While Microsoft's Internet Explorer comes pre-installed with the Windows operating system, some of us have chosen to ditch the inbuilt client from the software giant's for an open source alternative. Mozilla's Firefox has shown to be the faster, more compact, less intrusive, more advanced, and to some, vastly superior when compared to Microsoft's offering. Add-on's really make Firefox rock though.

The Firefox add-on feature is like having a Ferrari with the option of adding wings to make it fly or a trailer so you can carry more luggage (although who in their right minds would?). But that's the beauty of it! You get to chose what you want it to do. So for today I'm going to let you all in on my Top 5 most useful Firefox add-on's.

1. Adblock Plus

How many of you visit the NZ Herald website to catch up on the latest news? You load the website and all these flashy advertisements start to appear. It may be nice to know what the hot rates for house of travel are this week but did you know that loading advertisements each time you visit a website adds to the load time of the website, slows down your computer, and uses up your precious data allowance? This is where Adblock Plus comes to the rescue. After installing, all you need to do is restart your browser and when it loads up, chose a filter subscription (I chose EasyList + EasyElement(USA) since its english) and just like magic, no more ads!

2. DownloadHelper

This one is for all you youtube-holics out there. If you've asked the question "How do I download videos from youtube?" This is your answer. With DownloadHelper installed each time you watch a video or listen to a song the DownloadHelper icon will start to animate itself. To download it, just click on the right area which has a small downward arrow and select the link that describes the video or song you want to download.

3. DownThemAll!

DownThemAll! is a free download accelerator add-on for Firefox. So if you're a heavy downloader and you find your downloads are running slower than expected, it might be because the server your downloading from is under heavy load and is limiting the speeds to you(Not because the Orcon technicians think it's fun to slow you down and make you squeal). What DownThemAll! does is it breaks the file your downloading up into 4 pieces and then downloads the 4 parts simultaneously hence maximizing your broadband connection. To use DownThemAll! just install it and when you click on a link to download something, select DownThemAll! instead of save file as. Just a note, not all servers will allow you to use a download accelerator and if it doesn't you'll download a small file under 100kbs in size instead of the actual file. For those servers, just download the file normally.

4. Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer

Bookmarks to most people are the quick dial buttons of web browsing. It's a collection of links you slowly build up over time while browsing websites of interest. So what happens if one day you decide to buy a new computer, or you want to use another computer to browse the web? You could manually import your bookmarks to the new computer, but wouldn't it be nice if Firefox did that automatically for you? Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer backs up your bookmarks onto a server and then silently works in the background to keep all your bookmarks synchronized in each computer. So if you find a link at work that you want to have a more in-depth look at when you get home, all you need to do is bookmark it and it'll be there waiting for you when you fire up Firefox once you get home.

5. Distrust

Distrust is Firefox's answer to Google Chrome's incognito mode.  Once installed, you can start a distrust session by clicking on the little grey eye icon. During the session all of your browsing history and cookies created will be deleted at the end of the session or when Firefox is closed. So if you want to surprise your partner something special from ferrit.co.nz but don't want to risk them finding out about it the next time they use the computer, just run it in a distrust session.

There are many other add-ons out there and if there's a feature you need that isn't provided by the ones above, it's very likely you can find them at addons.mozilla.org. If you've got an add-on that you think is way better than the ones I've written about and should definitely take one of the spots in my top 5, tell us about it in the comments below.