Firefox add-ons

Question

What Firefox add-ons do you use that are useful for programmers?

Answer 1

I guess it's silly to mention Firebug -- doubt any of us could live without it. Other than that I use the following (only listing dev-related):

• Console²: next-generation error console
• DOM inspector: as the title might indicate, allows you to browse the DOM
• Edit Cookies: change cookies on the fly
• Execute JS: ad-hoc Javascript execution
• IE Tab: render a page in IE
• Inspect This: brings the selected object into the DOM inspector
• JSView: display linked javascript and CSS
• LORI (Life of Request Info): shows how long it takes to render a page
• Measure IT: a popup ruler.
• URL Params: shows GET and POST variables
• Web Developer: a myriad of tools for the web developer

Answer 2

Here are mine (developer centric):

1. FireBug - a myriad of productivity enhancing tools, includes javascript debugger, DOM inspector, allows you to edit the CSS/HTML on the fly which is highly valuable for troubleshooing layout and display problems.

2. Web Developer - again another great developer productivity tool. I mostly use it for quickly validating pages, disabling javascript (yes I disable javascript sometimes, don't you?), viewing cookies, etc.

3. Tamper Data - lets you tamper with http headers, form values, cookies, etc. prior to posting back to a page, or getting a page. Incredibly valuable for poking and prodding your pages, and seeing how your web app responds when used with slightly malicious intent.

4. JavaScript Debugger - has a few more features than javascript debugger provided by firebug. Although I must admit, I sparingly use this one since firebug has largely won me over.

5. Live HTTP Headers - invaluable for troubleshooting, use it frequently. Lets you spy on all HTTP headers communicated back and forth between client and server. It has helped me track down nefarious problems, especially when debugging issues when deploying your web app between environments.

6. Header Spy - nice addon for the geeky types, shows you the web server and platform a web site runs on in the status bar.

7. MeasureIt - I don't use this all too frequently, but I've still found it valuable from time to time.

8. ColorZilla - again, not something I use all that frequently, but when I need it, I need it. Valuable when you want to know a color and you don't want to dig through a CSS file, or open up a graphics editing app to get a color embedded in some image.

9. Add N Edit Cookies - this has been a great debugging tool in web farms where the load balancer writes a cookie, and uses the cookie value to keep your session "sticky". It allowed me to switch at will between servers to track down problems on specific machine. Also a good tool if you want to try to mess with a site that uses cookies to track your login status/account, and you want to see how your code responds to malformed or hacked info.

10. Yellowpipe Lynx Viewer Tool - yeah I know what your thinking, lynx, who needs it, its so 1994. But if you are developing a site that needs to take web accessibility into account (meaning accessible to users with visual impairments who use screen readers), or if you need to get a sense of how a web spider/indexer "sees" your site, this tool is invaluable. Granted, you could always just go out and grab Lynx for yourselfhere's the windows xp port that I use.

I've got a handful of other addons that I've used from time to time that I'll just quickly mention: FireFTP (one I installed wasn't stable and I've not tried a newer release), Html Validator (also found this one unstable, least back when I installed like a year ago), IE Tab (I usually just have both IE and FireFox open concurrently, but that is just me, I know many others that find this addon useful).