Firefox is a great browser for SEOs and web developers. Due to the fact it is open source, many developers have written plugins and add-ons for the software to do a huge variety of tasks.
Here is my list of the top 10 plugins I use regularly:
- Web Developer Toolbar – essential for web designers and developers
- ColorZilla – great tool for getting hex and RGB numbers for colours from graphics
- Google Toolbar – search Google web, images, news etc. Also gives link to cached page, and backward links
- SEO for Firefox – from SEOBook, gives instant backlink data from a number of sources
- IE Tab – embeds IE into Firefox, allowing for easy comparison of site designs between the two
- SEOpen – useful backlink and pages indexed check, as well as server headers, robots.txt and whois lookup
- Google Icon – simple plugin that adds favicons to Google results. It makes searching through the SERPs that little bit easier!
- SearchStatus – another useful tool with backlink, Archive.org and whois checks
- Professor X – displays a page’s head information without viewing the source code
- Screengrab – very useful tool for capturing whole pages as an image
Other useful plugins:
- HTML Validator – adds HTML validation to the browser
- ListZilla – another simple but useful tool, this one outputs all your plugins as HTML, allowing you to keep a backup (or indeed write interesting posts about all the plugins you have!)
- Live HTTP Headers – adds a “Headers” tab to the View Page Info menu
- Live PageRank – adds a little green bar to the bottom of your browser
- PDF Download – helps with PDF download management
- Sage – simple RSS and ATOM reader
- Server Spy – gives info about what type of server a site is hosted on
- Show IP – shows IP address of current page
- Lynx Viewer – shows what the current page would look like in Lynx, a text-mode browser