Creative Fuel is a resource for graphic designers, web designers and multimedia developers.
We discuss the software, hardware, books and online resources you need to get the job done.
We've tried to assemble some of the best links, tutorials and relevant information to save you time, effort and money.Top-shelf: Firefox Add-ons
Firefox add-ons are available in numerous categories, with something for every web user. This round-up includes my picks for the best add-ons for web designers/developers. The best part is that they’re all FREE!
- Web Developer - Adds a toolbar with a wide variety of tools for the web designer/developer. This really is indispensable for anyone serious about creating websites. If you don’t already have it, this is a must have!
- Firebug - Another great tool for web developers. You can test your site’s performance, debug javascript, troubleshoot and change CSS live in Firefox, inspect virtually any aspect of your web page (HTML, CSS, Javascript, DOM) and make tweaks right in the browser. Another must have for developers! Sitepoint has an excellent article on in-browser development tools. There are also a number of Firebug add-ons including YSlow (see below), Firecookie and Jiffy.
- HTML Validator - Using the W3C Tidy Validator, you can easily view problems in your code and see exactly where the problems are, all in one handy viewer. Links to other reference sources are also useful. You might also try Total Validator. It has some nice features.
- WAVE Toolbar - This toolbar, provided by WebAIM, is very helpful in validating and troubleshooting pages for Accessibility (508 Compliance).
- SearchStatus - View the Google Pagerank and the Alexa score for any site. Right click on the “Q” button and get lots of useful details about how a site is doing in the search engines.
- Screen grab! - This simple tool captures the webpage as an image. You can capture the visible page or the entire length of the page (even the part that would require scrolling forever). The images are a little too compressed than I’d like, but the time savings is well worth it when you need a full screen screen capture.
- YSlow - Get detailed information about how your site could get a speed boost using Yahoo’s YSlow extension. Using Yahoo’s Exceptional Performance methods, you can squeeze more performance out of your web site.
- MeasureIt - Measure the size of anything (in pixels) within Firefox. Simple, but very useful tool.
- Colorzilla - This simple utility gives you several useful tools in one. The eyedropper can pick up the color of anything in Firefox. It reports the color in RGB, and Hex and makes it easy to copy the value of your choice to any program, including Photoshop and Dreamweaver.
- Clear Cache Button - Adds a button to your toolbar that will instantly clear your cache. This comes in handy for debugging your site. I preferred Cache Status, but it isn’t available for Firefox 3 yet.
There are many other worthy extensions. These are just the top 10 I rely on. Which extensions do you count on?
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