Firefox Plugins
There is no doubt that the internet is full of great things, the problem is information overload. Take the iphone app store , with over a 100,000 apps available who has time to go through them all? I guess now is a good time to give a shout out to Envato’s app storm are a really great resource for iphone apps.
So what does this have to do with Firefox? Nothing really, It’s just that Mozilla’s browser has so many great add-ons it is hard to sort through all the junk to find a few gems. The way I have found most of the extensions I use it by reading a blog post or talking to friends. So, in no particular order here are the Firefox plugins that I use.
Web Developer Toolbar
I pretty much used to live in this toolbar, and I still use it for a lot of stuff, although I tend to use the next one on the list a lot more these days.
Here are a few of the things you can do with this plugin:
- Disable javaScript
- Edit CSS
- Outline any page element
- Validate Html and CSS
- View Source code
- and pretty much disable anything you want
this is just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do with this plugin. Maybe I’ll write a post examining it closer sometime.
Firebug
If you are a web developer of any nature than you probably already know about Firebug, for me it is a must have and something that I use, each and everyday.
Since the things you can do with Firebug are so diverse, here are a few resources for you to check out:
FireFTP
I started using FireFTP when I was on a trip. I did not have my regular computer with me and I needed to do a quick piece of work. I was, and I still am amazed with how many features this plugin adds to your browser. For the uninitiated, it turns your browser into a full fledged FTP client. Very handy.
ColorZilla
Quick and easy color picker for your browser. Handy if you are trying to match colors
Chatzilla
Free IRC client add-on. Obviously if you don’t know what an IRC is, then this will be useless to you.
Evernote Web Clipper
I discussed Evernote a few posts ago(Evernote or Ever not?). This little extension will help you add clips to your evernote notes. If you are an avid evernoter than this is a must have.
WebMail Notifier
All my email addresses are handled by Google, either by gmail or google apps, so this is a must have for me. I can handle all my email accounts simultaneously with this little add-on. It is nice having a notification whenever you receive an email, no matter what account it goes to.
Better Gmail 2
Adds some great functionality to the standard Gmail. So much so, that if you try to use Gmail without it you will feel lost.
Xmarks
Formerly known as Foxmarks, Xmarks is a great bookmarking add-on that you can use to sync bookmarks and passwords across computers. I love knowing that bookmarks are going to be up to date no matter what computer I am on. This will also add some info to your google searches, basically adding some user information.
YSlow
This is really an extension for Firebug, YSlow analyzes web pages and suggests ways to improve their performance based on a set of rules for high performance web pages.
Summary
So that is what I generally use, I have been known to add a few more here and there, but for the most part I like to keep my extensions to the basics. Do you know of any great extensions? Add them to the comments and let us know why we should try them out.
