The best Firefox addons for a web developer

If you read my last post “I used to love Firefox” you will already know my favorite Firefox addons, however you will also know that by installing a load of addons your browser speed will suffer. I can’t live without my addons so here is my recommended list of Firefox addons a web developer needs without slowing his/her firefox down too much.

1. Colorzilla

With ColorZilla you can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program. You can Zoom the page you are viewing and measure distances between any two points on the page. The built-in palette browser allows choosing colors from pre-defined color sets and saving the most used colors in custom palettes. DOM spying features allow getting various information about DOM elements quickly and easily.

2. del.icio.us Bookmarks 1.5.29

This extension seamlessly integrates your browser with del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/), the leading social bookmarking service on the Web.

This extension integrates your browser with del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/), the leading social bookmarking service on the Web. It does this by augmenting the bookmarking functionality in Firefox with an enhanced experience that offers the following advantages:

- Search and browse your bookmarks
- Access your bookmarks from any computer at any time
- Keep your bookmarks organized with tags
- Share your bookmarks with friends or anyone on the Web
- Import your existing Firefox bookmarks

3. Download Statusbar

View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar – without the download window getting in the way of your web browsing. Despite its compact size, Download Statusbar packs in more useful features than the standard download window. The fully customizable interface auto-hides when not in use, allowing full control without interruption.

4. Firebug

Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

5. Flash Switcher

Switch between various flash plugins or remove current plugin. It is installed in the statusbar of your browser. when you click on it a popup menu appears showing different options: which flash player version to install (2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9) or if you want to remove the currently installed one.

6. Google Toolbar

Basically this is another toolbar with good features like spell check, bookmarks, quick links, autofill forms and so on. For me however the most important deature is the page rank.

7. Html Validator

HTML Validator is a Mozilla extension that adds HTML validation inside Firefox and Mozilla. The number of errors of a HTML page is seen on the form of an icon in the status bar when browsing.

I’m not sure whether to add this to the list as you can simple use the “Web Developer Toolbar” to do the same thing through the w3c validator, but i guess this dows save two mouse clicks.

8. IE 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. Got to say I develope website in firefox and this make switching to an IE browser unbelievably easy.

9. MeasureIt

Draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage. Amazingly useful when you are trying to get the pixel distance perfect from on div tag to another, or measure the sapcing you have left. I personally use if for turning the jpg image of the website into a perfect copy full product.

10. Save As Image

I used to use screengap however I dont think its supported in the new firefox and it uses Java runtime to save the image. I’ve got to say it took me a while to find this addon but it’s brilliant. Adds the ability to save a page, frame, or part of either as an image.

Useful for showing people bugs in a website, creating a snapshot of design progress, or perhaps even creating a gallery of websites.

11. Web Developer Toolbar

This is the absolute MUST for any web developer using Firefox. I use it every day no matter what i’m doing, its so user friendly and packed full of feature. This is my number 1 recommendation, try it you will not be disappointed.

And that’s it. If anyone else has any recommendations please feel free to post them.

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