Back in the 90’s I was browsing the Internet with either Netscape or Internet Explorer, but as soon as I found out there was an alternative I made the switch and have been a loyal Firefox user ever since (occasionally Opera as well). Not that the other browsers are terrible, but Firefox has always felt safer, faster and more up-to-date when it comes to web standards and correct page rendering.

When surfing with Firefox less space are wasted on menu bars and it is extremely customizable due to the huge amount of available plugins/extensions made over the years. In my job as a web designer / developer there’s a few which stand out as VERY useful…

My favourite extensions at the moment are:

1. Firefox dictionaries - spell checkers
2. Measureit - Draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage.
3. HTML Validator - HTML Validator is a Mozilla extension that adds HTML validation inside Firefox and Mozilla. The number of errors of a HTML page is seen on the form of an icon in the status bar when browsing.
4. ColorZilla - Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies.

I’ll keep updating the list as I stumble across more usuful stuff.

I still have the other browsers installed as I need to check that pages look okay witin all of them, which most of the time results in the creation of IE specific stylesheets. Since around 2000 IE has grown to be the biggest enemy any designer faces during the creation process of a website, I’ll post on that subject later.

These days my colleagues normally tells me that if it looks fine in IE “as well” - it’s ready.