Firefox add-ons

Question

What Firefox add-ons do you use that are useful for programmers?

Answer 1

As far as web development, especially for javascript, I find Firebug to be invaluable. Web developer toolbar is also very useful.

Answer 2

Web Developer for web development. Scribefire if you're a blogger-progammer

Answer 3

I'd also recommend the Web Developer extension by Chris Pederick.

Answer 4

I guess it's silly to mention Firebug -- doubt any of us could live without it. Other than that I use the following (only listing dev-related):

• Console²: next-generation error console
• DOM inspector: as the title might indicate, allows you to browse the DOM
• Edit Cookies: change cookies on the fly
• Execute JS: ad-hoc Javascript execution
• IE Tab: render a page in IE
• Inspect This: brings the selected object into the DOM inspector
• JSView: display linked javascript and CSS
• LORI (Life of Request Info): shows how long it takes to render a page
• Measure IT: a popup ruler.
• URL Params: shows GET and POST variables
• Web Developer: a myriad of tools for the web developer

Answer 5

For web developing I use the Web Developer Toolbar, CSS Viewer and MeasureIt.

But I'm really not one of those who has a thousand of extensions to do everything. I like to keep things simple.

EDIT: Thanks to Dan's answer I don't need MeasureIt anymore. Can't believe I've never seen that! I guess I'll just have to pay more atention to this WebDeveloper toolbar.

Answer 6

@Flávio Amieiro

MeasureIt is an unnecessary extension to have if you install the Web Developer Toolbar. Web Developer Toolbar includes a ruler as one of its features. Under the "Miscellaneous" category for Web Developer click the option "Display Ruler" to use a ruler identical to the MeasureIt one.

That will allow you reduce the number of extensions needed by at least one.

Answer 7

The ones I have are...

• Y-SLow
• Live Headers
• Firebug
• Dom Inspector

Answer 8

Adding to everyones lists, Tamper Data is quite useful, lets you intercept requests and change the data in them. It can be used to bypass javascript validation and check whether the server side is doing its thing.

Answer 9

I use Web Developer, it's a real time saver.

Answer 10

One that wasn't mentioned yet is this HTML Validator extension that I found very useful.

Answer 11

Here are mine (developer centric):

1. FireBug - a myriad of productivity enhancing tools, includes javascript debugger, DOM inspector, allows you to edit the CSS/HTML on the fly which is highly valuable for troubleshooing layout and display problems.

2. Web Developer - again another great developer productivity tool. I mostly use it for quickly validating pages, disabling javascript (yes I disable javascript sometimes, don't you?), viewing cookies, etc.

3. Tamper Data - lets you tamper with http headers, form values, cookies, etc. prior to posting back to a page, or getting a page. Incredibly valuable for poking and prodding your pages, and seeing how your web app responds when used with slightly malicious intent.

4. JavaScript Debugger - has a few more features than javascript debugger provided by firebug. Although I must admit, I sparingly use this one since firebug has largely won me over.

5. Live HTTP Headers - invaluable for troubleshooting, use it frequently. Lets you spy on all HTTP headers communicated back and forth between client and server. It has helped me track down nefarious problems, especially when debugging issues when deploying your web app between environments.

6. Header Spy - nice addon for the geeky types, shows you the web server and platform a web site runs on in the status bar.

7. MeasureIt - I don't use this all too frequently, but I've still found it valuable from time to time.

8. ColorZilla - again, not something I use all that frequently, but when I need it, I need it. Valuable when you want to know a color and you don't want to dig through a CSS file, or open up a graphics editing app to get a color embedded in some image.

9. Add N Edit Cookies - this has been a great debugging tool in web farms where the load balancer writes a cookie, and uses the cookie value to keep your session "sticky". It allowed me to switch at will between servers to track down problems on specific machine. Also a good tool if you want to try to mess with a site that uses cookies to track your login status/account, and you want to see how your code responds to malformed or hacked info.

10. Yellowpipe Lynx Viewer Tool - yeah I know what your thinking, lynx, who needs it, its so 1994. But if you are developing a site that needs to take web accessibility into account (meaning accessible to users with visual impairments who use screen readers), or if you need to get a sense of how a web spider/indexer "sees" your site, this tool is invaluable. Granted, you could always just go out and grab Lynx for yourselfhere's the windows xp port that I use.

I've got a handful of other addons that I've used from time to time that I'll just quickly mention: FireFTP (one I installed wasn't stable and I've not tried a newer release), Html Validator (also found this one unstable, least back when I installed like a year ago), IE Tab (I usually just have both IE and FireFox open concurrently, but that is just me, I know many others that find this addon useful).

Answer 12

• +1 for LORI ("life-of-request-info"). It's a very convenient alternative for rough measurements of the load time of a particular web page -- the kind of thing that you might otherwise use an external stopwatch for.

• New Tab Homepage. Combined with a "speed dial"-type homepage (a personal, fast-loading page of links that you use frequently), helps you get where you're going faster when you open a new browser tab.

• LastTab. Changes the behavior of Ctrl+Tab to let you navigate back and forth between your most-recently-used tabs with repeated presses of Ctrl+Tab, the same way that Alt+Tab works in Windows. Also provides a nice view of all open tabs while Ctrl is still being held down for easy navigation. (The resultant behavior is very similar to the Ctrl+Tab behavior in recent releases of Visual Studio.)

Answer 13

FireFTP is good for grabbing/uploading any necessary files.

Answer 14

I find Hackbar to be quite useful. Very useful if you want to edit the querystring part of the url, to test for vulnerabilities, or just general other types of testing where you might end up with complicated query string values.

Answer 15

I was learning DOM inspector, but I've switched to Firebug.

Answer 16

Some of which has been missed above are here

• Load Time Analyzer – View detailed graphs of the loading time of web pages in firefox. The graphs display events like page requests, image loading times etc.

• Poster – A must have tool for web developers enabling them to interact with web services and other web resources.

• Aardvark – A cool extension for web developers and designers, allows them to view CSS attributes, id, class by highlighting page element individually.

Answer 17

Fiddler is a really great debugging proxy. Think of it as a more powerful version of the "Net" panel in Firebug or the Live HTTP headers.

It used to be an IE-only extension, now it also has hooks into Firefox.

Answer 18

Groundspeed, is useful for testing server side code. It was created for input validation tests during pentest, but can be useful for any test that require manipulating input (similar to TamperData).

It lets you control the form elements in the page, you can change their type and other attributes (size, lenght, javascript event handlers, etc). So for example you can change a hidden field or a select to a textbox and then enter any value to test the server response and stuff like that.

Answer 19

Firefox addons:

1. FireBug:helps web developers and designers test and inspect front-end code. It provides us with many useful features such as a console panel for logging information, a DOM inspector, detailed information about page elements, and much, much more.

2. Web Developer-gives you the power disable CSS, edit CSS on the fly, measure certain areas of a page and much more.

3. ColorZilla Just click on the icon, hover over the area you'd like to know the hex color for, and click.

4. Window Resizer to make sure the layout is displayed properly in the standard resolutions of today.

5. Total Validator validating websites much easier by checking HTML, links, CSS and doing a lot more.