Misc: Top 15 Firefox Extensions & My Addiction To These Firefox Extensions
Yes, I know the best medicine is to talk about your addiction. I must admit it……so here goes! *hangs head in shame* I’m a Firefox extension junkie, but I’m really trying to get help I promise. At the time of this post, I had 40 Firefox extensions, but to show my shrink that she was actually helping me I voted 3 Firefox extensions off the island and am now left with 37 extensions. That number alone bothers me; why can’t it be 35 or 40, but then again that’s another issue for her to solve another day.
Here’s a list of my favorite extensions along with some commentary about them.
Autocopy: This is my #1 used extension. I’m so used to it that I now forget to do Ctrl C in other applications. After 5 minutes of trying to figure out why I can’t paste a link into my browser from my email I realize that I forgot to do Ctrl C. Yes, I’m totally addicted to this one.
Forecastbar Enhanced: Not all of my extension are used for work purposes. This one is used so much I can’t honestly remember when the last time was that I watched the local news for the weather. You can actually play meteorologist to all your friends who have no clue about this extension. Then again they may throw snowballs at you when you said it will be sunny tomorrow when it actually snows.
Web Developer: This extension is full of various goodies for web development. It will help you develop and test websites. It also allows you to gain access to the HTML source code, CSS files, and javascripts of interesting sites. You can also disable javascript, redirect and such.
SEO for Firefox: Created by Aaron Wall of SEOBook this tool is very useful in finding out various things about a website when you search Google such as it’s Pagerank, last Google cache date, links pointing to it in Google and Yahoo, .edu and .gov sites linking to the domain and so forth.
Rank Checker: Another resourceful to extension created by Aaron Wall of SEOBook that allows you to check you rankings for keywords on Google, Yahoo and MSN as well as the international versions of these sites. You can also keep track of the changes that transpires with your keywords.
HTML Validator: This one is one of my most used extensions as well as it makes it easy to show a client what exactly they need to fix on their website to make it more browser compliant as well as have the site validate.
IE Tab: This is one beneficial to me so I don’t actually have to use IE to do cross-browser testing when I’m designing websites. I’m not a big fan of IE7 so I’m so glad I can use IE Tab.
Tab Mix Plus: This extension enhances Firefox’s tab browsing capabilities including such features as duplicating tabs, merging tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows. Very useful for things such as XM Radio that automatically pop out into a new window; then you can just merge them together.
DT Whois: Helps you find out useful information about a domain name with just one click. For instance, you can see exactly who owns a site and where it’s hosted at as well.
Download Statusbar: I love this extension too! You can view and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar without the annoying download pop up window getting in the way of your web browsing. Also, sometimes you may not want to download the program right then; thus it stays in your statusbar until you’re ready to install the program.
Flashblock: Lets you block all flash movies from loading; lets you pages load faster without all of the extra junk trying to load at once. You can also determine what sites get theirs loaded automatically.
Firebug: This is one of my latest extension that I recently downloaded. It integrates with Firefox to put a variety of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.
User Agent Switcher: This one also is a new extension that I recently downloaded. It adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser. You can go from Firefox to Netscape to Opera to IE.
Fireshot: A great extension that lets you create screenshots of a site. However, unlike other extensions, this plug-in provides a set of editing and annotation tools, which let you quickly modify your screen captures and insert text and graphical annotations on it. This type of functionality is so useful for me as a designer.
MeasureIt: This extension lets you see how big a certain area is on websites (in pixels) in case you’re trying to emulate a particular look and feel of a website. Makes it easy to guess what size graphics to create in Photoshop and what not.
So these are my favorite 15 Firefox extensions, what are some of your favorite extensions? Leave us some comments about what your favorite ones are that you couldn’t live without. Please tell me there are others like me out there. Maybe we can start a support group together!
Comments
4 Responses to “Misc: Top 15 Firefox Extensions & My Addiction To These Firefox Extensions”
Those are some great ones. I’m going to have to check into Autocopy. I’m also a huge fan of Aardvark. Very helpful with web design troubleshooting.
Thanks for mentioning Aardvark; I’ll have to try that one out!
I think you may have a Firefox Addiction. At least check out the video.. it’ll help you laugh it off
Nice list!
Nice video! Totally how I feel on some days.