Mozilla launches Fashion Your Firefox tool

Customised plug-ins for all

Shaun Nichols in San Francisco, vnunet.com 19 Nov 2008

Mozilla has introduced a new way for Firefox users to pick add-ons for the open source browser.

Fashion Your Firefox is a tool designed to provide each user with a customised set of plug-ins best suited to their tastes and needs.

The company has assembled a series of recommended plug-ins, each designed around a certain theme of user behaviour.

The packages include a 'shutterbug' bundle for users who enjoy sharing video and photos, or a 'rock star' bundle which includes music-playing extensions such as foxytunes or a last.fm plug-in.

"One of the great things about the Fashion Your Firefox collection is that it allows users to bundle a bunch of different add-ons together all at once," wrote David Rolnitzky, programme manager in charge of add-ons at Mozilla, in a blog posting.

"In essence, it's like having a shopping cart that you can use to select any add-on from the Fashion Your Fox collection, 'check-out' with just one click, and after a quick Firefox restart, have a whole new browser that's made just for you."

Mozilla also announced that the total number of Firefox add-on downloads had topped one billion. The company estimates that there are some 5,000 Firefox add-ons currently in existence.

"That is an absolutely staggering number," wrote Rolnitzky. "Firefox is truly unique in having such a large community of add-ons creators that are passionate about extending the capabilities of the web through Firefox."

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