One of the greatest aspects of Firefox is the ability to install add-ons to do just about anything and everything a browser can possibily do. As a web developer this functionality is extremely useful to us.
Firefox has some cool add-ons which make the job of website designers much easier. There are many useful add-ons for Firefox out there and we use several pretty much every day for work.
Since there are so many different add-ons available to download, it can be a little overwhelming to pick out which ones you should be using. I compile a list of the 25+ Essential Firefox Add-ons (along with brief descriptions) that every web designer should know about. Be sure and let me know if i missed anything!
01. Web Developer
The Web Developer Extension is a extension for the Firefox browser and it’s a great tool for web designers. It has a variety off essential tools that allow you to code quality websites and troubleshoot problems easily. It’s a powerful all in one plugin. Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools. The added benefit of having Web Developer Tool is the ability to edit CSS on the fly. If you want to try a different font, different size, different color, background, borders, margins, padding, practically anything to do with CSS, you can make the changes in the Web Developer tool and see the changes instantly. The Web Developer tool saves you time when playing around with CSS.
02. 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. Firebug gives you full control over the CSS, HTML and JavaScript of any page that you choose. Inspect and edit HTML, Tweak CSS to perfection, Visualize CSS metrics, Monitor network activity, Debug and profile JavaScript, Quickly find errors, Explore the DOM, Execute JavaScript on the fly, Logging for JavaScript. Best of all, every change that you make is done live and instantly, so you can quickly test out different changes and see the results of those changes instantly.
03. Codetech
Codetech is another wonderful firefox extension which allows you to edit your documents right next to your web pages as you surf. This web page editing tool has the feel of Dreamweaver in a Firefox extension. For a web developer or designer, which offtenly deals with HTML source code, Codetch is a lite version of a application like Adobe Dreamweaver. It has a similar layout, yet less features, but it helps the user to complete its source based tasks.
Author description says it all. It’s the closest you can get to a professional web editing interface in a browser. Install it as an extension today and have a full featured editor right beside your web pages as you surf!
04. Colorzilla
An other one of my favorite Firefox extensions is ColorZilla indeed. ColorZilla add-on features an online eyedropper, which makes it quite simple to get the exact value of a specific color. With ColorZilla you can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program. In addition to color picker, ColorZilla offers a DOM color analyzer which allows you to locate elements on the page that correspond to a given color and find out the CSS rules that specify a certain color. ColorZilla also features a online palette viewer that allows choosing colors from pre-defined color sets and saving the most used colors in custom palettes. With this beautiful extension you can Zoom the page you are viewing and measure distances between any two points on the page.s
05. FireShot
FireShot is an advanced screen capture add-on for Firefox. In addition to giving you the ability to capture an entire web page, FireShot also allows you to add add graphics and notes directly to your screen captures.
FireShot gives you several options for handling your screen captures. Not only can they be saved in a variety of file formats, but they can also be saved to your computer, emailed to others or saved on the free FireShot hosting server. As a result of its wide range of features, this add-on has attracted over one hundred and fifty thousand active users, and has proven itself to be invaluable for web designers and other Internet professionals.
06. MeasureIt
As someone who creates designs for the Internet, one of the most chellanging job is to create design elements aligned. In that case MeasureIt comes in handy and allows you to overlay a ruler on a browser page so you can verify width, height and alignment of page elements.
07. CSS Validator/HTML Validator
CSS Validator is a Firefox extension which Validates a page using the W3C CSS Validator. Adds an option to the right-click context menu and to the Tools menu to allow for easy validation of the CSS of the current page. Opens the results in a new tab. Will only work on pages that have a CSS file associated. For example it will work with http://www.w3.org/ as the URL has a CSS file. When using the HTML Validator, you can choose to validate directly in the browser (where any errors are shown as a status bar icon), show the source with explanations of errors after the validation or a validation with proposed solutions to any errors.
08. GridFox
One of the most frustrating issues that a web designer undoubtedly encounter when coding grid-based layouts. How can a designer be sure that the grid is maintained from the original mockup to the final coded version? When I coded my first grid-based layout, I found myself regularly taking screenshots of the site and comparing them with my original grid in Photoshop. There had to be an easier way.
GridFox is a great extension that will overlay a grid on a selected website. If you can open it in Firefox, you can put a grid on top of it. It’s easy to customize, allowing you to create the exact grid you designed your layout around.
09. CSSViewer
With this extension you can view CSS properties of related page elements. Very handy, when You got large CSS file with styles overlapping each other, to analyze why something is not displayed in the way You wanted.
10. Browser Window Resizer
The Browser Window Resizer is useful tool for testing different screen sizes. It accurately resizes your browser so you can test to see if the web page you’re working on looks right in all of the standard resolution sizes. This will allow you to see if your design is going to look good to visitors who aren’t using the same resolution as you. The best thing about this add-on is that if you are using it in conjunction with the other add-ons in this list (specifically Firebug), when you see that something isn’t displaying properly, you can instantly make adjustments to your code and see if that fixes the problem, all without ever leaving your current browser window. Browser Window Resizer add-on resize your Firefox window to 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×1024 and 1600×1200 resolution sizes.
If i miss any other addons which you think essential for designer please feel free to share it by your valuable comment.
