Finding the Best Firefox Add-ons Gets Easier With New ‘Collections’
The ability to expand Firefox’s capabilities using add-ons, and thus extend its basic functionality far beyond that of a normal web browser, is no doubt responsible for much of its popularity. There are literally thousands of ways to extend Firefox, and Mozilla claims that users have downloaded close to half a billion add-ons.
However, while savvy users know what they want and are willing to sift through the Mozilla add-ons site to find it, many Firefox users either don’t know what they want or have trouble finding the right add-on.
To help them out Mozilla has unveiled a new approach to extending Firefox — Add-on collections.
A “collection” is a bundle of add-ons aimed at novice users just getting started with customizing their browser. It’s similar to an idea Mozilla started with its Fashion Your Firefox campaign. The new collections take that idea a step further by allowing you to create your own bundle of add-ons that can be shared their friends, posted on the web and even — if it proves popular enough — end up featured on the Firefox Add-ons website.
The new “collections” section of the Firefox add-ons site already has quite a few nice bundles aimed at everyone from web developers to social network junkies to travelers looking for trip planning tools. While most of the featured bundles are currently Mozilla creations, the company hopes to eventually swap those out with better collections from savvy users.
To create a collection of your own, you just need to log in to the add-ons site, give your collection a name and select the actual add-ons you���d like to include. Once you have your collection tweaked the way you want it, just save it and it will then show up in the directory with a unique URL you can share with friends or post on the web.
The video below offers a step by step walkthrough showing you all the various options for creating your own collection.
Add-on Collections II: Sharing & Publishing from Justin Scott on Vimeo.
If the new collections website isn’t enough for you, there’s even an add-on for discovering top-rated bundles. The Firefox Add-on Collector helps you organize your collections and can even manage and update the collections you’ve created.
Add-on bundles are something that the Mozilla community has long argued would help less experienced users do more with Firefox, and it’s nice to see Mozilla implement the idea in a way that usable, easy to figure out and dare we say, fun.
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