I’ve been asked by a few clients and colleagues about what firefox extensions I use.
For those that aren’t familiar with firefox extensions – they’re nifty little add-ons for an already excellent browser that you can download and install for free.
For the most part the extensions I use are used to develop and/or debug (X)HTML, CSS and Javascript frontends. Hopefully they might make your life a little easier too, as I know they certainly do mine.
Firebug
A really neat little javascript debugger which not only gives you much more information about where errors in scripts occur but also gives a live DOM inspector – so when you change something with javascript you can view the updated HTML that your browser is rendering.
Web Developer Toolbar
A must have for anyone doing frontend development, it’s got some really nice features like allowing you disable CSS, highlight those evil tables, replace images with their alt text and allowing you to validate your page (local and/or remote versions) by clicking a button on the toolbar.
Fangs
Fangs creates a text based version of a webpage as it would be read by a screenreader, although it’s no substitute for a proper fully fledged screenreader, it can give some helpful insights during the development process.
Aardvark
A visual aid to see what css classes and id’s have been applied to particular elements by just mousing over, no need to ‘view source’.
HTTPLiveHeaders
Not really for frontend development, but a very useful extension that allows you to see what server the site your looking at is running on, what kind of http codes are being returned, view the remote cookies and lots of other nice goodies.
Have you got any to add to the list? Why not pop them in a comment below.
November 21, 2006 at 11:05 am
I’m using Flock (www.flock.com) which I find great – nearly all the FFox extensions work with it, plus it makes blogging much easier too. I’ve been using WebDev and Firebug for a while now – WebDev is indespensible.
November 21, 2006 at 11:51 am
Another toasty add-on I get great use out of is Del.icio.us: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1532/
November 21, 2006 at 2:09 pm
My favorite is Screengrab (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1146/).
It lets you create an image of a full web page, not just what shows in the browser at any given time. Since most pages these days are more than one screenfull, it’s pretty essential for me.
(Note, it hasn’t formally been updated for FF 2.0, but look in the comments in the link above and you see a link to a fix that works.
November 21, 2006 at 2:14 pm
Flock has delicious built in, and makes in incredibly easy to share favourites across multiple machines – something that used to be a complete pain.
November 22, 2006 at 7:00 pm
Another one I’ve just discovered is “Stylish”. You can apply CSS to any sites you wish, allowing you to essentially turn off or hide advertising or other content in your favourite online mail client or search engine.
November 24, 2006 at 1:07 pm
I could not live without the Web Developer toolbar! I also find a far simpler extension called IE View (http://ieview.mozdev.org/)very handy. It lets you view the current web page in IE by right clicking, which comes in handy when testing and for those sites that think there is only one browser in the world
November 28, 2006 at 10:23 pm
Good list all right. I guess different people have different extensions.
One of my most used extensions broke about two weeks ago. I was 2 days without it and I really was starting to crack up.
If I lost the web developer plugin though, I would certainly be lost.