50+ Essential Firefox Extensions For Designers And Developers

The best thing about using Firefox is the large number of extensions available. Here are some 50+ Firefox extensions for designers and developers that would help you increase your productivity.

And while you are at it, do check out the 50+ Useful Cheat Sheets for Designers and Programmers. Do subscribe to my RSS feed to keep yourself updated about the latest happening on The Chronicles of R.

1. Web Developer Toolbar
The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools. It is designed for Firefox, Flock and Seamonkey, and will run on any platform that these browsers support including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

2. AspellFox
Adds Aspell spell checking to the context menu. Left click in any text box and select AspellFox from the context menu. You can also select text in a text box and run aspellfox on the selected text.

3. RankQuest SEO Toolbar
RankQuest SEO(Search Engine Optimization) Toolbar provides you quick access to more than 30 intuitive SEO tools. Alexa Rank and Page Rank provided by Alexa and Google respectively ensures the popularity of the site. Once you download and install the SEO Toolbar you are only one or two clicks away from carrying out most of your day to day SEO operations.

4. OperaView
Even if you using Mozilla browser all the time, sometimes it is necessary to view the page you are looking at in Opera browser (especially if you are a web developer). OperaView extension makes that process easier by adding the item View This Page in Opera to the page context menu and a button to the toolbar and item Open Link Target in Opera to the link context menu.

5. IEView
IE View is a simple Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox extension (for Microsoft Windows systems), which allows the current page or a selected link to be opened in Internet Explorer. IE View adds menu items to the page context menu, and the link context menu. Right-clicking a link now includes an "Open link target in IE" menu item. Right-clicking elsewhere in the main body of the page (not within an image, text box, etc.) gives "View this page in IE." You can also add sites to an "always-view-in-IE" list. These sites, when reached in Firefox, will automatically reopen in Internet Explorer.

6. Total Validator
The Total Validator Firefox extension provides one-click validation. Once installed all you do is browse to the page you want to validate then click on the TV icon in the browser status bar.

7. SEO for Firefox
This extension directly adds more info into Google and Yahoo search results. Some things it adds are page rank, alexa rating, how many people link to you on Technorati, del.icio.us book marks, and much more.

8. LiveHTTPHeaders
Directly edit your headers with this extension. You can capture, and POST back the headers you’ve sent and received. This is a great script to find out why your forms aren’t working.

9. ViewCookies
It adds a tab to the Page Info dialog box, which shows the cookies of the current webpage. This is interesing for developers, privacy-concious users and others.

10. ViewSourceWith
Open images, CSS files, JavaScript and HTML source files of a website in your favorite editor.

11. ScribeFire
ScribeFire is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog.

12. No-Referrer
Allows you to open a link without sending the HTTP referer header.

13. Load Time Analyzer
Load Time Analyzer produces graphs that show the occurrence of events such as requests for the page, images, stylesheets and scripts, along with events like the execution of an onload script. You can use it tune the performance of your page or to help make Firefox better.

14. User Agent Switcher
Adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser.

15. EditCSS
EditCSS allows you to edit and modify currently loaded stylesheets. It's an extension based on a wonderfull bookmarklet created by Jesse Ruderman : Edit styles and displays the code into a sidebar.

16. FireBug
An essential part of the web developer’s toolbox, Firebug allows you to tinker with the undercarriage of your project’s CSS, JavaScript or HTML. You can operate Firebux through a panel or in a separate window. It allows you to identify how each line of code shapes the final product as rendered on the web.

17. MeasureIt
Draw a ruler across any webpage to check the width, height, or alignment of page elements in pixels. quite a handy tool for designers.

18. FireFTP
A powerful FPT client in one tab, your work in another. Sometimes the simplest solutions can be profoundly useful. (Note: Does not as yet support SFTP).

19. ColorZilla
This extension allows you to pick colors from the web, paste the hex code into other programs, zoom in on pages, measure distances and utilize a built-in pallet browser. A must-have for any web designer.

20. Copy as HTML Link
Creates an HTML link to the current page using the selected text and copies it (into the clipboard) for pasting into other applications.

21. View Source Chart
View Source Chart Extension draws a color-coded chart of a webpages source code and displays source in its altered state after the DOM has been manipulated by JavaScript.

22. NoScript
This Firefox extension provides extra protection for Firefox, Flock, Seamonkey and other mozilla-based browsers. It allows JavaScript, Java and Flash and other plugins to be executed only by trusted web sites of your choice.

23. GreaseMonkey
Allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript. Hundreds of scripts, for a wide variety of popular sites, are already available. You can write your own scripts, too.

24. FoxyProxy
FoxyProxy automatically switches an internet connection across one or more proxy servers based on URL patterns.

