Anyone knows how great WordPress is. But few people know that it can be better. WordPress supports a large variety of plugins that can enhance your blogging experience, that can improve your blogs’s performance or plugins that simply make your life a lot easier. We selected only a few in this release, giving you a 10 must-install plugins list. Download, install, activate, try and let us know your opinion about them. Enjoy and happy blogging!

1. Akismet
Automattic Kismet (Akismet for short) Wordpress Plugin is a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue, so you never have to worry about spam again.
Plugin Page | Download Plugin

2. podPress
The podPress pluggin gives you everything you need in one easy plugin to use WordPress for Podcasting.
Plugin Page | Download Plugin

3. Technochrati Tagging
Allows you to use Technorati tags (http://www.technorati.com/help/tags.html) in your blog entries by adding a custom field to blog posts. Also allows for tag listings (http://www.technorati.com/tags/) to be added to your website.
Plugin Page | Download Plugin

4. Flexible Upload
Flexible Upload is a plugin for Wordpress 2.0.x and 2.1.x to enhance the image upload functionality. It resizes pictures to a specific dimension, creates custom-sized thumbnails, adds an optional watermark signature, and other options
Plugin Page | Download Plugin

5. Google Analytics
The Google Analytics plugin for WordPress lets you easily add Google’s web tracking script to your WordPress powered site.
Plugin Page | Download Plugin

6. Mighty AdSense
It will allow you to host the code in WordPress without having to modify the templates. Google Ads are displayed in post item and you can specify how many blocks are going to show up in a page. Ads preview tool is included in the control panel.
Plugin Page | Download Plugin

7. Wordpress Video Plugin
This plugin will let you embed Flash Videos (flv) in your WordPress posts/pages. It supports YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe, MyspaceTV, Yahoo! Video… and many others!
Plugin Page | Download Plugin

8. Wordpress-phpMyAdmin
This is a simple plugin that will allow you direct access to your WordPress database through phpMyAdmin within your WP admin console. No need to deal with phpMyAdmin setup and login and settings are taken from your WP settings.
Plugin Page | Download Plugin

9. Search Pages
This plugin lets your visitors search through posts and pages instead of only posts.
Plugin Page | Download Plugin

10. WP-Print 2.11
Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page.
Download Plugin | Plugin Demo

We all know by now that Firefox is a great tool, what most people don’t know is that Firefox works with the so called Extensions (small pieces of software that add features or small tweaks to you Firefox). Using Extensions is a blessing and they make your life on the internet a whole lot easier.

Here is a great collection of Firefox Extensions for webmasters:

1. Web Developer 1.1.4

This Extension adds a toolbar with some great features for easily editing the CSS, work on the accessibility of your site and other cool features. Get it here!

2. Firefox Accessibility Extension 1.01

Firefox Accessibility Extension makes it easier for people with a disability to view and navigate webpages, but it also helps developers to check the accessibility of their pages. Get it here!

3. SeoQuake 2.0.4

SeoQuake is huge, i use it every single day and it saves me a lot of time. This Extension basically adds a toolbar in the corner of the websites and with the push of a button it expands giving you almost instant information about the way search engines view and index that website, along with statistics from Alexa and other great features for the webmaster that works with Search Engine Optimisation. Also every time you search for something in Google, Yahoo or Msn you’ll get the same statistics under every result. Get it here!

4.Total Validator 4.1

Provides true HTML validation (HTML 2.0 to XHTML 1.1) using the official DTDs, plus added attribute checking. So you no longer have to put up with the limitations of the W3C validator (no type checking) and tools like HTML Tidy which interpret the standards incorrectly (they don’t use the official DTDs).

Also performs accessibility validation (WCAG, US-508), broken link checking, spell checking (5 languages), and takes screenshots using 24 browsers on Windows, Linux, and OS/X. Get it here!

5. KGen 0.2.1

KGen retrieves every words of a page and lets you know how many time they appears on her and their weight in the page (a word in the title of a page has a stronger weight than a word in a paragraph).

So, you can easily know how to optimize your pages, know what’s the secret of your competitors or simply know what’s the main subject of a webpage.

You can also select some words and transfer them to your clipboard and paste them on tag fields on your favorite social network or fill meta-keywords of your web pages.

To open the KGen sidebar : View>Sidebar>KGen. Get it here!

6. IE Tab 1.3.3.20070528

We all know how frustrating and time consuming is to edit your page especially the CSS file to make your site display correctly in IE as well as in Firefox, this Extension gives you an embedded IE in a new tab!

This is a great tool for web developers, since you can easily see how your web page displayed in IE with just one click and then switch back to Firefox. Get it here!

7. Yet Another Window Resizer 1.1

This Extension helps you view your web page in several resolutions. Get it here!

8. MeasureIt 0.3.6

Draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage. Get it here!

9. Clear Cache Button 0.5

Adds a clear cache toolbar button. After installing the extension, find the clear cache button in the toolbar customization panel. YES, this is an extension for the very lazy webmaster! Get it here!

10. Font Finder 0.5a

Simply highlight a single element (e.g. a paragraph or a strong tag ), right-click and select `Font Finder`, then marvel as the full CSS text styling of the selected element appears. Get it here!

Ok, so what is XUL?

XUL was developed by Mozilla to use for its cross-platform apps like FireFox. XUL was developed for creating UI for apps just like DHTML is used for web page interface. The only complete implementation of XUL can be found in the Gecko layout engine. XUL basically relies on existing web technologies like CSS, JavaScrips and DOM which makes it reasonable easy to master if you have a background in web programming and design.

A XUL interface is typically defined to consist of three discrete sets of components:

• Content: The XUL document(s), whose elements define the layout of the user interface.
• Skin: The CSS and image files, which define the appearance of an application.
• Locale: The files containing user-visible strings for easy software localization.

Drawbacks of XUL:

• The main drawback is the lack or message when errors occurs. The interface just does not display.
• Using RDF to fill widgets is rather difficult.
• Using XPCom, XPConnect is more difficult again.

You can go as deep and you want into XUL on Mozilla’s Introduction to XUL.