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!
January 19th, 2006 at 9:59 pm
Wow - these are awesome!
I knew about the Developer toolbar, of course, and also IE View, but the rest are new to me and I’m sure I will be unable to live without them soon. ;-)
Antipagination is especially cool. I have ALWAYS hated clicking next continually while scrolling through search results. I tried this out at iStockPhoto.com and it made browsing infinitely faster.
Thanks a lot!
January 20th, 2006 at 5:54 pm
Awesome indeed. And I thought I had mined the developer extensions thoroughly! Thanks, Mani.
One extension that I use to analyze a page as I develop it is View Formatted Source. It uses the DOM Inspector to show a collapsible, structured source listing. Hover any tag to find exactly what CSS rules apply. Sadly, it won’t tell me why the rule does not work in Internet Explorer.
P.S. If you have Firefox version 1.5, you will need the updated version from Muffin Research.
January 31st, 2006 at 5:11 am
Thanks for taking the trouble to recommend the extensions Mani! The Web Developer’s Toolbar is awesome. Reminds me of HTML Toolkit, another awesome software out there.
Cheers,
Jai
February 1st, 2006 at 1:12 pm
David: That sounds like a great extension! Unfortunately, it won’t work with Firefox versions more recent then 1.0.4
=(
February 26th, 2006 at 10:01 am
Yes,
cool Extensions! :-)
Some I knew already, some I will give a try.
Thank you!
Share your pleasure and it will grow!
May 18th, 2006 at 5:10 am
Hey there, really like the blog your having Sheriar ;D
Just had to inform you ppl that a new version of the extention David talked about is out. Working with FF 1.5.0.*
Cheers
April 30th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Thanks for the extensions. I don’t do too much web design, but that makes it even more frustrating to deal with the differences in FF and IE. I’m definitely going to put some of these to work.
For a browsing (rather than developing) extension I really like Browser Split. You can Open as many pages as you’d like within one tab.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4287
Hope you like it!
Max
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4287
April 30th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
Awesome tips. I ended up downloading each one I didn’t already have (meaning, the majority of them) - except Antipagination, which I couldn’t find for Firefox 2, sadly. It looked like the most interesting one.
April 30th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Firebug is another add-on very similar to the one David was talking about, if not better! And it works in all versions of Firefox:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843
May 2nd, 2007 at 7:54 am
Just a quick FYI:
There’s a ruler in Web Developer Toolbar under Misc. -> Display Ruler so you really don’t need Measure It.
May 6th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
HELP!!!!
I *Need* Antipagination - I spend 40 hours a week browsing the web as part of Google’s quality improvement program, and often come across sites with multiple pages. Clicking through each one significantly adversely affects my productivity.
I’m using FF2.0 - when I clicked on the “Antipagination” link in this article, I was redirected to a page informing me the add-on is in the Sandbox - but once I went to the sandbox, I was unable to locate the add-on. Using the “search” feature provided no results. Can anyone shed some light on where this add-on might be?
May 8th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
why the title change?
May 11th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
I use download toolbar (very useful for downloading multiple things, e.g songs). Saves a lot of effort in download box.
May 13th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Just stumbled upon this, definitely thumbs up– As a developer I really can’t believe I’ve lived without these.. although, you should really check out Firebug if you haven’t. That extension really changed the way I work.
Thanks again
May 16th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Matt
Try this https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2099
May 20th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
The Antipagination extension reminds me of a greasemonkey script called googleautopager for google searches. It can be found at http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/1392.
August 1st, 2007 at 1:20 am
Very helpfull blog!
I try a lot of this addons after reading about in this blog.
Thank you very much for this help ;-) Kurt
August 29th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
The firefox Addon fireftp is a very useful litte integrated cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox.Very helpful and fast.
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/684
October 5th, 2007 at 1:59 am
Very nice!
http://www.tx-design.de
October 16th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Omg, I cannot believe you do not have firebug in your list!
Click the link that someone pasted above. I wouldnt want to live without firebug!
November 16th, 2007 at 9:10 am
i tried HTML Validator and Measure it today after your friendly recommendation, i am so glad about it, i gues ill try the other ones too verry soon
March 15th, 2008 at 12:19 am
May 6th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
You missed Firebug. It should be on top of the list.