Firefox extensions are probably the single best reason to switch from IE (assuming the tabs and stability are just a given ). Extensions make my life so much easier as a designer/developer, and help my productivity and relieve a lot of headaches, blow is a list of extensions I have installed and use regularly (if not hourly).

First (and most obvious) is the MXNA extension for viewing the latest news, information and weblog posts from Macromedia, developed my Mike Chambers (which I have already posted about before).

Although the MXNA extension is at the top of my list, the one I get the most use out of is the Web Developer Extension by Chris Pederick. If your work depends on web development and you don't have this extension, you are missing out. The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools including the ability to disable just about anything (JavaScript, Cookies, Style Sheets, images, etc..); allows you to edit the css file right there in the browser and see your changes; add your own css, place borders around elements (perfect for debugging css issues); clear cache, history and sessions; and tons of other goodies that will save you countless hours of debugging and testing. Check out the User Agent Switcher extension by the same author. The User Agent Switcher extension adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser so you can see what your page looks/acts like in IE, Netscape, and Opera right there inside Firefox.

Another genius extension is the PDF Download extension"that you can use if you are annoyed to click on a link and then discover that Firefox is loading the Adobe or other PDF plug-in (very heavy) and is trying to show a PDF file directly inside your browser." If you hate the 5 minute power down while your browser starts the Acrobat reader, you'll love this extension.

And last but certainly not least, there's the Objection extension, which adds deletion of Local Shared Objects to the Option > Privacy panel. This is a great tool, not only to see who's storing things in your Flash player, but also great for Flash developers testing and debugging their own LSO's.

Those are some of my favorites, feel free to let me know if there's a great one I'm missing.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 27th, 2005 at 10:53 am and is filed under Firefox. 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.