A real gem among the extensions is the Web Developer extension. It provides so many extremely useful features that it can be considered a separate application, not an extension. The illustration below shows only the top-level menus of the Web Developer extension. And under each of the menus there are commands and I dare say all of them are really useful. If you are working in Web development, this extension is a must-have, you might even wonder how you have managed until now without it.
Web developers might also be interested in the HTML editors that are available as Firefox extensions, although you will hardly swap your favorite HTML editor for cuneAform, Codetch or EditorZilla. The Html Validator extension is a useful for HTML coders. Other editors that might be of interest to advanced users are the Edit Config Files extension and the and Menu Editor extension. The Edit Config Files opens the about:config file where you can fine-tune the settings of Firefox (but make sure that you know what you are changing because if you mess things up you might need to reinstall Firefox). The Menu Editor is said to allow the customization of application menus (File, Edit, View, etc.) and the main context menu. For me the Menu Editor did not work, but you might have more luck with it.
Among the extensions that deal with images, there are a lot of useful and interesting ones. For instance, Image Zoom allows you to zoom in on images that are inside the browser. So, no need to save them and open them in an external program in order to zoom in or out on them. One of the best features of the ColorZilla extension is that it eliminates the need to save a screenshot of the image and open it in an external image editor just to pick the color of a pixel. Designers will appreciate ColorZilla best, as well as the MeasureIt extension, which allows to get the pixel width and height of any element on a Web page. The Image Toolbar extension is also nice, because it adds functionality, similar to the functionality in Internet Explorer – i.e. saving, copying, printing of images.
Developer Tools isanother interesting category, even if you are not a developer. Besides the already mentioned ColorZilla, WebDeveloper, and HTML editors, there are other useful extensions, although for some of them, I question why they were placed in this category. For instance, ABC SMS Send, All-In-One Sidebar, and Amazing webpage emailer have hardly anything to do with development – ABC SMS Send sends SMS messages, All-In-One Sidebar, which is among the top downloads, is a sidebar tool that can manage other sidebars, open windows, installed extensions, downloads, bookmarks, etc. While many sites offer the functionality to email a webpage, the majority of them still don’t, which is where the Amazing webpage emailer comes in handy. It allows you to email any browser page directly from the browser window without ever having to copy the URL to a new email message.
Useful for any user surfing the web, the IE View extension is necessary when you encounter a page that hasn’t been done professionally and either opens only in Internet Explorer, or opens in a deformed state in Firefox and other non-IE browsers. Also, this extension is useful when one needs to check how a page would display in IE without ever actually needing to run IE. Other very useful tools for developers include the small link checking extension (LinkChecker) and the Checky 2.5 extension, which allows to validate and analyze programming code inluding: HTML, XHTML, CSS, RDF, RSS, XML, WAI, Section 508, P3P, Hyperlinks, Metadata.
There are interesting extensions for bookmarks as well. For instance, Bookmarks Synchronizer allows to keep your bookmarks in one place (an XML file on a FTP/WebDAV server), no matter from how many locations you browse the Net. And if you have the habit to bookmark every other page you browse, the Enhanced Bookmark Search and the KeywordBar extensions (a sidebar where all bookmarks that contain specified keywords are displayed) might make it easier to find the one you are looking for among the thousands of entries. Also, with the Sort Bookmarks extension you, you can sort them alphabetically.
The Web Annoyances category is another interesting one. One of my favorites is Copy Plain Text – a simple extension that speeds the copy & paste process of large blocks of text into a text-processing program without all the interfering and unessessary formatting. The Flashblock extension is a nice weapon against annoying Flash animations. It replaces all Flash animations with a button that can be clicked in case you actually want to view them. Another two extensions that are handy when you do not want to see particular content are Nuke Image and Remove It Permanently. Nuke Image removes an image temporarily from a Web page, while the second extension is more radical. I found both extensions very useful for getting rid of undesired images.
In conclusion, I would like to say that this review of Firefox extensions is by no means comprehensive. I might have omitted many extensions that somebody else will like a lot, or I might have included ones that you do not find useful. In any case, it is not possible to describe all of the current existing extensions in a short article. If one wants to stay informed about Firefox extensions that may be released in the next week, the next month or sometime in the distant future, the best way is to frequently visit their site.
The PCMech.com weekly newsletter has been running strong for over 8 years. Sign up to get tech news, updates and exclusive content - right in your inbox. Also get (several) free gifts.
Pages: 1 2
