5 mandatory Firefox extensions for the web developer

When it's about web development Mozilla's browsers have always been one step ahead. Recently Internet Explorer also added more possibilities for fine tuning of the applications by developers, but they first have to be adopted, because when for long you have been developing a technology aside from the commonly accepted standards then it's hard to make the ones using it to change their way of work. I have always strive to adhere to the commonly accepted standards, so my choice of Firefox as platform for development of web applications is not an accident. In this article, I'd like to present 5 extensions, which in addition to the wonderful browser can make your life easier.

I'd like to make in advance the arrangement that this is not a rating and the ordering is random.

LiveHTTPHeaders

This is one of the extensions, which I'm using the longest. HTTP protocol is of the type request - answer and this extensions allows you to see both. Much useful when tuning applications, because it shows what's transferred and what's received by the browser - headers, cookies, data. With this extensions you could easily find out what server software is serving a given site.

• Official page
• Installatoin

WebDeveloper

This extension is simply mandatory for everyone doing web development. The list of things, which it could do for you would require a separate article, so I'll mention only the most important. The extension adds a toolbar with instruments, which allow you to hide any part of a web page - pictures, forms and so on, to disable JavaScript, Java, cookies, CSS and so on, to highlight separate elements, to show hidden attributes, to resize the page and lots, lots more. It's the ideal solution for checking the accessibility of the page without pictures, styles or scripts, but this is just one of the things for which I'm using it. In addition to all this you could check your pages for compliance with the web standards.

• Official page
• Mozilla addons page
• Installation

Html Validator

This extension will allow you to check locally your HTML pages with the help of tidy tools of W3C. Through a comfortable user interface in View Source you'll be able to review consecutively the errors and warnings in the source, as well as the warnings for impacted accessibility. Really useful for those that have the willingness to follow the standards.

• Official page
• Installation

JavaScript Debugger (Venkman)

Long gone are the days, when to fix a problem in some twisted JavaScript you'd have to write alert("blah, blah") everywhere. The large credits for this go to Venkman - the JavaScript debugger. Irreplaceable extension for fine tuning some more complex JavaScript programs. Unfortunately, the current version (0.9.7) doesn't work well on my Firefox 1.5.0.4, but I have no doubts, that it's only a mater of time for this to change.

• Official page
• Installation

DOM Inspector

Although, this extensions comes by default with Firefox I highly recommend it to everyone that for one reason or another do not have it. With this extensions you'll be able to review the hierarchical structure of your HTML/XUL/XML source and to find the elements in the graphical representation of the page. Really useful for reviewing the styles applied to a given element, the size and position of the element and so on.

• Official page

Those were mine 5 mandatory Firefox extensions for web developers, which I'm using almost every day. They are famous enough, but if you're unfamiliar with any of them then it's time to install and try it. Happy hacking ;-)

Handiwork

Today at work we did practice handiwork, again and almost until 8 PM. We had to do a lot of things manually, because they can't be done otherwise - restrictions of the technology. To make man wonder how important is the human factor in the century of the information technologies. While people do things once and then only deliver, we make same thing many times with the purpose of perfection :-) Quite often this lead to errors, but what to do when this is the situation... well, at least for now.

Congratulations Italy!

What could I say, congratulations to the Italians. There were teams that deserved more, but this is the world cup. "World" only to the quarter-finals :-) Lets hope, that the next one will not be so frugally, but on the other side maybe this will be the future of football.

WebTech 2006

Last friday and saturday I was on WebTech. Again alone, because my friends which wanted to come couldn't, and there were others that didn't show any interest.

With satisfaction I can say, that this year there were more interesting for me themes and the lectures were presented more professionally, although the level can be raised even more. I was impressed, that some of the lectours from the last year continue not to present lectures passably. The good thing is that most of the lectours from Bulgaria did presented themself good.

This year I'm generally satisfied from the organization, because with the ticket I bought the accommodation was painless. On the other side how should I know, that only with the pass card I could take free beverages from the coffe next to the halls? Nevertheless, my ticket was for the middle of the halls, not allways I could take place there. From organizational point of view there are things you can want.