Recently, like a couple million other people, I upgraded from FireFox 1 to FireFox 2. So far, I haven’t really had any compatibility issues. I’ve had this minor problem that sometimes when I minimize FF2, it disappears from the taskbar at the bottom of the screen. A quick visit to the task manager, and I can pull it up again. But that’s not what really, at the moment, as Peter Griffin might say, griding my gears.

Whats really grinding my gears is a little detail overlooked in one of the menus. Our beloved “extensions” seem to be no more. I don’t mean the fact that a whole bunch of mine no longer worked. A bunch of the ones that no longer work didn’t work in the first place. If you look under the “tools” menu, the “extensions” heading has been replaced with the more mundande and downright pedestrian “Add-Ons.” I know that this heading now controls the updates, extensions, and themes. But come on. What used to be the largest selling point for FF? It was the extensions. Sure, we all knew about its better security, and the tabbed browsing. But the real kicker were the extensions. It didn’t matter that a good chunk of the people who used Firefox didn’t know the first thing about web security, and that they didn’t fully grasp just how much safer FF was. They just liked the idea of having multiple programs rolled into one. They weren’t add-ons. An extra button on a toolbar is an add-on. Some random smiley :C is an add-on. But an extension is so much different. An extension is usefull. Its a way to compound functions into one window, give a free-flowing river of customizable information at your fingertips. I mean, extensions are cool. They work. They’re unique. Add-on’s aren’t. They’re just extra baggage, thrown in, without any forethough. Extensions are cool and hip; Their the things that you want to use.  Being an extensions is like being asked “do you want to become the most popular kid in school,” and you answering “of course I want to be the most popular kid in school.  Why wouldn’t I?” Add-ons are sluggish, and bulky.   Add-ons are like slowly agreeing to become the fat kid who constantly eats, and doesn’t try worth a damn in gym class.

Memo to Firefox : We know that the new add-ons page covers more than just extensions, but it sounds so much better, cooler, etc. if you call em extensions instead.