If you loaded every great extension for Firefox up, I think your computer would probably implode. Here I’ve listed the top 10 extensions that have proven themselves through the test of time and extensive usage.

10. FireShot

The FireShot extension gives you the ability to take screenshots, edit, and distribute them almost instantly. This is insanely convenient compared to opening a program like Photoshop, pasting your screen, editing, and sending the finalized version. You can save the files in multiple formats, create vector objects, or even have screenshots load in your editor of choice. Only problem is there’s no support for the Mac version of Firefox upon writing this.

9. Firebug

Firebug is a long standing extension that has received extensive attention from the web development community for years. It allows you to find code, perform live in browser editing, and even save your changes. Currently you can edit CSS, HTML, and even execute JavaScript. This is great for finding framework/coding/CSS bugs or discovering techniques by other developers.

Check out FireScope, YSlow, and/or FirePHP to add great features to Firebug

8. Grease Monkey

This is a flexible extension that allows you to plug scripts into it for various purposes. For example, want to create a tag cloud for your Google searches or refresh Twitter when you’re away? Simply place a few lines of code from a script into the extension and suddenly your life will become easier.

7. Adblock Plus

Your time and screen space are two of your most important assets as a graphic or web designer. Why waste this space on having pointless ads suck up your screen space and slow down your load times? Adblock Plus is an easy to use extension that blocks ads from a list of popular ad providers.

note: I’ve tried several other ad block extensions and none of them can even compare

6. Google Notebook

This simple extension integrates the ability to collect pictures and web pages with a simple click . All you have to do is select the content you want to note, then Right Click>Note This or drag and drop the content into your browsers mini Notebook window. Doesn’t seem like that big of a deal at first, but this has saved me hundreds of hours building project references and documents.

note: Google Notebook has been shut down, sad day

5. Web Developer

Originally based upon the PNH Developer Toolbar, the Web Developer extension for Firefox is one of the most downloaded web developer extensions of all time. It allows you to instantly add borders to your HTML objects, validate via web standards, check screen sizes, disable CSS sheets, work with cookies on the fly, and more!

4. ColorZilla

No graphic or web designer should be without the ColorZilla extension. Like the older program Pixie, it allows you to grab any color’s value. This is great if you find a piece of artwork or website with colors you like, but have no idea what color values are used.

3. IE Tab

It seems that every single extension or program that attempts to render IE pages crashes. While this is probably true, the odd little extension IE Tab almost never seems to crash and allows you to change rendering engines with a simple right click. Great for web designers to check IE page display errors without opening the browser.

2. Delicious Bookmarks

Although there are newer programs out there then Delicious, nobody can argue that a majority of people still use this bookmarking software. The Firefox extension allows you to share pages on the fly and check your inbox for new bookmarks.

1. ScribeFire

The ScribeFire extension gives you the ability to manage all of your blogs in one place and even publish your material to several locations at once. They support practically every major blogging website (Facebook, MySpace, ect) and it even comes with a great wysiwyg editor.