As I have mentioned on this site before, I am a Linux user. More specifically, I am a Slackware user and as such, it goes without saying that I am not an Internet Explorer user.

I have been using Firefox since its pre-Firebird, pre-Phoenix days of 2002. Nearly three years on, and with the browser “all grown up now”, I have to say I am very much dependant on it. I have to admit I have strayed from time to time, experimenting with others such as the almost-had-me Opera and the looks-great-in-KDE-but-shit-in-anything-else Konqueror, but Firefox is undoubtedly the browser I have come to know and love.

One of the features that has become a necessity in my daily goings on are the plethora or Firefox extensions. So without further adieu, here are my Top 5 Firefox Extensions I Can’t Live Without.

5. User Agent Switcher

This extension allows Firefox users to specify what user agent to broadcast to the world when browsing the internet. It is amazingly simple, yet the uses of this extension are numerous. I personally use it for three specific purposes:

• To ’spoof’ the user agent of my browser to test my own code. On some of my clients’ sites I use some nifty PHP to sniff the users browser and deliver the appropriate stylesheet compatible with that browser. (Can you all say IE sucks?)
• To access clients’ sites that are so old and/or badly coded that they actually refuse to load for any other browser than IE/Win.
• To ’spoof’ user agents such as the Googlebot - once again to test my own code. (Specifically, logging of search engine spidering activities.)

Of course, there are essentially limitless uses for this plugin, these are just a few of my personal requirements.

4. Foxytunes

Foxytunes is an amazing extension if for nothing more than its huge list of supported players and operating systems. It only made number 4 in my top 5, not because there is something specifically wrong with it, but rather that it is merely an amusement extension. The fact that this extension made my top 5 despite this fact is a testament to its functionality and features.

What this extension does is integrate a small control panel within your web browser that allows you to control your chosen media player without having to toggle between windows. If that is not reason enough to give this extenstion a go, then have a quick glance at its feature set. All of that for the the princely sum of $0 and less than 175KB of your bandwidth.

3. Bookmarks Synchronizer

This extension is one that I simply cannot do without. Bookmarks Synchronizer gives you the ability to sync your bookmarks to a FTP/WebDAV server of your choice, allowing complete portability of your internet favourites.

If you are anything like me and have the annoying combination of a huge bookmarks repository as well as using numerous different computers on a daily basis, you will easily see the value of this extension. I can bookmark my heart out, and when I close firefox those new bookmarks are automatically sync’d to my chosen FTP server. The next day at work, as soon as I open my browser Firefox instinctively checks the same server for an updated file and loads the new bookmarks accordingly. Brilliantly simple and simply brilliant.

2. Adblock

The Adblock Firefox Extension: the perennial favourite amongst Firefox veterans. If you haven’t heard of or used this extension you must be living in a cave. For arguments’ sake, let’s call that cave Internet Explorer.

The Adblock extension, strangley enough, blocks ads. Sick of Doubleclick? Block it. News.com.com.com scattered with ads? Block them too. It also has a nifty filters function using wildcards and regular expressions. *doubleclick* will work wonders. Its simplicity is also its greatest strength, as all you have to do is right click, Adblock. That’s it. Really.

Go and try it on a site like CNN, you will not be disappointed.

1. Web Developer

“And to the victor come the spoils.” Although in this case, the victor is Chris Pederick, and the spoils are nothing more than a fuzzy feeling hopefully delivered by being crowned number 1 in my Top 5 Firefox Extensions I Can’t Live Without

Chris has been afforded the amazing privilege of having not one, but two of his creations feature in my top 5. Considering he has only released a total of two extensions, User Agent Switcher and Web Devloper, 2-from-2 is not half bad, Mr Pederick.

The Web Developer extension is something I use and abuse most of my day, and I cannot begin to fathom the number of man-hours this extension has saved me in debugging and testing my work. If you have anything to do with web design or development and are not yet using this, I suggest you throw your copy of Frontpage 3.0 out the window and install it!

The feature list is rather extensive, but a few worthy of mention and that I use most frequently are:

• Outlining of various elements including block-level elements, deprecated elements, links without title attributes and custom elements (such as divs etc).
• Scores of configurable tools including validating the HTML, CSS and accessibility, as well as speed reports and link checking.
• The display of id and class details.
• The display of anchors and link paths.
• Convert form POSTs to GETs, and vice-versa.
• Find broken images and/or images without alt tags.
• Disable CSS, javascript, images, cookies, cache, java, colours and many more.
• Display cookie information.
• Display response headers and page information.
• Shows whether the browser has rendered a page in quirks mode or standards compliance mode.
• Many, many, (did I mention many?) more features.

For the full list make sure you check out the features, or even easier, download and install the extension and try it out.

Honourable Mentions

• ColorZilla - Advanced eye-dropper, color-picker and page-zoomer. (Think Photoshop’s eye-dropper functionality for your web browser.)
• Gmail Notifier - Allows checking for new Gmail messages directly from the browser’s UI.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 19th, 2005 at 9:39 pm and is filed under Browsers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.