There are many different scenarios behind broken links, dead websites or 404 errors. For one, the server could in fact be down or overloaded. Especially popular sites like Facebook or Twitter are often slow and timed out when hit by the masses. The same is true for pages that receive a short-lived hype via Digg, Del.icio.us and the like.

On the other hand it may be an issue on your side. Just think of a bumpy ISP or a bad wireless connection. In any case, it’s annoying when you cannot access a website, and constantly hitting the reload button doesn’t make it any better.
Here are three Firefox addons to ease your mind.

Not so long ago I got an email from one of the readers asking if there is a way to be notified about site updates when the site doesn’t offer RSS feeds. And since there are plenty of popular sites that don’t provide any feeds I thought it may be a good idea to write about it. So if you’re interested here are some free tools that can do the job.

Monitor Webpages for Changes

If you’re a Firefox user then you can try Update Scanner. It’s an extension that lets you monitor webpages for changes. You have an option to choose how often the website should be checked for changes, and whether it should ignore the minor ones, such as the changes to numbers.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, there existed a light-weight browser that lived in the deep shadows of Internet Explorer. It was based on the source code of Netscape, a fallen bird which fell prey to Microsoft. It had a wonderful feature - the ability to increase features by installing extensions. Fast-forward to 2008, and that browser is now known to the world as Mozilla Firefox.

It is obvious that Firefox has much more functionality because of these addons. Add to it the fact that the primary reason for not switching from Firefox to alternate browsers is the addons and you will get an idea of how great the concept of addons is.

The idea of this post is to go through a bunch of tools that add to your browsing experience. Nothing extra ordinary but a handful of simple useful apps that solve common web problems: slow website loads, 404 errors, tab overloads, never ending signups, phishing, etc. Enjoy!

(1) OpenDNS - A quick way to add to your web speed. In simple terms, OpenDNS allows you to speed-up domain detection process which is normally handled by your ISP. There is nothing to download or install, but a couple of changes to your connection settings. Among other things, also includes domain typo correction, phishing protection, and domain blocking. Demo video.