Firefox web developer plugins

Returning to work after the Christmas holidays I was confronted with a brand new, clean install version of Firefox 3.0. Very strange, because I already had said browser/version installed, along with all bookmarks, cookies, plugins and history.

But every cloud has a silver lining. A chance to rid myself of no longer needed cruft, and cut back to the bare essentials. So here is my list of plugins, in no particular order, that make Firefox such a cool tool for any web developer.

• NoScript – makes the web a safer place to browse. Selectively allow scripts and browser plugins to run on individual sites, block the stuff you don’t want, never be click-jacked!
• Foxmarks – synchronise bookmarks between all of your computers. Home, work, mobile – all in sync, all the time.
• Firebug – live editing, debugging and monitoring of CSS, HTML and JavaScript as you browse. Plus network monitoring, JavaScript profiling, DOM exploration. Is there anything this magical tool cannot do?
• Web Developer Toolbar -information and page control at your fingertips. Turn stuff on, turn stuff off, view hidden stuff, measure it, highlight it, analyse it. Beautiful!
• Colorzilla – the latest version of this add-on adds the ability to create colour palletes from any page, on top of it’s already outstanding eyedropper and colour picker. Lots of other features make this an essential tool for working with colour.
• LiveHTTP Headers -View headers and responses as you browse the web. Essential for debugging cookie, server and HTTP transaction information.
• Operator – View and interact with microformat and other semantic data on a web page. Extract contact, location, event, taxanomic details into various applications for storage and/or immediate use.

So there we have it, seven plugins that make light of many web development tasks. No doubt there are others that do the same type of job, but these are the best of breed as far as I’m concerned.

Do you use something different, or have a must have recommendation? Comments are open, feel free to let everyone know what you think.