Now, I know what you are going to tell me before you even say it.

“Mitch, there are already a million and one video downloaders out there, why review another one?”

Number one, you are right – there are way too many.  So what makes the 1-Click YouTube Video Download any different?  It cuts out the useless junk, and gets right to the meat and potatoes.

Other plugins make you pass through one place, that goes to another, and then finally after you turn in a circle three times you might have the video.  This add-on doesn’t make you do that dance.  Instead, it adds download links under the videos on YouTube.

All you do is select if you want to download the .flv version, the .mp4 version, or the HD version (if available).  Click the link, the download starts and you are done.

You can pick up the 1-Click YouTube Video Download add-on for Firefox on the Firefox Add-ons web site.

Need help watching your feed subscriptions in Google Reader? 

The Google Reader Watcher add-on for Firefox is here to help.  With this extension, you can be instantly notified when your favorite new source, blog or any other web site with an RSS feed is updated and ready to read in Google Reader. 

There is not a lot to  be said here.  Google Reader Watch (yes, the name does sound like it is having an argument with itself) simply checks your Google Reader for unread feeds and if you have, the plugin will display them on your browser’s status bar.

Now I usually only check my own Google Reader account once or twice a day.  However, if you want to stay on top of the latest updates this extension gets that job done.  For example, you could easily subscribe the your favorite Firefox blog, the greatest podcast about web hosting, and some guy named Mitch’s techie blog and find out all three were updated this morning.

You can pick up the Google Reader Watcher from the Firefox Add-ons web site.

Picking a location for all of your downloaded files is an easy thing to do.  All you have to do is go to Tools in the menu bar, then Options, then in the Main tab, pick your place to save your downloads.  What if you want all your downloaded .zip files in a folder named “Archives” and files downloaded from Mozilla.org to go into a folder named, “Mozilla Downloads”?  Then you need the Automatic Save Folder add-on for Firefox.

This extension allow you to specify where each file you are downloading will be saved too.  If you are using the Firefox option “Save the files in this folder”, the file will be saved automatically to that location. If you are using the Firefox option “Always ask where to save the files”, Firefox will show you suggested path location choices to save your file to.

How to Start Sorting Your Downloads

Your downloads will play by the rules you set up for them.  Here are a few example situations:

If you want all your executable files .exe to be saved in a specific folder:

• domain: all
• filter: .exe
• folder: your executable files folder

Now if you want all the files from a particular website (mozilla.org for example) to be saved in a Mozilla folder:

• domain: mozilla.org
• filter: all
• folder: your Mozilla folder

As you can see the possibilities for customizing your files and where they are downloaded to are endless.   You can also use dynamic variables to create a dated folder:

• folder: X:\root folder\%Y% %m% %d%

Another neat feature is the ability to automatically accept the download.  There is no need to click the OK button.

You can learn more about how to customize and use the Automatic Save Folder extension for Firefox on the official web site, and download it from the Firefox Add-ons web site.

Since Facebook is the king of the hill when it comes to social networks, there have been a lot of add-ons dedicated to making it better.  Facebook is great, but is not without flaws.  Thankfully, these Firefox add-on developers have worked out some of the kinks and have masterminded some of the best add-ons for Firefox to date. 

Here are my top five Facebook add-ons you can add to Firefox.

 Friendbar

Facebook and Twitter are now easier than ever to use. Friendbar displays a running stream of text and photo updates right on the toolbar, and allows you to post updates, to like, comment, update, retweet, dm, and reply from the toolbar itself.

 Facebook Toolbar

Facebook seems to quickly be outgrowing the other social networks by leaps and bounds.  It is hard to find a friend that hasn’t switched over to it from the other social networks like MySpace and the like.  So with that said, why not grab a toolbar that will help you get a little more out of your Facebook usage and help you stay connected with your friends even better?

 Facebook Photo Album Downloader

In need of a way to download all the images you may have uploaded to your Facebook photo album?  Sure you could go through each image, click by click and download each one individually.  Why do that though, when you have FacePAD.  This extension will let you grab all the photos from any album you need on Facebook.

 Facebook Video

The popular Greasemonkey Facebook video script is now a full-fledged Firefox addon that lets users download or convert Facebook videos, and embed videos outside of Facebook.

 Facebook Dislike

You can “like” things on Facebook, so why can you not “dislike” things too? If you use Facebook, and you have Firefox – you can now add the feature some have really been wanting. You get the ability to dislike things that your friends have posted.

There are my top five, which one is your favorite?  I would have to say that the Facebook Photo Album Downloader is probably the most functional, so in turn – my favorite of the favorites.  What also would be the Facebook flaw you wish you could fix?  You might just be the inspiration for some Firefox add-on developer’s next creation.

