So now, you have absolutely no excuse! Firefox’s newest release, version 3, takes everyone’s favorite open source web browser to a level unparalleled by any of the competition. While Firefox has always been the browser of choice for most web developers, designers, and internet geeks, the new features have taken it to a completely different level for user experience.
So you’re a web developer or graphic designer and don’t use Firefox? Why not? Firefox makes being a webmaster much less of a chore. With hundreds of useful extensions, Firefox allows webmasters to customize their browser to meet their needs. Need some examples? Here’s a few I use on a daily basis:
Are you a graphic designer or web designer? You’ll know one of the most important ways to learn what’s hot and find inspiration is searching the web and getting ideas. You also know how tedious it can be looking through code or trying to find images that have colors you’ve use on your site to create new graphics.
You need the ColorZilla’s Plug-in. ColorZilla (http://www.colorzilla.com) puts a small eyedropper in the corner of your Firefox browser and allows you to click it, and then click any element on the page you are viewing to get the exact color. This plug-in also allows you to zoom directly on the page and gives some of the most use PhotoShop features directly in your browser.
Do you have a video website download any type of content from the web like videos, images, etc.? The DownloadHelper Plug-in (http://www.downloadhelper.net) puts a small image next to your Navigation Toolbar that when clicked, shows all the media that can be downloaded from the page. It will allow you to download AVI, FLA, JPEG, MPEG, and many more with the click of a button, without searching through source code of folders.
Do you use Social Bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, De.lico.us, Squidoo, Facebook, Twitter, or the numerous other similar sites available? Nearly all the large social networking and booking marking sites have Firefox plug-ins that allow you bookmark content without ever leaving the site you’re visiting.
The Web Developer Plug-in (http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/) has a smorgasbord of cool features that are created with the web developer in mind. From debugging scripts, to disabling CSS, JavaScript, etc., to resizing the window size to see how things will look, it’s a great tool with hundreds of features I can’t even get into. This is one you definitely will spend some time playing with.
Some other hot plug-ins for webmasters:
FireFTP 1.0 (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/684)
Nice FTP program built into Firefox, so you don’t have to keep multiple programs running
FiveGestures (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6366)
A customizable mouse gestures extension which enables you to execute various commands and user scripts with five types of gestures.
UserAgent Switcher (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59)
Adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser.
YSlow (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5369)
YSlow analyzes web pages and tells you why they’re slow based on Yahoo’s rules for high performance web sites.
A full list can be found at https://addons.mozilla.org. There are hundreds of extensions to help your user experience AND to help get your job done more effectively.
Add as many or as few of these add-ons as you want! You never knew how helpful a browser could be. Happy surfing!
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