrobat reader, you'll love this extension.

And last but certainly not least, there's the Objection extension, which adds deletion of Local Shared Objects to the Option > Privacy panel. This is a great tool, not only to see who's storing things in your Flash player, but also great for Flash developers testing and debugging their own LSO's.

Those are some of my favorites, feel free to let me know if there's a great one I'm missing.

I only use this for Firefox since I almost always have a browser open. So to apply this to Firefox, right-click on the Firefox shortcut icon you use to start the browser. Select Properties and in the "Target" line, add the text: "/Prefetch:1" to the end

The line will now look like this (assuming you have Firefox installed into the default location):
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" /Prefetch:1"

Enjoy!

Instead most people wanting to save Flash sites for inspiration and future reference are left digging through their temporary internet files looking for the files that hopefully apply to the site. This isn't too hard for IE users as most know where to look to get at their temporary internet files that IE uses. But what if you prefer a real browser, one that works for you, one that isn't so clumsy, what if you use Firefox? Do you know where your temporary internet files are in Firefox???

Well the good news is you don't need to in Firefox, anything you want you can get directly in the browser while browsing the page of interest**. Here's how:

While in Firefox, just right click anywhere on the page (outside of the embedded flash object) and click "View Page Info" (or select the "Tools" drop-down in the browsers menu bar) and click on the "Media" tab. You will see a list of all objects that page contains. If you look under the "Type" column and find the word(s) "Embed", that will be the flash file(s) in the page. You can the select the desired file from the list and click "Save as...", at which time Firefox will give you a dialog box asking where to save your file.

You now have a Flash file "for reference use only". Also please keep in mind that these works (unless otherwise noted) are protected by copyright, and not free to use as you wish, copy as you see fit, or otherwise rip! If you do see something you want to know more about, try emailing the creator, you'll be surprised how many are willing to offer help/feedback and answer your questions.

**There is one drawback to this method however, it does not give you access to loaded swf's.**

MosDev.org has a list of editable Documented Preferences that can not only speed the performance of Firefox up but can also let you customize the browser for the way you want. To access these advanced preference settings, open up Firefox and browse to
about:config
You will see a list of all documented preferences with a description for each and what the default value is. Any change/alteration you make will now appear in bold. You can change nearly (if not all) values, just be careful to know what you are changing before you make the change. However, if you really mess it up you can right-click any preference and use the Reset command to change the setting back to it's default.

For example, you can make Firefox perform on the web much better by adjusting how many requests the browser makes of a Web site at once.

• Change network.http.max-connections from 24 to 48.
• Change network.http.max-connections-per-server from 8 to 24.
• Change network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy from 4 to 12.
• Change network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server from 2 to 6.
• Change network.http.pipelining from False to True by double-clicking on the value.
• Change network.http.pipelining.maxrequests from 4 to 32.
• Change network.http.request.max-start-delay from 10 to 0.

Here is a comprehensive list of the Documented Preferences

In addition to the browser settings, you can also customize the way Firefox looks and handles by modifying the style sheet it uses by making changes in a file named userChrome.css located at:
C:\Documents and Settings\[YOUR USERNAME]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

(Replace [YOUR USERNAME] with your actual username for your computer) The Profiles directory will contain a subdirectory that will be oddly named "{SOME RANDOM STRING]. default. Inside that directory there's a "Chrome" subdirectory which has a file named userChrome-example.css. Rename this text file userChrome.css. Now edit userChrome.css with your favorite text editor (like Notepad). This works just like any other CSS file from what I can tell. For example to make the foreground tab highlight with an orange color (cause we all know how cool orange is) and use dark gray type I can add the following code:
/* Change active tab color */
tab{
-moz-appearance: none !important;
}
tab[selected="true"] {
background-color: #DE6A0A !important;
color: #333333 !important;
}

In addition to all of that you have the extensions for Firefox. One of the coolest extensions (especially for blog posting or Forum posting) for inserting BBCode into your posts can be found at Jed Brown . This adds Formatting (BBCODE/HTML/XHTML/etc.) to the context menu for Blogs and forums.

And of course where would I be without may favorite extension, the Macromedia News extension which 'notifies you of the latest news and information from Macromedia', or the Search Macromedia plug-ins 'for searching Macromedia and Flash resources', all created by Mike Chambers.

So there you go...start hacking away and make your browser work for you, not the other way around