We all know that Firefox has tons of plug-ins and add-on’s, but there are a few any web developer must know and use. The description and screenshots are taken from the Firefox add-ons site.
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CSSMate: Inline CSS Editing Evolved. Originally a port of the fantastic EditCSS tool that I’ve been using for many months. I’ve gutted it, made each stylesheet load into a separate tab. Removed the save load clear functionality as i found it to be useless and added in support for loading stylesheets that have a media type of “all” instead of “screen”.
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FireShot: FireShot is a Firefox extension that creates screenshots of web pages.
Unlike other extensions, this plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify captures and insert text and graphical annotations. Such functionality will be especially useful for web designers, testers and content reviewers.
It’s possible to choose whether entire web page or only visible part of this page should be captured.
Screenshots can be uploaded to server, saved to disk (PNG, JPEG, BMP), copied to clipboard, e-mailed and sent to external editor for further processing.
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Web Developer: Maybe the most succesfull of all, has great reviews. Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.
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SeoQuake: Seoquake is a Mozilla Firefox extension aimed primarily at helping web masters who deal with search engine optimization and internet promotion of web sites. Seoquake allows to obtain and investigate many important SEO parameters of the internet project under study on the fly, save them for future work, compare them with the results, obtained for other, competitive, projects.
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ViewSourceWith: The main goal consists to view page source with external applications but you can also…
- open page source as DOM document, read faq
- open CSS and JS files present on page
- open images using your preferred image viewer (e.g. GIMP or ACDSee)
- open PDF links with Acrobat Reader or Foxit Reader or what you prefer
- edit textboxes content with your preferred editor and automatically see modified text on browser when you re-switch focus on it, this simplifies wiki pages editing, read faq
- open server side pages that generate the browser content, this simplifies web developer’s debug, read server-faq
- open files listed in Javascript console. When editor open file the cursor can be moved to line number shown on javascript console, read js faq
For desperate cases you can add Microsoft IE to editor list.
Enjoy your development!
Amit
By ATSkyWalker on Mar 31, 2008 | Reply
ummmm. no FireBug?
By Betty on Mar 31, 2008 | Reply
I’m confused, how is firebug not on that list.
By Saroj on Mar 31, 2008 | Reply
You have not mentioned Firebug. It is a complete editor I can Say. Online editing style changes are few of the things from its vast majority of features.
By Jacob von Eyben on Mar 31, 2008 | Reply
You should add Firebug
(http://www.getfirebug.com/) to your list.
Contains a bunch of tools: javascript debugger, dom inspector, some css tools, network monitor.
What I find most useful is the network monitor. It is especially useful when developing solutions that uses AJAX.
By Andreas on Mar 31, 2008 | Reply
Are you kidding me? Where is Firebug?
By John on Mar 31, 2008 | Reply
Ok so here’s my list
1: Firebug Console Tab
2: Firebug HTML and CSS Tabs
3: Firebug Script Tab
4: Firebug DOM Tab
5: Firebug Net Tab
By Bhaarat on Mar 31, 2008 | Reply
screw css mate. Firebug FTW!
By t on Mar 31, 2008 | Reply
Firebug should be included default install and evryone knows about it .. so hence the list above
By Stuart on Mar 31, 2008 | Reply
no firebug, are you nuts?
By Wes P on Mar 31, 2008 | Reply
Not to beat a potentially dead horse with this one… but, ah, Firebug’s a good one too.
Fireshot looks like it might be interesting though. I’ll have to check that one out.
By alfred on Mar 31, 2008 | Reply
Hehe I have to agree with the rest. Any web developer should have firebug. But I think I saw some extension which I will have a look at. TY.
By Bernard on Mar 31, 2008 | Reply
Firebug & Firecookie!
By Jeffrey on Mar 31, 2008 | Reply
Firebug is def a must have for webdevelopers. Dom inspect, HTML/CSS editing, Layout inspect, JavaScript console and ‘debugger’ and best of all great AJAX support!
My tools:
* Firebug
* Web Developer
* FireShot
By badger on Mar 31, 2008 | Reply
Firebug.
By Amir on Mar 31, 2008 | Reply
Man I love right-clicking on a dropdown and selecting “Inspect Element”
…
“Inspect Element” rocks. Takes you directly to the point in the source of the element under the cursor (generated source i.e. after javascript modifications), with detailed, editable css information on the right.
Oh yeah, it’s part of FireBug
Also, TamperData is a nice extension for analysing/meddling-with http traffic. It gives a touch more info than firebug for this kind of thing.
