12 best Firefox add-ons for hardcore Diggers

digg user
A digger at London's Diggnation Live. Is he hardcore? Does he have Firefox?

Some things just work better together.

Fish and chips. Kittens and internets. Nickelback and angry crowds hurling missiles. That sort of thing.

You can add Digg and Firefox to that list - and as we've discovered, there are some very smart add-ons that bring your favourite site and your favourite browser even closer together.

Here's our 12 must-have Firefox add-ons for hardcore digg users...

1. Simple submissions
Has the page you're currently viewing been submitted to Digg? Digg Extension tells you - and if it has, it shows all the important numbers such as the number of Diggs and the number of comments.

2. Never miss a Digg
Essentially the Digg Extension on steroids, the Digg Firefox Toolbar notifies you when friends Digg, submit or comment on stories, and it pops up a notification of anything interesting that's just been Dugg.

3. All Digg, all the time
Occasionally even the most hardcore Digger has to do something more productive - so why not keep your chosen Digg category open in the Firefox sidebar? That's exactly what the Digg Sidebar extension offers.

4. Super search power
Wouldn't it be great if Google, Yahoo or Live based your search results not just on relevance but on Digg rankings too? With Socialphile, they do.

5. Digg Effect? What Digg Effect?
The Digg Effect often overwhelms unsuspecting sites, but don't despair: TADSEE enables you to right-click and see the Google Cache or Coral Cache of the page everybody's trying to access.

6. Digg and beyond
A Firefox 3 version is due Real Soon Now, but for now Social Media for Firefox is an experimental, use at your own risk, add-on for Firefox 2. It's a clever one, though: it enables you to see whether a site has also been submitted to StumbleUpon, Reddit or Delicious.

UPDATE: Social Media for Firefox has now been updated for Firefox 3.

7. Serious sharing
In an ideal world, every website would have share icons not just for Digg, but for every bookmarking service you might ever use. In the real world there are too many services for site owners to support - so install the Shareaholic add-on and get the buttons in your browser instead.

8. Infinite scrolling
When you get to the end of a page on Digg, Google, Lifehacker, The New York Times and so on AutoPager automatically loads the next page and adds it to the bottom. If you're a Digg addict or a voracious reader, it'll save you stacks of time.

9. Digg your feeds
The Google Reader Digg News Greasemonkey script adds a simple Digg control showing the number of Diggs and a Digg It button to every link in Google Reader.

10. Digg to Delicious
Simple and useful, the Digg.licio.us Greasemonkey script adds a Save It button that saves Digg links to your del.icio.us account.

11. Don't get fooled again
The Digg Comment Enhancer Greasemonkey script sorts out comment threads by displaying linked images and YouTube clips inline. If everybody had this, Rickrolling wouldn't exist.

12. Read it? Hide it
Digg Done That uses the power of Greasemonkey to hide Digg stories that you've marked as read. If you get carried away you can reset the read-list at any time.

Now read 25 essential Firefox add-ons for power users

Carrie Marshall
Contributor

Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, is on sale now and her next book, about pop music, is out in 2025. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind.