I've been a Firefox user since v2.0 came out about 12 years ago. There were times when it wasn't the best web browser out there, but still, I kept going back to it for one reason: My favorite extensions wouldn't work with anything else.
Today, I like the current state of Firefox itself for being fast, customizable, and open source, but I also appreciate extensions for manifesting ideas the original developers never thought of: What if you want to browse without a mouse? What if you don't like staring at bright light coming out of the monitor at night? What about using a dedicated media player for YouTube and other video hosting websites for better performance and extended playback controls? And what if you need a more sophisticated way to disable trackers and speed up loading pages?
Fortunately, there's an answer for each of these questions, and I'm going to give them to you in the form of my favorite extensions—all of which are free software or open source (i.e., distributed under the GNU GPL[1], MPL[2], or Apache[3] license) and make an excellent browser even better.
Although the terms add-on and extension have slightly different meanings, I'll use them interchangeably in this article.
Tridactyl
Tridactyl[4] enables you to use your keyboard for most of your browsing activities. It's inspired by the now-defunct Vimperator[5] and Pentadactyl[6], which were inspired by the default keybindings of Vim[7]. Since I'm already used to Vim and other command-line applications, I find features like being able to navigate with the keys h/j/k/l, interact with hyperlinks with f/F, and create custom keybindings and