indispensable firefox addons for web design

June 22, 2009 @ 03:19 pm Blogged, Tech,
Tagged as: computers,lists,webdesign,tools

there’s a bit of overlap here and there, but each is handy for specific purposes!

colorzilla - Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies.  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.

dom inspector - DOM Inspector is a tool that can be used to inspect and edit the live DOM of any web document or XUL application. The DOM hierarchy can be navigated using a two-paned window that allows for a variety of different views on the document and all nodes within.

dummy lipsum generator - Generate “Lorem Ipsum” dummy text (from http://www.lipsum.com).

firebug - Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page…

fireshot - FireShot is a Firefox extension that creates screenshots of web pages (entirely or just visible part).  Unlike other extensions, this plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify web captures and insert text annotations and graphical annotations. Such functionality will be especially useful for web designers, testers and content reviewers.

ghostery - Ghostery Watches the Web Sites that are Watching You.  Find out how web sites are watching you across every page on the web with Ghostery. Ghostery alerts you when you visit a web site that has web bugs on it. Web bugs are hidden scripts that track your behavior and are used by the sites you visit to understand their own audience.

i.e. netrenderer - Render the current page with IE NetRenderer

link checker - Check the validity of links on any webpage

live http headers - View HTTP headers of a page and while browsing.

lori (life-of-request info) - ‘lori’ can tell you how long it takes to load a page. Useful for web developers who are working on profiling, optimizing a web site

measure it - Draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage

screengrab - Screengrab! saves webpages as images…  It will capture what you can see in the window, the entire page, just a selection, a particular frame… basically it saves webpages as images - either to a file, or to the clipboard.

seo quake - Seoquake is a Mozilla Firefox SEO extension aimed primarily at helping web masters who deal with search engine optimization(SEO) and internet promotion of web sites. Seoquake allows to obtain and investigate many important SEO parameters of the internet…

total validator - Perform multiple validations and take screen shots in one go. This 5-in-1 validator works with external, internal, or local web pages using the Total Validator service or local copy of the desktop tool…

web developer - Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools

user agent switcher - The User Agent Switcher extension adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser

On 06/24/09, Orc said...

I like Chickenfoot (http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/chickenfoot/) and Greasemonkey (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748), tho these are mostly used on existing web pages to automate tasks… But I guess one could write scripts to help with testing of his/her own designs

On 06/24/09, arin721 said...

ohh, i will add those!  i love addons and gadgety things :D

Check out arin721's latest entry: bunnies of death host soylent green cook off

On 03/06/10, Adley said...

I can see that you are putting a lot of time and effort into your blog and detailed articles! I am deeply in love with every single piece of information you post here. Will be back often to read more updates!

On 03/06/10, arin721 said...

gosh, but spammers are so polite nowadays!  so in that same vein, let me extend you my thanks, adley, for your kind words.  they really meant a lot to me.

i did notice that you’d accidentally included a link for erotic massage.  i fixed that for you.  i assume you meant to bookmark it and somehow wound up posting it by mistake, since it has nothing whatsoever to do with the topic at hand.  i’m sure you’re now terribly embarrassed, but have no fear, no one here is judging you.

haha, at least it wasn’t the “help! i have a small penis” search link that you’d accidentally posted on ANOTHER entry.  *i totally deleted that for you.*  (otherwise, we’d have so judged you.  and your small penis.)  you might want to try a search on “how to bookmark a webpage”, for next time tho!

have a pleasant day, and once again, thanks for the kind comments!

Check out arin721's latest entry: ed brayton on rachel maddow show

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