25. DOM Inspector
Inspect the DOM of HTML, XUL, and XML pages, including the mail chrome.

26. sqlite-manager
Manage all your sqlite databases using this lightweight extension for firefox, this extension will be useful to developers who want to create and play with sqlite databases.

27. QuickJava
QuickJava is a Firefox plugin that allows you to easily enable/disable the Java and Javascript from the toolbar. Two icons are placed in the toolbar, click on them to toggle the state. If you right click either icon it will update both icons.

28. FirePHP
FirePHP enables you to log to your Firebug Console using a simple PHP method call. All data is sent via response headers and will not interfere with the content on your page. FirePHP is ideally suited for AJAX development where clean JSON and XML responses are required.

29. CSSViewer
A simple CSS property viewer.

30. Browser Windows Resizer
The Browser Window Resizer is useful tool for testing different screen sizes. It accurately resizes your browser so you can test to see if the web page you are working on looks right in all of the standard resolution sizes. Window resizer supports the 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1600×1200 resolution sizes.

31. Table2Clipboard
This extension adds two menu items, one in Edit menu and the other one on context menu. The item on Edit menu is always visible but grayed if no table cells are selected. The item on context menu is visible only when table cells are selected. To select table cells you must hold down Control key and click on cells to copy.

32. YSlow for FireBug
YSlow analyzes web pages and tells you why they're slow based on the rules for high performance web sites. YSlow is a Firefox add-on integrated with the popular Firebug web development tool.

33. Extended Statusbar
A Statusbar with speed, percentage, time and loaded size.

34. Dummy Lipsum
This extension generates “Lorem Ipsum” dummy text.

35. CSSValidator
CSS Validator is a Mozilla Firefox extension which Validates a page using the W3C CSS Validator. Adds an option to the right-click context menu and to the Tools menu to allow for easy validation of the CSS of the current page. Opens the results in a new tab. Will only work on pages that have a CSS file associated.

36. HTML Validator
HTML Validator is a Mozilla extension that adds HTML validation inside Firefox and Mozilla. The number of errors of a HTML page is seen on the form of an icon in the status bar when browsing. The details of the errors are seen when looking the HTML source of the page.

37. Firefox Accessibility Extension
This Mozilla/Firefox Accessibility Extension makes it easier for people with disabilities to view and navigate web content. Developers can use the extension to check their use of structural and styling markup that support functional web accessibility.

38. Image Zoom
Image zoom gives you complete control of the size of most images displayed in mozilla based software. Both individual images or whole pages of images can be zoomed.

39. Screengrab!
Screengrab! is an extension for Firefox that makes it easy to save a web-page as an image. With it, you can save anything that you can see in a browser window - from a small selection, to a complete page.

40. FireShot!
FireShot is a extension for Firefox and Internet Explorer that captures, edits, annotates, organizes, exports and prints screenshots of your web pages.

41. Abduction!
Capture an entire web page or part of a web page and save it as an image.

42. IE Tab
This is a great tool for web developers, since you can easily see how your web page displayed in IE with just one click and then switch back to Firefox.

43. Aardvark
As you move your mouse cursor over a page element it will be isolated by a red rectangle. A yellow caption will display the element’s type and class or id (if available). Keyboard shortcuts then allow you to edit or delete the element.

44. wmlbrowser
It is a simple extension that allows you to view WML pages in Firefox. This will come in handy for mobile web developers, especially now that mobile phones and other similar portable devices are joining the mainstream Web bandwagon.

45. JavaScript Debugger
Helps debug complex javascripts, track life-values of variables. This is a must for everyone that work with JavaScript.

46. XPath Checker
An interactive editor for XPath expressions. Choose 'View XPath' in the context menu and it will show the editor. You can edit the XPath expression and it incrementally updates the results.

47. ScrapBook
This is an incredibly powerful extension. It lets you save a page (it makes a perfect work since the code is processed and manipulated - no more CSS-images wrong in saved page) and quickly edit it. With this extension you can easily organize your saved pages (you can save entire page or part of it).

48. Flagfox
Displays a country flag depicting the location of the current website's server and provides quick access to detailed location and webserver information.

49. Firecookie
Firecookie is an extension for Firebug that makes possible to view and manage cookies in your browser.

50. Greasefire
Automatically find Greasemonkey scripts on Userscripts.org (requires Greasemonkey).

51. Inline Code Finder for Firebug
Finds HTML elements with inline JavaScript events, inline styling and javascript: links.

52. Custom Buttons²
The Custom Buttons² Firefox extension provides the code base support necessary to create, maintain, import, and export custom toolbar buttons.

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