Pew Pew Laser Blog

Firefox Extensions for Developers.

Firefox is my number one tool for web development. I could live without Dreamweaver, but not Firefox. In fact, syntax coloring in the source code viewer is the original reason I started using Firefox a few years ago. Once I discovered all of the marvelous add-ons and tab-based browsing, I switched from IE permanently. Here are many of the add-ons that I use for web development.

• There's the Web Developer toolbar, and Firebug of course. But you already know about those, don't you?
• View Source Chart is one of the most undervalued add-ons out there. Not only are the collapsible code blocks indispensable for figuring out what's going on with foreign code, but the Source Chart will show you the results of any JavaScript executing on the page. That's right - you get the source code; post JavaScript render.
• FireFTP - a fully capable FTP client, which can store settings for multiple. What more do you need?
• JS View gives you a list of all the external CSS and JavaScript files that are pulled in by a web page. This is a very effective tool for inspecting code, or figuring out what resources your pages actually rely on.
• Live HTTP Headers displays header information for webpages. That's the sneaky, secret webpage stuff like redirects, form submission info or status codes like 200 OK.
• YSlow will analyze webpages and recommend speed improvements. It requires Firebug, but all you developers have that installed, right?

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