I have seen a number of great articles on the web with people’s preferred Firefox addons. I agree with some them and have also found some new ones to play with. So to return the favour, so to speak, I am going to release what i think are the most useful Firefox addons in regard to web development and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). An additional bonus is that ‘Top 10’s’ always make good link bait in SEO (there’s a tip for you SEOs and blog writers!). This list is written in no particular order so lets start…

1) ‘All in One SideBar‘ this, and it has to be said is my favorite, allows you to access and manage all your Firefox addons through a side bar which is incorporated in to your browser. This is real over kill if you are a normal web user, but for a developer it isn’t half handy. Highly recommended, therefore instead of having a link to the Firefox page, here is the link for the developers’ site to show my support. http://firefox.exxile.net/aios/index.php

2) ‘Web developer tool bar‘, I prefer this to the ever popular firebug, which i also have installed, although it doesn’t have any functions to debug javascript, it is a great tool for development and tests CSS on the fly. Keys to remember after installing are “ctrl shift f ” and “ctrl shift e”. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60

3) ‘IE Tab‘ if you are a developer, you should already be using this as it allows you to switch to what your site looks like in IE while being in your Firefox browser. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419 As for a test in later versions of IE, I recommend Multiple IE. http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE

4) ‘Grease Monkey‘ this allows you to alter the way a given web page is displayed by adding bits of javascript.https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/748 For instance, you can get a script for Grease Monkey that puts numbers next to your search results in Google. From http://www.addedbytes.com/tools/ Very useful for quick SEO queries.

5) ‘Live HTTP Headers‘ for advanced SEOs/developers, lets you see the header request in regards to web 2.0 technologies. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3829

6) ‘Tabs open‘ relatively does what it says on the tin. It is very useful when you have got as many tabs open as I have! https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1956

7) ‘Delicious Bookmark’ because like many developers I use mutliple computers at home and at work. I uses Delicious so that I can easily access my bookmarks anywhere. Delicious Bookmark for Firefox, intergrates the bookmarks into Firefox so that I can quickly add favorites to my Delicious account. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3615 To use this tool, you will need a
Delicious account. https://secure.delicious.com/register

8 ) ‘ColorZilla‘ allows you to select a color from a given webpage and gives you it’s hex value. Great for design. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/271

9) ‘GA?’ This is a nice little SEO tool that allows you to see if Google Analytics is installed on a given site by a nicely colored icon in the bottom right of the screen. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5631

10) And finally, the ‘Smart Digg Button‘ this allows you to Digg articles like this straight into your Digg account.https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4878

All that is left to say is a massive thankyou to the developer of all the Firefox addons and keep up the good work, Firefox rocks ! If you think that you known of any better addons that I have missed, feel free to email me or leave a comment so other users can see what is available.

For several years, Mozilla’s Firefox has been steadily gaining ground on its more established rival Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Despite the fact that its development is entirely open-sourced, the project has consistently introduced innovative ways to improve the safety and functionality of the browser that you use to surf the internet.

These positive changes have given Mozilla a platform to develop its browser further and its popularity continues to increase. The Firefox browser is downloaded over 500,000 times a day and the project currently enjoys around 12% of the market share. So why should you choose Mozilla Firefox over its more established rival. Quite simply, it is a better browser.

Due to the popularity of the Firefox browser, Microsoft sought to combat this in its latest version of Internet Explorer by including some of Firefox’s innovations such as tabbed browsing, an integrated search engine and a built in pop-up blocker. Nonetheless, Firefox still has many more benefits and Microsoft has as yet not built a browser that matches it.

So here are seven reasons why you should choose Firefox instead of Internet Explorer.

Firefox is a faster browser: Studies show that the internet explorer browser does not load a page quicker then Firefox. The latter uses fewer resources and can be tweaked to make the best use of the computer’s capabilities.

Firefox is a safer browser: Despite the many improvements made in the latest version of Internet Explorer (version 7), there are still many security issues related to the browser. Firefox does not use Active X, which can easily be manipulated to spread viruses and spyware. Although Firefox is not completely safe, its track record demonstrates that its developers consider browser security as paramount.

Firefox makes it easier to manage downloads: The Firefox download manager is great because not only does it organize the download information in a single place but you can also pause the download and start it again at a later convenient time.

Firefox is fully customizable: Because Firefox is open source, the browser is capable of being completely flexible. You can change the theme of the browser, design and attach plug-ins that you choose and you can block images. The plug-ins available are great. You can add spell checkers, translators and many other useful applications.

Firefox enables you to clear your data easily: Unlike Internet Explorer, the Firefox browser allows you to easily delete all of your private data by pressing one single button. Alternatively, the Internet Explorer browser requires you to manual select cookies, temporary internet files and history in order to clear the data. If you have been using the browser for a long period without clearing it then this can be a cumbersome task.

Firefox gives you comprehensive page data: There is a cool tool built in to Mozilla Firefox that allows you to bring up the data about the current website that you are visiting. You can visit the links that are present, the date the page was last modified and other interesting information. Firefox will also allow you to view the source code for the website. This is great for web developers.

Firefox allows you to block images: Should you visit a site that has lots of images on it, for example adverts then Firefox allows you to block any images specific to that site. This is great as it improves the speed that it takes for the website to load. Internet Explorer does not have this functionality.

How do I center a CSS Div Horizontally? This is a question I hear from my readers in both emails, and comments somewhat frequently. There are already at least 10 (probably more like 100) other websites that tell you how to do this, but the question still comes up.

So being that I am such a nice guy, I figured I would write a blog post about the subject instead of just answering emails, and comments all day.

The code to center a div horizontally is really simple. It should be noted that you MUST have a fixed width div for this to work.

#div-container {
width:800px;
margin: 0 auto;
}

The margin CSS values I used above were written in CSS Shorthand, but you could also write the code without shorthand, in which case the code would look like this:

#div-container {
width:800px;
margin: 0 auto 0 auto;
}

Now just insert a DIV into your html with the ID  given a value of div-container like is shown in the example below.

<div id=”div-container”>
Place your newly centered div’s content here
</div>

So that’s the long and short of it. Pretty simple and upfront. Hopefully I won’t get any more emails about this, but as always feel free to email or comment if you have any questions or comments.

Firefox has been, and will always be my favorite web browser. The developers of this amazing program never cease to amaze me. And although the bare bones fresh install of Firefox is great as it is, there is nothing wrong with making great even greater.

So in this post I will be listing some of the best plug-ins, tips, tricks, and hacks to make your browsing as powerful as it can be.

As always, this will be an ever expanding list. Check back frequently!
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As a web designer I encounter all sorts of road blocks that although small, really start to add up to wasted time that I’m not getting paid enough for. The Web Developer plug for Firefox built by Chris Pederick has completely dissolved all those road blocks to make my life a whole lot easier.

Read on to get a generalized summary, review, and small tutorial on this quite amazing incredibly powerful tool. (more…)

From the first day I discovered Mozilla Firefox I was greatfull to the internet gods. I jumped on board and never looked back at the scourge of the internet, Internet Explorer. As far as I’m concerned they don’t even deserve a link back from my site.
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