Understandably there are many people in the world do not use Firefox, but if you’re still stuck on Internet Explorer then good luck with that. This post isn’t really aimed at you, so you may wish to ignore it.
Firefox Add-ons
If you haven’t already guessed I’m a big Firefox fan and tend to use it over other browsers. Personally I try and avoid Internet Explorer, and generally only use Safari if I’m on another Mac. Firefox addicts have created a ton of add-ons and plug-ins to make your life easier and enhance your browsing.
So whilst this is not an exhaustive list, by any measure, I thought I’d share some of the handy web design / general design tools and plug-ins that I’ve come across for– take your pick. On no particular order. I may add to this list later…
GridFox
This handy little tool is allows you to overlay a grid on top of other webpages, you come across that were designed using the grid system. Once installed, or you have to do is, right click on the webpage you wish to view GRiD Fox then options, enter your stats and then Voilà!
A handy little tool that those who build websites, but may not be the best of visual layouts were at work creation.
ColorZilla
A handy little utility that allows you to get colour readings and create colour palettes from images using on the Web — great creating colour palettes from photos, for instance.
It also has the ability to measure the distance between 2 points on the screen (also rather handy) and a Page Zoomer. You can also save, bookmark and share the palettes.
Html Validator
Handy HTML validator that checks your coding from within Firefox and Mozilla, and reports errors (if any) in the status bar with a small icon.
The complete list of platforms is downloadable from here: http://users.skynet.be/mgueury/mozilla/ (main link on the add-ons page is the Windows version)
- Windows,
– Linux 32 bits
– Linux 64 bits
– OpenBSD 32 bits
– OpenBSD 64 bits
– MacOsX PPC
– MacOSX Intel
ColorfulTabs
I heart this little utility! If you’re anything like me and have a gazillion tabs open at once, you’re bound to find it hard to find what you are looking for 5 minutes ago. With so many tabs open. Think of this as a little filing system — you can colourise any tabs you wish, with a simple, right click or double-click, depending on how you set it up.
It has since been upgraded to work with the latest Firefox versions, which was a godsend, and I like to be organised and work fast (meaning I need to switch between pages I’m using relatively quickly), but I didn’t want to stay on earlier versions of Firefox just to do that.
You can even save the tabs highlighted with a certain colour to a folder on your bookmarks, which is really handy. The downside is you are limited to 4 colours that you can pick which 4 colours you wish them to be. I really think they should let you have 8 and be able to name them so you can colour-code tabs as you personally want.
IE View
Lets you load pages in IE with a single right-click, or mark certain sites to *always* load in IE. I think this is handy for when you are testing browser compatibility or using it open pages that just look better in Internet Explorer.
JavaScript Debugger
“Venkman” is the code name for Mozilla’s JavaScript Debugger. It is a powerful JavaScript debugging environment for Mozilla based browsers.
Greasemonkey
Allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript. You can download tons of scripts and create your own…you know…
Ghostery
Ghostery works on Windows, Mac and Linux. It’s purpose is to notify you about an extensive list of the web bugs, annoying ad networks and various widgets on each page on the web, allowing you stop them and protect your privacy. Great idea. Especially as any good conspiracy theorist would agree, we are watched far too often without even being aware of it.
Straight from the horse’s mouth
We currently support over 200 services with weekly updates and additions. A sample of the supported services:
* Google Analytics
* MyBlogLog
* Quantcast
* IndexTools
* SiteMeter
* Lijit
* Omniture
* CrazyEgg
* Snap
* Omniture
* Statcounter
* Piwik
* Mint
* Facebook Beacon
* Typepad Stats
* Lookery
* HubSpot
* Yahoo Analytics
* Facebook Connect
* Federated Media
* OpenAds
* Amazon Associates
* FeedBurner
* Feedjit
* Google Adsense
* HitTail
* FriendFeed
* Woopra
* ScribeFire QuickAds
* NetRatings SiteCensus
* Doubleclick
* Wordpress Stats
* Snap
* RightMedia
* Tacoda
* WebTrends
* OpenAds
* ShareThis
* FeedBurner
* Seesmic
* AddtoAny
* AddThis
* Revenue Science
Do you need any more reason?
FireShot
This is a cool little screen capture extension that creates screenshots of web pages (entirely or just the visible section).
Unlike other many other extensions, this plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify web captures and insert text annotations and graphical annotations. Such functionality will be especially useful for web designers, testers and content reviewers. It has many functions similar to FastStone Capture but is handily attached to Firefox.
The captures can be:
- uploaded to FREE public screenshot hosting
– saved to disk (PNG, GIF, JPEG, BMP)
– printed
– copied to clipboard
– e-mailed
– sent to configurable external editor for further processing.Adds the ability to capture web pages (take screenshot of entire of visible part), edit it, add annotations and upload to free screenshot hosting, save (PNG, GIF, JPEG, BMP), print (NEW!) copy to clipboard, send to external editor or e-mail it.
FireFTP
Allows FTP from Mozilla, transferring your files quickly and efficiently. FireFTP also includes more advanced features such as:
…directory comparison, syncing directories while navigating, SFTP, SSL encryption, search/filtering, integrity checks, remote editing, drag & drop, file hashing, and much more!
Capture Fox
This tool can be used to capture a Firefox window or the whole screen and make screencast videos. Handy if you want a basic tool to compose tutorials, e-lessons or videos. You can also record your voice with it.
(They inform that this extension is for Windows XP, Vista, and 7.)
Save Complete
I often like to read things later and save pages on the web if i think they will be erased or updated or want a copy of a web page in its existing state – like when I want a quick way of archiving pages in my client’s CMS for instance.
As more and more sites use CSS, Firefox’s built-in complete save becomes increasingly less effective, as it doesn’t support stylesheets. This extension fixes this, and saves the complete page, including all images, stylesheets, flash, javascript, and anything else associated with the document, even imported stylesheets and images referenced in the stylesheet files.
w3schools Browser Trends
Oh, and by the way… for the people who insist on asking me why:
If you need further proof that Internet Explorer 6.0 just SUX, then you should try visiting any site with Web 2.0 functionality on your browser, and then go try it on a modern browser and see what you are missing. No, seriously! IE 6.0 is like Comic Sans to me. Not trying to sound elitist, but puh-lease! If there is anyone sticking up for IE 6.0, then power to ya, but I wouldnt be surprised if you were alone in touting its “merits” (are there any, apart from the fact its great to joke about?). It needs to die already. So much so that it holds up nice design in so many ways. And there is no reason to keep using it when you can download a new one and keep us designers happier. Agree? 
And don’t give me that rare excuse that “some businesses would have to pay a fortune to upgrade to newer platforms and browsers” – heard it all before, and that is soooo lame considering IE 6 is so 2001. What are such a large amount of people still using Windows 98? I’d doubt it. Infact in a matter of weeks i will be able to say it was soooo last decade. So do yourself (and all the modern web designers) a favour and get yourself a decent browser. You/we won’t be disappointed.
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Yes, I realise there are tons more useful utilities but I’m sleepy and that will do you all for now. Arrivederci!