Is it really the most wonderful time of the year?  I think so.  We have reached the time in the year where we all start pulling our Christmas trees down from the attic and hunting down the best Christmas-y theme you can find in this Firefox winter wonderland.  Of course I am talking about the Tinseltown theme for Firefox.

This theme is decorated from head to toe with holiday joy. 

Here is a look at the theme in action, of course checking out the always entertaining TwisterMC (who just happens to be the mastermind behind the theme, but I am pretty sure isn’t a cat).

Like what you see?  You can download the Tinseltown theme for Firefox from the Firefox Add-ons web site. Have another favorite holiday-inspired Firefox theme? Leave your personal favorites in the comments!

The features to love here are plentiful. You can dynamically, show bookmarks by using folder and search terms.  Highlight the bookmarks in any color you would like, sort the bookmarks by name, visit time, last visited and most visited, and a lot more.

Incredible Bookmarks also help you clean house.  It can:

• Run a check to find out duplicate bookmarks in each Incredible Bookmarks toolbar.
• Run a check to check the links in each Incredible Bookmarks toolbar to see which links are no longer available.

This video covers some more of the basics when it comes to using the Incredible Bookmarks add-on for Firefox:

This add-on for Firefox has incredible promise, and I could not find a feature I didn’t like.  My favorite overall feature is the ability to color code your bookmarks and bookmark folders.  I like to keep things neat, nice and organized – so this suits my needs, perfectly.

To learn more about Incredible Bookmarks, check out the official site, and you can download it from the Firefox Add-ons web site.

Looking for the best way to keep an eye on the skies this Thanksgiving weekend?  Look no further than the AniWeather add-on for Firefox.  This extension animates weather information for locations all around the world.  Using the weather watching site, Aniweather.com – you get real-time condition updates, and a five-day forecast.

Some of the other great features of AniWeather include:

• Link to more detailed views seamlessly
• Lots of graphics and animated reports
• Easy one click switching of locations for travel
• Coverage for over 70,000 worldwide locations

I would easily put this add-on up against any other weather-related extension out there, as far as functionality and information goes.  It ranks up there with the best.  You can learn more about the AniWeather add-on for Firefox at AniWeather.com or download it at the Firefox Add-ons site.

One can only hope. According to several web sites that heard about it from a friend, who knew a friend, who was feeding the dog of a guy who might have worked at Sony, the PlayStation 3’s web browser might be getting a big upgrade, to Firefox.

Well turns out is was a possible rumor, then not so possible, but might be in the works?  Here is the first leak of information from psinsider:

We recently received a tip from a source very close to Sony who says that they have been in talks with Mozilla lately about possibly porting Firefox over to the PS3.

Later on, they issued a “correction”:

Looks like we goofed on the Mozilla rumor… I heard back from our source recently.”I don’t know how the guys from ps3center did this, but please tell me WHERE I wrote that Mozilla is going to port Firefox for PS3 ?? There was just a meeting between someone from PS division and someone from Mozilla.”The original message only mentioned that they had been talking, and I made the mistake of assuming it was related to porting Firefox onto PS3. I apologize for the lack of foresight. Sometimes when interpreting information from a rumor (which in some cases can be worded pretty vaguely), mistakes like this can be made. We apologize for the inconvenience.

So there were “talks”, I guess you could say, but nothing definite or newsworthy yet.  Personally, I’d love to see the PS3 browser get switched over to Firefox.  Even a stripped down basic version of Firefox would be better than the buggy thing they have there now.

There are a lot of Firefox features that don’t get much press, or are quickly forgotten about.  For example, did you know that you could switch to using Gmail or Yahoo! Mail as your default mail client (to handle those mailto links)?

To chance your settings, go to Tools, Options and then click on the Applications tab.  From there, type “mail” into the text box to go to the default mail handler settings.  From the drop down box, you should get several choices, Yahoo! Mail and Gmail being two of them.  Choose the webmail application of your choice, hit the button labeled, “OK” and you are all set.

Now you are ready to use the webmail provider of your choice as your default e-mail application, as far as Firefox knows.

That might be a little extreme, but it does help to point out that this extension will let you split your browser up however you see fit to do so.

Here are the various ways you can split things up:

• Choose the “Split Browser to” menu in the context menu.
• Choose the “Load in Split Browser” menu in the context menu on link.
• Click popup-button on top/bottom/left/right edges of the content area.
• Drop links, bookmarks, tabs, etc. to popup-button on top/bottom/left/right edges of the content area while dragging.

To close split browser frames, hit the close button (for that frame) or “File” > “Close All Split Browser” closes all of them at once.  Another neat feature is that the status of the split browsing window saves, so it will automatically restore your splicing of the browser next time you start Firefox.

Split Browser is a terrific add-on if you are looking for a unique way to browse multiple web pages at once.