Thanks for the FireShot tip, I’ll give it a shot
By James on Mar 31, 2008 | Reply
Also for who can have access to the AMO sandbox, there is a tool to improve the security: Form free https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6727
Form free is a component to transform checkboxes, radio buttons, select elements to a input text and enable disabled elements from all forms in a page.
It makes easier to test and identify SQL injection vulnerabilities in web pages.
By karim on Mar 31, 2008 | Reply
SeoQuake? Why? What has SEO to do with web developpement?
By Stijn on Mar 31, 2008 | Reply
I’m with stupid. Firebug is a definate must have.
By Peter T - webshop on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
I didn’t know about Fireshot, works well, thanks.
By Bryan Glass on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
After all these comments, I hope Amit has now been introduced to the wonderful world of Firebug. I just discovered it last June, and I have no idea how I ever worked without it! (I’m always hackin’ away on the console tab).
By anoy on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
FIREBUG!
Only tool that is realy required for web development on Firefox.
By Sean on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
As most web developers know, Firebug is the king, and Web Developer the queen of Firefox extensions.
And as umm… every single commenter has pointed out, your omission of Firebug is glaring. It puts into question your experience in the field.
By db on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
I guess this must be part two, and we simply missed part one: “Firebug, the one extension every web developer must have.”
By Pfft on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
How on earth can you not have Firebug on that list?
By Amit on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
Thank everyone for commenting.
Off course FireBug in #1, maybe I should have added to the title “Besides FireBug” :). I just wanted to show a few other plug-ins that many people don’t know. Look forward to my part 2 article, which also won’t include FireBug :).
Amit
By Jay on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
Umm what happened to Firebug? This is like having a list of top 5 search engines without mentioning Google.
By Geshan on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
Yes firebug is almost all that you need, other extensions come later in the list.
By Kayzah on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
FIREBUG!
By kenman on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
@James
For security testing, you can do all that Form Free can do with either Firebug or the Web Developer toolbar. In Firebug, you can use the console + Javascript to set form values programmatically, or you can browse the form DOM object and edit the values there. In the WebDev toolbar, you there’s several different methods to mess with form fields under the “Forms” button.
Lastly, if security is what you’re testing, then HackBar was made especially for you: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3899
By Foodazukus on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
WHY NO FIREBUG?!?!?!?!?!?!?
By Leo on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
I am surprised that the author of this list never used FireBug while developing web applications … FireBug is very popular extension for more than 2 yrs now, and all the other extensions on the list can be uninstalled when you install FireBug.
By Amr Elsehemy on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
Nice set of extension I already use 4 of them, but man FireBug is a #1
Keep on it
By Julian on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
CSS mate? WTF?
That feature is included in web developer toolbar, which you also mention.
By Stijn on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
Amit sure seems to have found a way to spark a conversation. (:
By algorithmic on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
Live HTTP Headers is another must have: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3829
By podi on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
you are writing about firefox plugins, but why can read your blog only in IE ? Got confused when viewing it the first time with firefox and I saw only comments, no content, wtf ? I switched off adblock on your website but with no results
By Erik on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
Has anyone mentioned Firebug yet?
By shahary on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
podi,
We had 5-10 minutes where Dev102 style sheet was ruined. It is OK now, thanks for pointing about the problem.
By webboy on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
FIREBUG! FIREBUG!
By ted case on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
Why not firebug?
By neO on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
Great ! or not
By al on Apr 1, 2008 | Reply
Firebug is so last millennium.
By Kevin on Apr 2, 2008 | Reply
This list is moot — no Firebug!
By andress on Apr 8, 2008 | Reply
Firebug!!!!
With Firebug i am able to see/inspect the page source of windows opened by javascript such case when menus are disabled..
Firebug is a must have!!!!
By Gabriel on Apr 8, 2008 | Reply
What about Firebug?
What about YSlow?
By Ray on Apr 9, 2008 | Reply
I had to add my voice too.. - insert Firebug.
By Omar on Apr 9, 2008 | Reply
Firebug must not be in the list, because it’s a MUST HAVE if you pretend to do some web development. You have to put at the beginning of your blog and after all start with your list.
Note. Negative vote in dzone.
By Billy on Apr 15, 2008 | Reply
I think someone missed firebug. Thats like zelda without a triforce. Come one. I can’t wait for another article without firebug.
By multimedia services on May 14, 2008 | Reply
i used firefox just 6 months from now. im not that oriented int o this software. but, thanks anyway for the information. i really a great help for me. have a good day!