The 10 lamest Firefox add-ons

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Want to make Firefox worse? Then you've come to the right place

We have angels and devils living in our heads, and they're having a fight about Firefox.

"Firefox developers are brilliant!" say the angels. "We must support the grass-roots development community!"

We nod sagely in agreement.

"Sod that!" say the devils, "Look at this crap!" Today, friends, is a devil's day. Look at this crap!

1. Firesomething

Wouldn't it be great if, instead of 'Mozilla Firefox', the browser window used random names such as 'Firebadger', 'Spacebeagle' or 'Hypnotoad'? Er, no, which is probably why developers Cosmic Cat haven't bothered to update Firesomething for Firefox 3.

2. Numpad Typing Drills
"Learn touch typing of the numpad keys" with this add-on - or just, y'know, type in lots of numbers. That works too. Numpad Typing Drills is well-intentioned, but we can't help feeling it's a little bit pointless. And by "a little bit", we mean "completely".

3. Homeland Security Threat Level
Is it time to panic yet? Find out instantly with Homeland Security Threat Level, which shows the current US Homeland Security Threat Level in the status bar. Maybe someone could make a version with Sarah Palin carving the threat level on the side of a moose.

4. Tom Green Live
Is Canadian comedian and TV personality Tom Green broadcasting? On the internet? Right now? Who cares?

5. Smart Stop/Reload
Smart Stop/Reload: because having separate stop and reload buttons is such a pain.

6. TrackMeNot
Controversial, this one: it's designed to hide your search activities by sending randomised queries to all the major search engines. Fans say it's necessary, but critics point out that it makes your browser act like malware. Google for one doesn't like it - and let's face it, few people's searches are interesting enough for anybody to bother reading them.

7. MC Chris Website Menu Navigation
Fans of nerdcore rapper MC Chris rejoice! Now you can easily access MC Chris things on the internet by, er, having a menu of bookmarks. All hail our site-specific toolbar menu overlords!

8. Calculator
There's a calculator in Windows. There's a calculator in OS X. There's a calculator in Linux. Which raises two questions: why do you need this? And what websites are making you do sums?

9. STOP! In the name of love
From the mind that brought you STOP! Hammer Time! - which played MC Hammer whenever you hit the Stop button - now comes STOP! In the name of love! Guess what it does. Go on. Guess.

10. Traduku
How many times have you thought "blimey, wouldn't it be great if I could translate text into Esperanto, the well-intentioned 'universal language' that only people with beards use?" That's right. NO TIMES.

Props to Digg user Akuma who suggested a list of lame Firefox extensions in a discussion about our 25 essential Firefox add-ons for power users article over on digg.

Now read 8 hacks to make Firefox ridiculously fast

Carrie Marshall
Contributor

Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, is on sale now and her next book, about pop music, is out in 2025. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind.