Favorite Firefox Extensions / Add-ons

I have been holding out on Firefox for a very long time. I was happy with IE7 and the improvements made over IE6. I had tried Firefox 2.0 around the same time, but never caught the bug.

Recently, my coworkers turned me back onto Firefox. I've been using it more and more over the past few weeks, and I don't think I'll ever go back to Internet Explorer.

Why have I made Firefox my browser of choice? It's all about the extensions, add-ons, and plug-ins!

I am so impressed with some of these add-ons (we'll call them add-ons from now on), that I've decided to list them here. I hope you find these add-ons as useful as I have, and I hope you'll recommend your favorites as well.

#1: Web Developer
I'm using version 1.1.4 by Chris Pederick and this is just an incredibly handy tool for any web developer to have. There must be nearly 100 options for viewing web pages.

• Disable JavaScrips, Cookies, Colors, Images, CSS, etc...
• Show form details. Shows the code behind the forms. This is invaluable for designing and debugging.
• Outline page elements (Frames, links, deprecated elements...)
  
• Instantly resize your browser window to mimic any display size.
• Validate your page against Section 508, WAI, and many other standards.

If you need to design or modify websites, I highly recommend this tool. It makes it much faster to get information about your code.


#2: Firebug
Unfortunately, I don't have as much personal experience using Firebug. However, I have always heard from fellow developers that it is an essential tool. This is another web developer tool that seems to have some duplicate functionality with "Web Developer" above. Still, Firebug allows you to easily view HTML source, CSS, Script, as well as DOM elements very nicely. My review does this add-on no justice, but I hope you believe me when I say you must have this tool if you are developing web sites.


#3: Live HTTP Headers
This tool allows you to view the HTTP headers as communicated in real time. Very useful when you are trying to debug the interaction with your websites. Helps to spot redirects and other interesting things that you really have no other way of seeing.


#4: Html Validator
This is another great tool for debugging HTML.
Validates your HTML against SGML or HTML Tidy algorithms.
Presents errors and warnings in a table that, when clicked, goes straight to the source code in question.
This tool has helped me at least twice today.









Well I only have 4 favorites at the moment. I have installed SeoQuake and YSlow, but haven't really had a chance to test them out. If you have a favorite that I didn't mention, please let us know. I'll get back to testing these other add-ons and I'll let you know how it turns out.

First Post

This is the first post to the BusinessHut blog. I'm not entirely sure how this is going to look, so please consider this a test. Over time, this blog will contain insight into the information technology problems we solve on a daily basis. I look forward to your comments (and criticisms).

Topics I hope to cover include:
ASP.NET Web Development
Microsoft Office Tips and Tricks - There's so much tedious work you can easily automate.
General Web Development/Design
Search Engine Optimization
Web Analytics - Primarily with Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer
Any other interesting things I encounter that I think you'll find intersting as well.

If you can't find the information you're looking for, take a look at our other websites:

BusinessHut.com
CountySeeker.com