Ten Firefox Extensions I Can’t Wouldn’t Want To Live Without

Recently I took a few hours to look through the entire database of Firefox extensions and check out a few new ones. Wow. It was so worth my time.

But in an effort to save you, my wonderful reader, that same amount of time, I thought I would give you the top-10 list of extensions new and old that I just wouldn’t want to live without.

1. Obviously It’s The Web Developer’s Toolbar

The Web Developer Toolbar is the one extension I actually can’t live without. For the ability to immediately disable styles alone this one is worth it. Oh man, it’s so good.

2. IE View

IE View lets you load pages in IE with a single right-click, which is very useful for cross-browser testing. No more copying the address in Firefox, opening IE, pasting the address, and clicking go. Phew … I’m exhausted just thinking about it!

3. HTML Validator

I know there are a ton of ways to get a page validated, but with HTML Validator the number of errors of an HTML page is seen at a glance in the form of a small icon in the status bar which is present while browsing. That’s right – you no longer have to validate the page to see if it validates. ;o)

4. Measure It

I use Measure It a lot. It allows you to draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage.

5. 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. And there’s more…

6. Screen Grab!

Screen Grab! is a serious time saver – right-click to save the entire web page as an image (it scrolls around the page taking shots and stitches it together), just the visible portion, or the browser window. No more stitching together multiple screen captures in Photoshop … yay!

7. Copy Plain Text

Copy Plain Text is a nice little extension that gives you an option to copy text without the formatting. You can even set it to trim extra space in and around the copied text!

8. Antipagination

Antipagination is one of the coolest extensions ever. You are going to love this one so much. It allows you to right click “next” or “previous” links to flatten all results to one page. That’s right—you get all your results on One Page. No more hitting next links and waiting. Heaven!

9. Session Saver

Session Saver restores your browser exactly as you left it, every startup, every time. Not even a crash will phase it. Windows, tabs, even things you were typing — they’re all saved. Sweet.

10. Open New Window From Here

One of the few things that I actually like better about IE than Firefox is that when you open a new window it opens a copy of the window you are currently in, rather than opening your home page. You can now duplicate that experience with Open New Window From Here, which opens a new browser window or tab from your current url location.

That’s a Wrap!

It was a challenge to choose only 10 extensions to share with you all – there are so many wonderful ones. I hope this article helps you to discover a new extension that you can’t live without!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 19th, 2006 at 2:47 pm and is filed under Browsers, Fun, Tips and Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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