Essential Firefox Plugins/Extensions?

Question

Hi All,

What firefox plugins could you not live without, as relates to webdev?

My list would be:

• DBGBar
• Dom Inspector
• Firebug
• Firecookie
• Google toolbar (useful for seo)
• Live HTTP
• ReloadEvery
• TamperData
• Web Developer

I am always on the lookout for new ones though, so I wonder if anyone knows of any great ones that I may have missed?

Answer 1

Firebug is the main one I use.

Answer 2

Web Developer is quite useful (firebug Andrew mentions is no doubt #1)

Answer 3

TestGen4Web - Just like your VCR - for Firefox. It records what you do, stores it, and plays it back on demand.

Answer 4

• Web Developer
• Firebug
• Delicious

Might also add Page Validator

Answer 5

Firebug, Web Developer toolbar and YSlow for Firebug are some of my picks.

Answer 6

Live HTTP headers, in addition to some already mentioned.

Answer 7

IETab is a nice to have (IE in a Firefox Tab)

Answer 8

the HTML Validator plugin is priceless, especially when you're working on stuff written by someone else who may not be so careful with standards compliance...

Answer 9

NoScript. Not just for blocking spam - it's a lot quicker than flipping the script setting on and off manually, and lets you simulate third-party servers going down.

You can also get a lot of useful info just from Firefox's built in error console (in the Tools menu) - among other things it'll point out broken CSS code.

Answer 10

ff-activex - allows to use active-x plug-ins in Firefox

Answer 11

YSlow - analyzes web pages and tells you why they're slow.

MeasureIt - Draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage. Even better is the Xray bookmarklet.

Hackbar Simple security audit / Penetration test tool.

FirePHP is a Firebug extension for AJAX Development

ColorZilla 2.0 is an advanced eyedropper, colorpicker, page zoomer and some other things.

Answer 12

Firebug is the greatest.

Also, not a dev tool but I have found it very useful and easy to use, Foxmarks bookmark manager.

Answer 13

Two other ones that I use are ...

1. Search Status (SEO related) http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/
2. Ad Block Plus (Blocks Ads) http://adblockplus.org/en/

Answer 14

Many of my favourites have been mentioned. To these I'd add:

• Adblock Plus: removes ads
• Add-Art: replaces ads with art
• Auto Copy: copies to clipboard on select
• Tree-Style Tab: shows tabs like a tree

Answer 15

Some of my favorites among others which already mentioned ,

• TabKit - Shows tabs in separate panel , closes the tabs in groups , grouping of tabs.

• Morning Coffee - restore the tabs those are saved to view them later.

Answer 16

1. Undo closed tabs. This is what I miss from IE8.
2. FEBE, for backing up the settings of Mozilla.

Answer 17

In addition to already mentioned addins:

• ViewState - Displays the current ASP.NET page viewstate size in the status bar.
• ColorZilla - Advanced Eyedropper, Color Picker, Palette Viewer and other colorful goodies for your Firefox

Answer 18

Besides the ones already mentioned (especially the marvellous Firebug), these are the development related ones I've found very useful:

• JSONovich does a good job at pretty-printing and colorizing JSON.
• User Agent Switcher is very handy for developing mobile web sites (or just for the sake of curiosity) -- "I'm an iPhone, reveal me your contents!"
• Sometimes Firefox leaves stuff in the browser cache even on reloads. The Clear Cache Button helps with this.
• Header Spy is similar to Live HTTP headers, but displays header information (and access to lots of more options) in the statusbar.

Answer 19

Xmarks is a good extension for backing up bookmarks, and allowing them to be synchronised between different machines. They have bloated it with other additions recently, but these can be turned off through the options.

http://www.xmarks.com/

Answer 20

I (ab)use Stylish to experiment with/prototype css changes. Yes you can do it in Firebug but it's not easy to keep track of all the edits you've made and it's not easy to copy & paste those edits back into your css file. Also, if you hit F5 you lose all changes made in Firebug.

Stylish survives page refresh and since it's just text you can simply select all to copy & paste your changes. Of course, it doesn't provide a css inspector or a DOM tree view but that's what Firebug is for.

Answer 21

Another one I use a fair amount is the Amazon S3 Firefox Organizer (S3Fox)

Answer 22

In addition to those already mentioned, Selenium IDE.

Answer 23

No mention of Greasemonkey or Mason?

Answer 24

I've found Venkman to be useful recently, in addition to firebug and others already mentioned.

Venkman aims to provide a powerful JavaScript debugging environment for Gecko-based browsers...

Answer 25

I find it interesting that so many people name a significant number of addons that Web Developer toolbar does for you. While they are all great plugins and might have a couple extra options, not sure if its worth it to have those plugins (for instance, MeasureIt)

Here is my list:
- Web Developer Toolbar (if you're a web developer [period])
- FireBug (essential for javascript/AJAX debugging)
- Google Page Speed (similar to YSLOW but it's from Google, very useful)
- ColorZilla (great color picker)
- HTML Validator (saves a bunch of time loading w3.org's page)
- Tab Mix Plus (anything and everything to do with tabbed browsing)
- Screengrab (if you use screenshots at all, use this) - Google Toolbar (SEO)

Answer 26

My list of addons which I use for development is:

• Firebug
• Poster
• HTML Validator
• Web Developer
• Pinger

I think those are essential for proper web development.