Did you try the extension to see what it does?

As you note, when you use Ctrl+Shift+v, Firefox will paste plain text. What does that mean, actually. When you copy something to the clipboard, many programs will give Windows multiple formats, such as HTML, plain text, bitmap, etc. When you use Ctrl+Shift+v, Firefox skips over its usual preference for pasting HTML and instead pastes the plain text.

The main thing the Copy as Plain Text extension does is change what Firefox puts on the clipboard when you copy. Instead of including both HTML and plain text, which is Firefox's normal behavior, it's only the plain text (cleaned up a bit). This can be beneficial if the program you want to paste in after copying from a page in Firefox doesn't let you choose, and pasting HTML makes a mess in that program. Not everyone needs this, obviously, it depends on where you tend to paste. And some people don't mind using an intermediary plain text program like Windows Notepad to cleanse formatting (copy in Firefox, paste into Notepad, select and copy in Notepad, then paste to the program where you don't want to paste HTML).

Thanks, jscher, for your reply.

I believe my original post acknowledged that the extension has additional options--but with the reservation that they would be of interest to an exceedingly small number of users (and the extension is not even promoted for those options). Do you think I'm wrong? If not, the extension does not warrant the Recommended designation. If you think I am wrong, perhaps you could explain.

I'm sure we can all find head scratchers in any list because they aren't for us. If you don't think copying plain text in the first place is different than pasting plain text after copying HTML then you probably won't be joining the over 19,000 users of this extension.