Firefox
Browsing the web is dangerous business. Whether your just searching via Google, or performing your online banking you should be aware of the dangers and take action now to safeguard yourself. Going out onto the internet with Microsoft IE, whatever version, is rather like pedalling a unicycle down a motorway. Sooner or later your going to get hurt. There are other browsers out there which are much safer, Opera, Chrome, even ( Shudder) Safari, but non are as simple and elegant as Firefox.
One of the fastest, and safest web browsers out there at the moment is Firefox. Firefox is a free download, just click this link to get it and install. It will copy over all your bookmarks from IE if you have been using that browser, and set itself as the default. It really is simple. And no complaints about “I know where everything is in IE”. STOP IT. Stop making excuses and protect yourself. Live a little and learn. Whilst Firefox out of the box is safe, there are a multitude of add-ons for the browser, (known as extensions) that make web browsing safer, and more enjoyable. This page lists some of the essential extensions to Firefox.
As an addition to safe and secure web browser experience, you should also implement on your system (home or office) Open DNS www.opendns.com Instructions are on the site, but its simple, just point your DNS settings to the following IP addresses 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 The instructions are on the site. Go, do it NOW ! OpenDNS protects you by filtering domain name queries, That is the part that converts your web page request from www.google.com to a computers Internet address. All ISP’s DNS servers are copied all over the world. OpenDNS is a filtered DNS. They check the websites before entering them. So, you don’t get phishing and scamming sites. Simple.
Last updated 9th Jan 2009 for Firefox 3.
Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page? Install Adblock Plus now and get rid of them.
They don’t come any better than this. It allows you to get rid of all Google averts that are supplied in web searches, groups and GMail. Also allows you to connect to GMail and Calendar via secure HTTPS (Secure) connections. (although you can do that in GMail settings now)
Firefox lets you install a dictionary. So when your typing up a blog entry or a text field, you can then right click on the page and spell check the entry. Saves you cutting and pasting to Word for a spell check.
This add on gets rid of the new window that appears when you download anything and places a smaller button window at the bottom of the browser whenever you download anything.
How many times have you gone to a web site and thought "Hey I’ll send this to ".." then had to cut and paste the URL into an email etc. This add on allows you to just right click on the web site and chose “email this” then you get the choice to sent from the local Mail client or from GMail, or Hotmail or others.
Firefox Extension Backup Extension
A clumsy name for a beauty of an add on – this allows you to backup all your add-ons to a folder you chose, making it easy to easily install them on other machines. Now with a handy online save feature so you can back up to the cloud.
Nice and easy one this one. I’ve been looking around for something like it for a while. Simply put, it displays at the bottom of Firefox, the times in any cities or locations around the world. As a side bonus, you can double click on the names and they open in Google Earth, neat. 
Another essential. Your working at home on Multiple computers and at work also. how to keep all those bookmarks in order. Install this beauty and it will synchronise all your bookmarks across multiple computers. Not one to be without.
Nice and neat, install, configure for you GMail account and if you get an email up it pops to tell you its there, click on the icon and it opens your GMail account in a new tab. You can configure more than one GMail account. This then checks all accounts and lets you know if mail has arrived.
This add ons changes the way GMail looks in your web browser. It tidies it up and provide some other useful features such as GMail Icons for attachments ( instead of just a paperclip) They are essentially a wrap up of some nice Grease Monkey scripts in one install.
This is probably more for the advanced user. The best security you can get in a web browser!
Allow active content to run only from sites you trust, and protect yourself against XSS and Click jacking attacks.
Some people say they cant use Firefox as they need to open certain sites with Internet Explorer. Some older web sites have been badly encoded so 
they only work with Microsoft’s interpretation of the web and not to web standards. Either way, no longer necessary. Install this add-on and when you come across a problem site, simply tell it to open in an IEtab. This add-on will then render the web site within a Firefox tab but using the Internet Explorer engine. Add the site to IETabs set of always load and never bother with IE again. Best of both worlds.
This is a little add on for when your bored, its a social network where people suggest web sites you might be interested in. You install the extension, then tell stumble your preferences, when your bored you click the stumble button, and bang, a new website that might interest you. A side benefit is integration in Google. When someone likes a site they give it the thumbs up. When you Google for anything, stumble adds little stars next to the results to show you other stumblers think its a good site. This can save in finding exactly what you need in Google.
Adds lots of tab features missing from Firefox by itself. 
This scans all your add-ons when you start up Firefox to check if there are any updates for them, Useful eh
Entries (RSS)