Firefox Extensions For Webdevelopers

As a webdeveloper, albeit a hobbyist one, I’ve found Firefox standards-compliance to be a valuable asset when writing HTML, CSS and javascript. Adding a few extensions makes Firefox even more useful to a webdeveloper/webmaster. My three favourite extensions are:

Firebug - a great way for analysing a page and all the parts that make it up; javascript, images, CSS, HTML, page load times, file sizes and even edit a page in real-time. It will even find errors in your code. It’s absolutely essential, even for the webmaster who outsource their webdevelopment so they can analyse pages and determine if there are too many "hits" per page (e.g. 10 javascript files and 60 images, when it could be a lot less) which will cause slow loading speed or to easily change the colour of a page themselves and see in real time how it will look.

Web Developer is different to Firebug in that it will highlight information on page so you can see the structure, for example image sizes can be displayed by images. Or div elements and IDs can be displayed. There is a wealth of information to be found and should quickly help you understand why a page is not displaying correctly. Perhaps easier to use and understand than Firebug.

Finally, Search Status is great for link analysis. Concerned that you have too many outbound links? Then just check a the link report search status generates in two simple clicks. The report is broken down in to internal, external, followed, nofollow and secure links. There’s also an option to highlight which links are followed and gather baclink reports ("MS Live" does not currently work). It’s also possible to check keyword density, meta tags and look it up in archive.org (a library of websites).