The Top Ten Firefox Plugins
Date: Jul 03, 2008
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Comments: 1
Introduction
Ok I'm going to admit it, I love Firefox. It's just a good browser that isn't bloated yet has a plethora of different plugins available to improve your web browsing experience.
If you're a web developer then I've got Ten Firefox plugins for you! I couldn't imagine my work without them and neither should you! So without further adieu. . . .
The Plugins!
FireBug
There is a reason this is at the top of my list. It's by far, the most useful plugin for any web developer. Especially for those who are doing javascript and AJAX.
It has a world class javascript error console, much better than the annoying popup one that comes standard with FF (no offense guys). If there is an error in my script a it will indicate it at the bottom of the screen and all I have to do is click that and it will give me a detailed account of what's happening.
On top of the superb console it also has an HTML, CSS, DOM and Script inspector so that you can get down to the nitty gritty at run time. I don't use these features much but they are handy on occasion.
But wait . . . there's more! It also has a rudimentary performance monitor that reports how long it takes for elements in your page to load.
YSlow
Ok, I'm kind of cheating, this isn't exactly a plugin but rather it's an extension onto FireBug. The only complaint I had about Firebug was that it didn't have a very good performance monitor and it wasn't very good at helping you optimize your scripts. Well here comes YSlow to the rescue. It installs right into Firebug and is a welcome addition to all the other great features.
It is extremely easy to use, it analyzes your page and gives you a score and recommendations on how you can improve the performance of your page. In addition it offers statistics and compression information about various components.
Web Developer
This is really handy tool as it provides links to very useful resources for validation, optimization reports, document information and much more. In essence its' a collection of valuable links that every web developer should know anyway. It's conveniently available from the toolbar and the Tools Menu.
Screengrab!
Another great Firefox Plugin! For those of you on a PC this is a dream come true. Most of you probably know how much of a hassle it is to take a screen shot. You have to click Print Screen on your keyboard, open Photoshop, make a new document, paste it into the document, crop it, resize it and on and on. This is even worse if you have dual monitors!
Well not any more! Screengrab saves you a lot of time and energy, it gives you the option of saving a part of the screen, the whole screen or even a whole web document! You can even save it to the clipboard or directly to your hard drive.
ColorZilla
Here's another gem. How many times have you wanted to sample a color from a website and you had to go through that whole Photoshp routine? This takes out that step makes it a snap to grab colors. It installs into the bottom left corner of your screen is always conveniently available when you need to sample a color. It returns the RGB values as well as the hexidecimal values.
My only complaint about this plugin is that it doesn't save the hex value into the clipboard, but other than that it's a must have for any web developer and designer.
PicLens
Ah one of my favorite plugins! This is a very elegant plugin and it has very high production values. It's not just for web developers either, it's for anyone who searches for images on the i nternet. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent looking for royalty free, high quality images on google. As soon as I got this I was about to browse through hundreds of images in seconds and find the perfect image in minutes.
You're going to have to try this plugin to really appreciate what it can do.
Stumbleupon Toolbar
If you aren't signed up for stumbleupon yet then you simply have to sign up now! For those unfamiliar, stumbleupon is a community based plugin that lets you view and rate websites. The more people rate it the more times it will show up when you click the "Stumble Button".
The stumble button basically grabs a random website from a category of your choosing. When you set that category to Web Development you will get a ton of interesting and valuable information about that topic.
For example, for several days I was trying to find information about how I can optimize my website, well I was taking a break one day and I clicked the stumble button and it immediatly brought me to what I was looking for! That was obviously a cooincidence but I wouldn't have found it without it.
MeasureIt
This plugin lets you do measurements of the browser. It's located conveniently at the bottom left hand corner of the browser. All you have to do is click and drag and it will display the width and height of your selection in pixels.
IE View
As much as we all love Firefox, we're going to have to develop in Internet Explorer at some point. I know it's painful and you dread loading that browser but it must be done. All is not lost however, Firefox has an easy way to switch between the two browsers.
This plugin adds an option to the right click menu to view the website in Internet Explorer. It also adds an option to the tools menu to ALWAYS view the web page from internet explorer. I'm not so sure I would ever want that but hey, it's still useful.
Dummy Lipsum
Ah the good ol' Lorem Ipsum. For those unfamiliar, its dummy text that you can use until that client finally decides to send you content for that website that's been sitting around for 6 months.
I used to go to www.lipsum.com for all my Lorem Ipsum needs but now it's right at my browser at all times! it lets me generate text by paragraph, words, bytes or lists.
Conclusion
I hope this article was useful, if you have any more recommendations why not post them in the comments below?
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