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Monday, March 24, 2008

6 Firefox Extentions Every Developer Needs


I don't need to convince you why firefox is the best browser in the world, so let's get right into it. I want to go over some of the extensions that I love, and that you can't live without!
  1. Web developer toolbar. Alright, that one was obvious. The main things I like about it though are the outline css elements, display form details, and clear cookies. Especially since I use Emacs for my html editing, it helps to be able to visualize my html/css every once in a while, especially when debugging some gnarly html tables.

  2. MeasureIt. This one's great for pulling dimensions off the screen without having to do a screengrab and pull it into photoshop.

  3. ColorZilla. When you need to get the hex code for a color on the screen, look no further! A handy-dandy color dropper.

  4. Live HTTP Headers. I pull this bad-boy out of my back pocket for the more advanced ninja tactics when I'm trying to debug flash or ajax code. When you don't have a specific URL to hit when you're testing, use the live headers to see where your browser is pulling data from. Little annoying though how if you have gmail open and you're staring intensely at your header log, like every 5 seconds you see a hit to gmail.

  5. Lorem Ipsum Generator. Nice little convenience tool for generating our favorite latin nonsense for design mockups, etc. The other way I usuall grab latin quickly if I don't have this installed, is by searching lorum ipsum on google, but the site you get to, always takes me like twice as long...so I like the extension a lot better.

  6. Screengrab. Sweet little tool to pull a screen grab off your browser. Doesn't work with flash though. One of the recent features they did which I like is allowing you to grab a selected rectangle, instead of just grabbing the whole screen. One thing that doesn't seem to ever work the way I expect it to is the Copy feature - as opposed to the Save feature - it doesn't seem to let me paste it anywhere! Email, paint, or anything.
Now that you're strapped with your developer tools, you're ready to rock and roll. Now go build some cool stuff!

2 comments:

zero.fuxor said...

what about firebug ...i can't live without it! =).

Anonymous said...

Yep - good call! You know I used that one a little bit but it was giving me some headaches with javascript so I just went back to javascript console in web dev plugin. But I should check it out again!

Monday, March 24, 2008

6 Firefox Extentions Every Developer Needs


I don't need to convince you why firefox is the best browser in the world, so let's get right into it. I want to go over some of the extensions that I love, and that you can't live without!
  1. Web developer toolbar. Alright, that one was obvious. The main things I like about it though are the outline css elements, display form details, and clear cookies. Especially since I use Emacs for my html editing, it helps to be able to visualize my html/css every once in a while, especially when debugging some gnarly html tables.

  2. MeasureIt. This one's great for pulling dimensions off the screen without having to do a screengrab and pull it into photoshop.

  3. ColorZilla. When you need to get the hex code for a color on the screen, look no further! A handy-dandy color dropper.

  4. Live HTTP Headers. I pull this bad-boy out of my back pocket for the more advanced ninja tactics when I'm trying to debug flash or ajax code. When you don't have a specific URL to hit when you're testing, use the live headers to see where your browser is pulling data from. Little annoying though how if you have gmail open and you're staring intensely at your header log, like every 5 seconds you see a hit to gmail.

  5. Lorem Ipsum Generator. Nice little convenience tool for generating our favorite latin nonsense for design mockups, etc. The other way I usuall grab latin quickly if I don't have this installed, is by searching lorum ipsum on google, but the site you get to, always takes me like twice as long...so I like the extension a lot better.

  6. Screengrab. Sweet little tool to pull a screen grab off your browser. Doesn't work with flash though. One of the recent features they did which I like is allowing you to grab a selected rectangle, instead of just grabbing the whole screen. One thing that doesn't seem to ever work the way I expect it to is the Copy feature - as opposed to the Save feature - it doesn't seem to let me paste it anywhere! Email, paint, or anything.
Now that you're strapped with your developer tools, you're ready to rock and roll. Now go build some cool stuff!

2 comments:

zero.fuxor said...

what about firebug ...i can't live without it! =).

Anonymous said...

Yep - good call! You know I used that one a little bit but it was giving me some headaches with javascript so I just went back to javascript console in web dev plugin. But I should check it out again!