Apple has been dinging Microsoft with its “I’m a Mac” ads since 2006. Microsoft recently decided to strike back with a 300-million-dollar campaign and some very odd ads starting Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. Then they released some “I’m a PC” ads with content hitting back at Apple, which I have to admit (after the crazy Seinfeld ads) actually was decent response. Well, now the ad war is on bigtime. Apple hit back with some ads about the ads criticizing their ads. This is going to get confusing (but funny!) before it’s all said and done.

UPDATE: There’s another one…

I catch a new article every few weeks along the lines of “The Best Firefox Extensions for Doing ______.” Sometimes I see something cool that I end up downloading and using regularly, but most of the time I just stick with what I’ve got. I decided to share the list of extensions I have installed, and what I use them for.

Aardvark
This extension fits into the web developer category, and is really handy for quickly visualizing block elements in a website layout simply by hovering over the page.

BugMeNot
If you’ve never visited the site Bugmenot.com, you’re missing out. That site provides generic logins to those silly sites that make you create a login just to view things. This extension gives you an easy right-click option to pull a generic login from Bugmenot to the site you’re currently viewing.

Chatzilla
This one is simply an IRC client for Firefox. The main reason I installed it was for viewing Apple Keynotes chatted via IRC, so it isn’t an extension that I use regularly.

ColorZilla
This is another web developer extension. It gives you an eye-dropper tool that can be used to pull colors from any website, and copy them to your clipboard. I use this pretty regularly to quickly get hex colors from sites I like, or to remind me what color I used in a site I created.

Delicious Bookmarks
I’ve got a Del.icio.us account full of bookmarks, and this extension helps me to add/tag/sync those bookmarks with Firefox.

Firebug
Firebug is probably the most used extension in my collection. It fits into the web developer category, and allows you to rip up the code to just abou any website you can pull up in Firefox. I use it mainly for tweaking and viewing CSS issues in my sites, but it does a whole lot more.

Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer
This extension keeps my bookmarks in sync between my work and home computers. It also provides a hosting service allowing me access to my bookmarks via their website on any computer.

Greasemonkey
This extension allows you to customize the way webpages look and function by using scripts to do different tasks based on the sites you visit. One of my favorite scripts removes hose annoying text link ads from sites that use them.

IE Tab
This one does pretty much what the name implies. It shows you what your site would look like in Internet Explorer. It’s handy for testing sites, but also if someone has a poorly developed site, it will allow you to quickly view it using IE without leaving Firefox.

Link Alert
I use the Link Alerty extension to warn me before I click on a link to an outside document. Where this extension is most handy is for PDF’s, so I don’t mindlessly click, and then have to wait for Acrobat to open. It’s also handy for e-mail links warning me when it is going to pull up my email client.

MeasureIt
Yes, another web developer extension (I’ve got a lot of them). This one lets you draw boxes around elements on a site to see how larget they are. It’s handy when looking at page/element widths.

S3 Firefox Organizer
This is my newest extension, and was downloaded when I started using Amazon’s S3 for backups. This extension gives me access (FTP-like) to my S3 storage account from inside Firefox.

Sage
A simple in-browser RSS reader - I like this better than the live-bookmarks reader built into Firefox.

Translator
This extension does quick and easy translations of websites with one click, Every now and then, I’ll run across a site I need to see that isn’t in English - this extension saves me in those circumstances.

User Agent Switcher
Along the same lines of IE Tab, this extension lets you spoof your user agent for those poorly developed websites that only work well in a certain browser.

Web Developer
The Web Developer extension is a very handy extension for web developers (duh), that provides different break-downs of page elements on the site you have it. It also allows live manipulation of those page elements.

WebMail Notifier
The WebMail Notifier extension notifies you when you get new webmail (catchy name eh?) so you don’t have to keep visiting the webmail sites one by one to check mail status. I use this for my hotmail, yahoo and gmail accounts.

Work-Only Extensions:
There are a few additional extensions that I use only on my work computer for various reasons.

Quartz PDF Plugin
Since Preview is my PDF-viewer of choice on my Mac, Quartz lets me open PDF’s using Preview right inside the browser vs. firing up an external instance for each doc.

Simple Mail
This extensions is similar to WebMail Notifier, but is used to check my pop mail accounts at work. I like to keep my work and home email separate, so my home mail doesn’t go to my mail app at work. This extension check my multiple accounts and lets me view/edit/send mail from right inside the browser.

Well, there’s the list of all the extensions I use. What does your list look like? Is there anything I should be using that I don’t have right now? What is your favorite best-extension-since-sliced-bread?