Opera and Firefox are doing an excellent job of keeping IE at bay. Their dedication to open standards and their rock-solid feature sets blow Microsoft's ancient app out of the water while staying on top of security issues. On top of all this, javascript mods for the two browsers (greasemonkey / userscripts) have gone beyond the functionality and integration of "extensions" and "plugins" to offer tightly integrated, highly useful tools that don't take a toll on system resources.

These scripts are intended for use with Firefox, but most or all of them will work in Opera as well. Those using FF 1.5 betas might run into some trouble getting some of them to work.

• Vonage Dial Linkify [install] - Looks for phone numbers in pages and makes hyperlinks out of them. When clicking on the link, your Vonage phone will ring and be dialing the number/link you clicked on.
• MySpace Custom Style Remover [install] - MySpace is the new AOL. If you absolutely have to venture into that disaster, this script can keep the cluelessness at bay.
• RIAA Radar [install] - This script will help you avoid giving money to the RIAA while shopping at Amazon. A tiny icon will apear telling you whether the disc you're buying supports members of this rogue organization.
• Google Gallery [install] - Google's image search results are much like the rest of the site, sparsely populated and easily rendered on virtually any computer. This script returns a compact selection of 200 images on a single page.

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