5 Must-Have Firefox Add-ons for Web Development & QA

These add-ons are so useful that I cannot work for a single day without them and so I would suspect most web developers and QA Engineers. These plugins / add-ons makes Firefox a formidable web development and testing platform. They are:

1. Selenium IDE - Selenium IDE is an integrated development environment for Selenium tests. It is implemented as a Firefox extension, and allows you to record, edit, and debug tests. It is an extremely useful tool for automating functional and regression testing. Read the 5 minute Guide to Selenium IDE for details.

Selenium IDE is disabled by default in Firefox 3 but you can download the updated version from their website which works with Firefox 3.

2. Firebug - Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. It is a must-have tool for any web developer. FireBug is top class web application debugger, the only one you will ever need.

FireBug is disabled by default in Firefox 3 but you can download the updated version from their website which works with Firefox 3.

3. Live HTTP Headers - It allows you to view and analyze HTTP headers (requests and responses) in real-time with several useful niceties like filtering built-in. This is a small but extremely useful too to debug web applications. It gives a clear insight into AJAX requests and responses which often goes on behind the scenes in any modern Web 2.0 website.

4. MeasureIt - A small Firefox plugin to measure the dimension of any items on a web page in pixels.

MeasureIt is disabled by default in Firefox 3 but you can download the updated version from their website which works with Firefox 3.

5. YSlow - YSlow, a Yahoo product, analyzes web pages and tells you why they’re slow based on the rules for high performance web sites. YSlow is a Firefox add-on integrated with the popular Firebug web development tool. YSlow gives you:

• Performance report card
• HTTP/HTML summary
• List of components in the page
• Tools including JSLint

YSlow completes FireBug functionality to make Firefox an unbeatable web development tool.

What are your favorite Firefox Add-ons for web development & QA?