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My Firefox Plugins

By David Walsh on May 23, 2008

I know that everyone and their brother creates this post but on the rare occasion that I do read a person's list, I see a good amount of the plugins that I rely on NOT in their list. Here are the plugins that I use on a daily basis.

AutoCopy

AutoCopy instructs Firefox to copy text when it's highlighted. Very helpful when copying content from a customer's old site into their new one.

ColorZilla

ColorZilla lets me place my cursor over anything on the page and it gives me the hex color of the pixel. It's a huge time saver as it allows me the ability to avoid doing a print-screen, opening Photoshop, and using the Photoshop color dropper to get the color.

Firebug

Firebug is an absolute must for my AJAX / JavaScript debugging. I couldn't get by without it.

HTML Validator

HTML Validator just validates how great my code is.

Link Alert

Link Alert changes my cursor when I hover over a link. The cursor changes to a visual representation of what I'm about to click on. It's great for me because it tells me if the link is to a JavaScript file, text file, or mp3 file. I love it. It also tells me if clicking on a link triggers a JavaScript event.

MeasureIt

MeasureIt gives me a ruler to mention object dimensions. This tool gives me a broad idea over how much space an object is taking up or how much space I have left to work with on my page.

Server Spy

Server Spy is dominant because I can instantly tell what type of server the current website is on. A must when trying to quote a new project.

Web Developer Toolbar

The WDT is as important to me as Firebug. WDT gives me a ton of control and information about the page I'm developing. Again, this is a must.

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Discussion

Catar4x
The autocopy link is bad :S
Thanks for sharing your developer’s plugin on firefox !
david
@Catar4x: Thank you for pointing that out — fixed.
Mark
Lol, I always use the photoshop method of finding colors. :) I thought I was the only one.
Eric Wendelin
Very interesting to know, David. Stay tuned for my list ;)
Spencer Barfuss
How does knowing what type of server someone is running a site on help you in determining how much to quote someone? Sorry if this is a dumb question, I’ve just never heard of doing that before.

Thanks!
david
@Spencer: It’s a small but helpful bit of info. If a customer wants website updates and they are on an IIS server w/ ASP files (because I inherited their current site), I know I have to charge more because an ASP will take me longer than a PHP update. PHP also acts different when hosted on IIS (diff. server variables, modules, etc.) so I’ll take that into consideration too. Another example: IIS doesn’t support .htaccess files for SEF links. I’d need to know that too.

Generally I pray to see “Apache” for their current provider. Then I can pretty much safely assume that the host has MySQL/PHP and can quote accordingly.

Like I said, not a huge factor but big enough to consider.
adam
Instead of MeasureIt, I just use the ruler in WDT. And instead of ColorZilla, I use a program called Pixie, by Nattyware. Since it’s a stand alone program you can grab hex colors anywhere on your monitor.
httpwebwitch
re: the color picker, I’d strongly recommend (if you’re on Windows) trying “Instant Eyedropper” from spicebrains.com. I rarely give software recommendations, and I am not affiliated with that company… but this is by far the best color tool I’ve ever used. It sits in your windows task bar; you click down on it (mousedown) and drag over the screen, then let go (mouseup) when you’re over the pixel you want to sample. The color (hex, rgb, you choose in the “options”) is in your clipboard.

For instance, in your davidwalsh logo, your hair color is #7C5D27, the background blue is #ACD8E5, your skin tone is #F2D4CC, your yellow shirt is #FFDB7D. It took less than a second to grab each of these.

Cheers,
httpwebwitch
httpwebwitch
sorry everyone – correction; the eyedropper I mentioned is actually at instant-eyedropper dot com.
Phil Thompson
I’ve a big fan of LiveHTTP headers (especially in sidebar view) tells me the headers that are being sent for every page load. I also like Unhide Passwords.
colleen
Hi David – this is fantastic, and it’s a great list, but I’m wondering if you have an alternate option for AutoCopy? It’s not compatible with Firefox 3.0.5 (the latest version)? thoughts?