I mentioned yesterday that I’ve been hunting some things down for Epiphany, the GNOME web browser, and I was hoping that Epiphany 2.24.1, the current version in Ubuntu Intrepid, was good enough to let me kick out Firefox when version 3.1 comes out.

I recently looked at the forthcoming Epiphany browser based-on-Webkit. However, some people told me that Firefox has so many extensions that it would not be possible for a new browser to compete, even among the target audience of GNOME users. Is this true?

"...For an overview of extensions that will work with one of the Firefox 3 betas, check out this, somewhat obtuse, but largely functional chart, which tracks Firefox 3 compatible extensions..."

Now, a lot of people publish lists of 'best' extensions. It's quick and easy to make these lists. One difference between my list and some of those "99 Must Have, Best Firefox Extensions!" is that is the real list of the extensions that I use every day. These don't just sound good, they work well.

Google Chrome is a nifty little browser, but to date it's hardly had the impact of Mozilla's Firefox. That's partly because it's still Windows-only, but we suspect it's largely because you can't use extensions. Both of those things are about to change.

Installing these Firefox extensions, like installing any other Firefox extension, is just a matter of clicking the shiny green Install Now button from the extensions' homepages. You'll find both the extensions enabled after a browser restart to complete the installation.

One of the major reasons Firefox is approaching 400 million downloads is because of how customizable the browser is thanks to extensions. In a way Firefox extensions are bittersweet, because they can provide some unique and useful features, but at the same time they can cause some unwanted problems.

There are a couple of others (Konqueror, Epiphany), but the primary open source browser that you’re likely to be using on Linux is Firefox. Now don’t get me wrong, Firefox is great for a lot of things. It is endlessly customisable and has ubiquitous support from website developers. It does have disadvantages too, however, including not exactly being the quickest beast out there.

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.