[Last Updated: June 2, 2008]

For a period of almost five years, Microsoft Windows users were stuck with Internet Explorer 6.0 for their web browsing needs. Their lack of support for the browser left an opening for competition, and out of those ashes rose a Phoenix which would eventually be known as Firefox.

The success of Firefox is often attributed to being open source, or for better handling of security issues, but I’ve always felt that it was the Firefox Add-ons that really made the browser appeal to web surfers.

Once Microsoft finally got around to developing Internet Explorer 7.0, they recognized the value of add-ons and built them into their next generation web browser. There are a large number of Internet Explorer Add-ons currently available, but they are rarely given much exposure, so I decided to collect the best of them here in this post, broken down into categories for easy reference.

Downloads

  • Star Downloader – Download manager and accelerator. Chooses the best mirror sites and splits up the downloads into multiple parts for faster downloads.

Feeds

  • FeedsPlus - Improves the IE7 feed reader, adding new views and popup notifications.

Miscellaneous

  • FoxyTunes – Allows you to control your music player from within your web browser.
  • IE7Pro – Dubbed the Ultimate IE7 Add-on. Adds all sorts of features, including Greasemonkey support, ad filters, crash recovery, and even mouse gestures.
  • IESpell – Allows you to spell check text boxes.
  • LeechVideo – Allows you to download your favorite videos from video sharing websites.
  • Mouse Gestures – Adds Firefox/Opera style mouse gestures to IE7.

Search

  • Add Search Providers – Allows you to switch the built-in search feature to your search engine of choice (instead of LiveSearch).
  • Customize Google – Enhances Google search results.
  • Inline Search – Adds the ability to find search results as your type.

Tabs

Web 2.0

  • Del.icio.us Buttons – Adds Del.icio.us buttons to your web browser.
  • ShareThis – Allows you to e-mail pages and bookmark websites in many of the popular social bookmarking services.
  • StumbleUpon Toolbar – Allows you to use StumbleUpon to “channel surf.”
  • Trailfire Toolbar – Allows you to leave behind sticky notes for other Trailfire users to view.
  • Wikipedia Toolbar – Lets you search Wikipedia from any site you are on.

Web Developer

If you rely heavily on any add-ons that aren’t on this list, please sound off in the comments below!

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My 'Best of' Series

  1. Best of: Firefox Add-ons
  2. Best of: Free Software
  3. Best of: Greasemonkey Scripts
  4. Best of: Thunderbird Extensions
  5. Best of: Internet Explorer Add-ons
  6. Best of: Facebook Applications