Firefox Extensions for Web Workers
April 17th, 2008 (4:00pm) Samuel Dean 5 Comments
Over on the OStatic blog, dedicated to open source, we’ve been having a lively discussion with readers about Firefox extensions. The readers have pointed out a number of excellent extensions that I had never heard of, and some that I had heard of but wasn’t using. Two of these can be very useful for web workers.
The first reader suggestion for a good Firefox extension that came in was for Firebug. I also noticed that in a previous post on good Firefox extensions on this blog, from Mike Gunderloy, it was among the top extensions he mentioned. I have previously used Web Developer for similar tasks, but Firebug is definitely worth having if you’re at all involved with web development.
Firebug is especially good if you occasionally get rusty on, say, CSS or JavaScript. Its debugging tools (the prompt for the name, no doubt) are very easy to use and very accurate, and it’s optimized for developers who work with two monitors concurrently. You can bring it up in one keystroke, and I frequently leave it running in the bottom of the browser if I’m working on a site. Firebug is also open source. If you’re a hotshot web developer, or even if you’re not, find a way to contribute.
The other Firefox extension that I’ve really taken a shine to is SEOQuake, which, of course, stands for Search Engine Optimization–the art and science of bringing people from search engines to your site. If you’ve been involved with SEO at all, you know that there is a lot to learn.
SEOQuake has several parts. SeoBar is a toolbar that shows the values of selected parameters for any web page you’re currently looking at. The set of parameters you see is customizable.
Among the parameters you can see for pages are Google PageRank, Google Index, Google link (the number of links pointed to the current page), and there are similar parameters for other search engines such as Yahoo!
If you don’t use these extensions, definitely try them. I’ll be getting lots of use out of them. See the links at the top of this post for more useful extensions, too.
Do you recommend any Firefox extensions?
5 Comments Post your own comment
JTPratt's Blogging Mistakes says: April 17th, 2008 6:02pm
People always seem to want to know the latest Firefox extensions to save time, I found that out from the reaction I got to my post last week Indispensable Firefox Extensions for Bloggers.
The ones I most highly recommend for bloggers are RankChecker, Google Notebook, and Fireshot. Reasons why are in my post…
=)
dansanuf says: April 17th, 2008 9:20pm
I’m a fan of FireFTP. It’s a nice little built-in FTP client that can work inside a tab, just like any other web page. Drag-and-drop from the desktop works too.
cubus says: April 18th, 2008 12:38am
FireFTP is a great tool indeed. I also use Screengrab! a lot. Makes taking (full length) screenshots of your website way too easy.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1146
Another simple, but handy extension is IE tab, let’s you upon the current page you’re visiting in IE. To see how your css got messed up :)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419
Firefox Extensions for Web Workers | White Sands Digital says: April 18th, 2008 7:03am
[...] of excellent extensions that I had never heard of, and some that I had heard of but wasn’t using. read more | digg [...]
G.Suvorov says: April 21st, 2008 6:25am
Thank you for mentioning SeoQuake in this list. If you have any ideas or suggestions how to make it better – please contact me.