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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ;-)
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