Article in Web Design

Firefox supports thousands of extensions, but some are a lot better than others, especially for web developers and SEOs. Here are a list of my 10 favorites -- your list may vary (and I'd love to hear your comments).

1. Firebug is a tool that allows you to edit and debug your code, including CSS, HTML, and Javascript. It's a great tool for the beginner to advanced user to learn and troubleshoot code without going to an external editor. Firebug opens up within the browser. One of my favorite parts of Firebug, however, is the fact that it can show you what external links are causing your website to load slowly.

2. SearchStatus is a toolbar extension for Firefox that lets you get information about websites you're accessing. Among its features are PageRank, Alexa and Compete Rankings, Whois information at the click of a button, robots.txt data, backward links, highlighted keywords, and more. It also highlights nofollow links which becomes exceptionally helpful when looking at directories, ads, and other pages.

3. IE Tab lets you view your website in IE without actually having to open Internet Explorer. It creates a brand new tab within Firefox with all IE elements.

4. Web Developer, like Firebug, lets you manage and modify code easily within the browser. Edit HTML or CSS and watch the changes appear live without having to upload to FTP.

5. SEO for Firefox by Aaron Wall allows you to view competitive information about a specific niche or market. The tool pulls in data from a variety of sources and puts them directly in the search results.

6. ShowIP puts the IP address of any website directly in the Firefox status bar. You no longer have to do an nslookup on any particular domain name because it's right there. This is also pretty helpful if you're trying to see which Google datacenter you're querying from.

7. Pearl Crescent Page Saver generates PNG images of a web page that you have open -- whether the visible portion or the entire page. I can't tell you how many times I've used this tool to save screenshots and troubleshoot problems, but it's an incredible lifesaver.

8. Colorzilla. Ever wanted to know what color is used on a particular webpage without creating a screenshot and opening Photoshop to generate the hexadecimal code for the color? ColorZilla is a small extension built into the bottom left hand corner of your Firefox installation. Activate it by clicking on the eyedropper tool and hover over the color to get an accurate and immediate RGB color code.

9. MeasureIt makes it easy to find out the height and width of any portion of a website in case you're inserting images or gauging how much screen real estate is needed on any website. While not used much, I find it indespensible when I actually do need it.

10. Rank Checker lets you get the current ranks of any website within Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft and allows you to save the results to a CSV file. It's a relatively new offering from Aaron Wall and is pretty darn good at what it does.

What are your favorite Firefox tools as web developers and aspiring SEOs?