Best Firefox Extensions (revisited)

It has been over a year since I posted my first reviews of Firefox extensions. Here is an update on some of my favorite Firefox extensions.

Web Developer Toolbar

Of course, the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar is still at the top of the list. Imitated by many other browsers, the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar has never been matched. It is a must have for all web developers.

Firefox Session Saver Extension

The Firefox Session Saver Extension is invaluable. It saves your browsing session, even if your browser crashes. If you are in the middle of reading 25 tabs and have to shut your computer off, just close the browser without worrying. The next time you start Firefox, your tabs will open up to the same pages that you left them on.

UndoCloseTab Extension

I hate it when I close a Firefox tab and can't get it back. The Undo Close Tab extension allows you to open up any tabs that you might have accidentally closed. The fastest way to use it is to right click on a web page and press the letter "u" (for undo close tab). The last closed tab will then reopen in the same place that it was before.

ScreenGrab Extension

ScreenGrab can take screenshots of web pages, even when they stretch beyond the visible space in the browser. This extension requires Java. The following web page was too long to capture in a regular screenshot, but it was easy with the Firefox ScreenGrab extension:

Snapper Extension

UPDATE: the ScreenGrab Extension has been improved to include the features of Snapper. I recommend using ScreenGrab instead of the Snapper extension

Sometimes the ScreenGrab extension is more than you need. To quickly capture a screenshot of just a portion of a web page, use the Snapper Firefox Extension. Snapper is a little fish that sits on the Firefox status bar. Just click the fish and he will open his mouth. Drag the mouse over a portion of a web page. The fish will close his mouth when the screenshot is ready. The only drawback of the Snapper extension is that it sometimes leaves red lines around some of the screenshots.

AspellFox Extension

The Aspellfox extension lets you spellcheck web forms before you submit them.

HTML Validator Extension

The HTML Validator Firefox Extension is another good one that I've covered in detail recently. It lets you know when there are HTML errors on a page, and it can even fix the errors for you with HTML Tidy — all from within Firefox.

LiveHTTPheaders Extension to View Headers in Firefox

The LiveHTTPheaders extension lets you view all headers sent to and from the browser. You can view a web page's header with the Web Developer Toolbar, but the LiveHTTPheaders has additional functionality.

X-ray Firefox Extension

X-ray is a great Firefox extension that allows you to see the HTML on a web page. The is very useful for a quick analysis of web pages that you come across on the Web. An example is shown below.

Firefox NoScript Extension

The NoScript extension is another Firefox extension that I now consider essential. It automatically blocks JavaScript on web sites, and lets you allow JavaScript on a case by case basis. In the image below, you can see the yellow warning bar at the bottom of Firefox warning that JavaScript is being blocked. The menu on the bottom right is showing a list of domains that are trying to run JavaScript on that page. Each domain has to be given permission before Firefox will allow it to run scripts. JavaScript is a serious privacy risk, and the NoScript extension should be installed on every Firefox browser.

Firefox RSS Panel Extension

The RSS Panel extension for Firefox lets you preview RSS feeds on a web page. When you load a page that contains an RSS feed, Firefox will show the orange RSS Panel in the top left of the screen like this:

When you open the panel, you can see a list of the latest articles on the web site from the RSS feed, as shown below:

Adblock Extension

Once you use the Adblock extension you will not want to browse without it. Adblock can be trained to remove the animated ads that you see on many web pages — the ones that say "punch [insert famous person here] in the face for a free iPod", or even worse, the animated talking characters on some web pages.

Firefox User Agent Switcher

The Firefox User Agent Switcher allows you to send a different user agent. So if a web site claims not to work with Firefox, you can set the user agent to another browser and try again. Usually it will work if you change the user agent.

Bookmark Duplicate Detector

The Bookmark Duplicate Detector lets you know if you have duplicate bookmarks. If you try to bookmark the same page twice, it will warn you that the bookmark is already in your bookmarks.

Firefox Sage Extension

The Sage Extension is a lightweight RSS reader that opens in a Firefox sidebar. I've mentioned it about a year ago on the RSS extensions for Firefox page, but want to also include it in the newer list. A list of RSS feeds is in the sidebar on the left, and the article excerpts are in the main Firefox window below:

Customize Google Extension

The Customize Google Extension adds several useful features to Firefox. My two favorite features of this extension are the additional privacy that it provides by anonymizing the Google Cookie, and the way it provides links on the Google search results pages to search other search engines with just on click. It inserts JavaScript on every Google search page that links to other search engines, shown by the red arrow below:

Chatzilla Firefox Extension

I covered Chatzilla in depth about a year ago. It's an IRC client that runs inside of Firefox. It's great for when you need to get onto IRC but don't have an IRC client installed (e.g., on Windows, or running a mini-Linux distro). Here is Chatzilla running on Ubuntu:

MeasureIt Extension

The MeasureIt extension lets you measure regions of the web page. It's very useful for design layout.

Colorzilla Extension

Use Colorzilla to identify colors on a web page and generate color palettes for your web page designs.

Scrapbook Firefox Extension

Scrapbook is an extension that lets you save web pages for offline viewing. In the following image, I'm saving the emacs PDF manual in my Firefox Scrapbook for offline viewing.

DevBoi Extension (Ruby on Rails, PHP, HTML, etc.)

I mentioned the DevBoi Firefox Extension a few days ago. It allows easy access to the documentation for several languages, including Ruby (and Rails), PHP, JavaScript, and more...

Related Posts

• Firefox Tips and Tricks
• Firefox Cheat Sheet
• Web Developer Toolbar Tutorial
• Firefox Extensions for Web Design
• More Firefox Extensions for Power Users
• 10 Firefox Super-Extensions
• Official Firefox Web Site

If you know of other good Firefox extensions, leave a comment below...