Shawn’s Thoughts

I love Firefox. Works great on the Stinkpad. Works great on the Crapple. Firefox is usually the first application I install after I fire up a machine for the first time, or re-pave one of the existing machines. I find myself using the same set of extensions over and over again, and I wanted to share them for posterity’s sake.. These are my favorite Firefox extensions:

• better gmail. better gmail 2, actually. I’m not a big gmail user (i’m still one of those hotmail wackos. when i do use gmail, i really like the added functionality, especially letting gmail grab the mailto: links.
• better greader. gotta keep plugged in. i hopped over to the Newsgator family for a while, but trying to use different applications on Windows, OSX, and my phone was driving me nuts. Better GReader adds some nice touches to GReader, especially the Preview functionality.
• fireftp. my favorite ftp client. makes updating my site simple - everything can be done inside firefox now.
• greasemonkey. lots of handy scripts available at http://userscripts.org
• firebug. the most powerful developer addin I’ve found. i love this addin - it lets me learn how someone put a site together, modify my own css and see the changes instantly. i can’t say enough good about this addin.
• foxmarks. keeps your bookmarks synced across multiple machines. i’ve found it is also the easiest way to send a link from my mac to my winbox, and vice versa
• del.icio.us bookmarks. for those sites I want to share, i use this addon.
• scribefire. The only free blogging client i’ve found for my mac. it’s a pretty solid blogging client. i still prefer Windows Live Writer, but I haven’t whined to Becky enough to convince her to create a Mac version for me.
• pdf download. for those who spend time wondering if anal retentive is hyphenated. let’s you choose on a file-by-file basis what to do - open, save, etc.

And there’s a couple Mac-specific addins I want to mention:

• System Proxy. Firefox had braindead proxy management. This addin reads proxy settings from the OS, which Firefox should do anyway. Great when I hop back and forth between the office and home. I let MarcoPolo figure out where I am, and this addin makes sure Firefox keeps up with the changes.
• User Agent Switcher. Unfortunately, there are those in the world, most of which work on the same campus I do, who think it is okay to only support IE7. Until they come crawling into the 21st century on their taped knuckles, I user this addin to switch the user agent string. I wish I didn’t need it, and I’m glad this addin makes the chore a lot easier.

Firebug is a godsend to me. Firebug provides one of the easiest ways to see exactly what CSS tags are affecting a specific item in your HTML.  I switch WordPress themes rather often, and it’s always an adventure learning how someone set up their style sheet.  Firebug’s inspect mode lets me point to a specific place on a page, and see all the CSS tags that influence the display.  I can then edit the CSS on the fly, and Firebug will save those edits during the session.  I can see how all my changes affect a page before I choose to upload the updated CSS to my server.