Firefox may not get quite as much love as it's Google-y rival, but that doesn't mean it didn't get plenty of love in 2013. With plenty of add-ons and tricks to stay productive, keep your privacy, and customize your browser, here's the best coverage of Firefox from the past year.


This year, Firefox received no less enthusiastic attention from its fanbase. This year, we learned how to use Adblock to fix YouTube's biggest annoyances, erase your most embarrassing autocomplete suggestions, and how to manage more than nine tabs without ruining your browsing experience.

Adblock Plus Now Block YouTube's Biggest Annoyances YouTube is infamous for its annoyances and its cluttered interface. If you want to just get down to Read more


Hola Unblocker is a browser extension that removes region locks and allows you to watch BBC iPlayer, Netflix, Hula, Pandora, and more regardless of where you live. It doesn't require any set up and works right out of the box.

Ever wish you could find out whether someone actually opened that email you sent, or whether they just ignored and trashed it? A service called Bananatag can tell you—but if you find that a little creepy, we've got the lowdown on how to protect yourself too.



Custom search engines are one of the coolest features of any modern browser. With just a few keystrokes, you can search Wikipedia right from your address bar, do a custom Google search for Lifehacker articles, or even get driving directions to a specific location. Here are five searches you should enable right now.


Firefox may not be as popular as Google Chrome these days, but it's still got one of the best extension libraries around. Here are the essential Firefox extensions you need to bend the web to your will


Recently, we had a guest post on why you should never have more than nine browser tabs open, and it was quite controversial—even among some of us on staff. So, here's our counterpoint: it's okay to have a ton of tabs open, you just need a few tricks to keep them all organized.


Google Reader may be shutting down, but Feedly is already an immensely popular alternative. Today they released 10 new features to help ease the transition.



We all know that feeling: You've found an interesting article online, only to discover it wants you to click through 10 pages of a slideshow just to read the darn thing. Here are a few tricks to banishing multi-page articles forever.


There's a strange joy in keeping 20 tabs open and pretending like you have the ability to multitask and actually manage all of them. But in reality, most browsers buckle under the pressure of too many tabs and you start to lose track of what you have open. Thankfully, there are a few great remedies for this. Here's a look at some of the best tab management tools for Chrome and Firefox that accomplish a variety of different tasks, from your browser's built-in features to the best powerful extensions.


We've always loved coupon sites like RetailMeNot for finding discounts at a moment's notice, butCoupon Follow decided to take it a step further by integrating their coupon data into the checkout process. Their extension, Coupons at Checkout, suggests available discounts and promo codes on available online store pages so you don't even have to look them up.


Feedly is easily your favorite RSS reader (and ours), but that doesn't mean it can't stand to get a few improvements. For those who like to tweak, here are extensions and user scripts that make Feedly even more useful.



YouTube is infamous for its annoyances and its cluttered interface. If you want to just get down to watching videos without all the junk, Adblock Plus has added support for a new, streamlined YouTube experience that gets rid of all kinds of cruft.



Firefox includes a couple of options for your new tab page. You can go with a grid of your most commonly visited sites, use the Firefox Start Page that has a Google search bar and quick-links to your history, add-ons, or downloads, or stick with the classic "about:blank." If you don't like those options, or you want something a bit more flexible, you do have options that add more features to every new tab. Let's look at some of them.


Password management tool LastPass updated to 3.0 today, which includes a whole new design and layout that makes it easier to approach and easier to use, new mobile apps, support for shared passwords among family members, and more.


A lot of us stare at a computer monitor for the bulk of our day and reading long articles or books is rarely a comfortable experience. With that in mind, here's a few steps you can take to make you reading experience less terrible.

When you sign up for a new web service, you're usually handing over a bit of personal information. At the very least, you're giving away your email address. MaskMe is a browser extension that lets you hide your information.



It's no secret that email is grossly insecure. If you want a little privacy in your inbox, the easiest way to do it is to encrypt your messages, and Mailvelope offers free, OpenPGP encryption for most popular webmail services that's easy to configure and a breeze to use.


Disconnect has always been one of our favorite privacy protecting browser extensions. Now Disconnect is even faster, and speeds up the web by shutting down ad-trackers, social widgets, and other snooping elements before they load, resulting in faster load times and less bandwidth consumed.



Facebook Chat now includes a feature that lets you know when a friend has read your message—or when you've read theirs. If you'd prefer to keep that information under wraps, Chat Undetected will do it for you.


Google got rid of the black navigation bar again. Many users feel that the new app launcher is a sub-par replacement. Thankfully, Proper Menubar brings it back with a vengeance.


Disconnect, makers of our favorite privacy-protecting browser extension, unveiled Disconnect Search today, an add-on that makes all of your searches, whether they're at Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and more completely private, regardless of whether you're using incognito or private browsing mode.