I was showing something to a colleague the other day when they commented on one of the Firefox extensions I had. After explaining it and showing off some of my others I decided I would write up about them here.
Firefox is a great browser, version 2 seems a bit buggy and I have had several issues with it since it came out but the fact that Firefox allows you to extend it by using user built addons still sets it out above all the others.
So what kind of addons do I have? Well, as a developer most of them pretty much help me do just that.
ColorZilla is top of the list for no other reason than it begins with a ‘C’ so I will start with that one. This, as the name suggest is all about colour. It has a great eyedropper/ colour picker that tells you the colour underneath the cursor anywhere on a page in several formats.
del.icio.us allows me to bookmark sites of interest quickly and easily.
Firebug is absolutely fantastic if you are a developer. It allows you to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. I have mentioned it in a previous blog post here and since then it has always been installed and used.
Google Browser Sync is another great addon that not many people know about. I fortunately/ unfortunately have the use of many different machines but this used to be a real annoyance when I had to constantly make sure that all my bookmarks were up to date on every machine (this was before del.icio.us 
). However I now just have to install Google browser sync to each machine and it will continuously synchronize my “browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords across your computers.” fantastic!
HTML validator will show the number of errors that are on an HTML page and then allow you to go in and inspect each one in detail when viewing the source of the page. As well as allowing you to validate the HTML it will also check the 3 levels defined in WAI too.
IE tab embeds IE into Firefox allowing you to see how your web page displayed in IE with just one click and then switch back to Firefox.
Live HTTP header simply lets you view HTTP headers of a page while browsing which can be great for debugging.
VeriSign EV Green Bar Extension was covered a couple of post ago here which I suggest you read if you haven’t already to find out more.
Finally the Web Developer toolbar which adds a load of features – too many to list here. The developer of the extension has a website which is probably the best place to go find out more about this addon.
I’m sure other great addons will come along and as they do I’ll make sure they get a mention but hopefully this list will provide you with a good selection to start with.
