The meat and potatoes behind this Firefox extension are pretty simple.  Once installed, you can double-click on any unlinked URL – then Firefox loads it up in the browser.  You no longer need to copy and paste the website URL into the address bar or do anything else to get to that unlinked address.  You just double click it.

So now, right from within Firefox you can fix somebody else’s bad website coding with one simple add-on.  You can pick up Text link at the Firefox Add-ons website.

Want to export your bookmarks to a .html file?  You can in Firefox with just a few clicks of the mouse.  This can come in handy when it comes to syncing your bookmarks with another browser, backing up or moving from PC to PC.  Mozilla has made the import and backup options in Firefox brain dead simple.

First, you will want to go to Bookmarks and then Organize Bookmarks from within the Firefox Menu toolbar.  That will open up the Bookmark Library.  From within there, click on Import and Backup and then Export HTML…

When you do, you will get a kind of “save this file as…” screen pop-up where the default name of the exported file will be bookmarks.html.  Select the location you wish to save the file to, and then hit the Save button.

There you have it.  You now have a picture perfect backup of your Firefox bookmarks.  Hope this basic tutorial comes in handy – and if you have any other bookmark exporting tips you would like to share – be sure to do so in the comments.

Do you remember Jetpack?

It is the Mozilla Labs project that makes the add-on building process easier, mixing elements of HTML, CSS and JavaScript.  Mozilla has released an awesome Jetpack Gallery, which serves as a community for Jetpack developers and add-on users.

Much like the Firefox Add-ons site, you have featured add-ons for Jetpack, ratings, and user reviews.  It does a good job at giving you a summary of what each add-on is all about and looks like.

Here are some of my favorite Jetpack add-ons I have found:

• Thumbtabs – This jetpack displays your tabs and theirs thumbnails in Jetpack’s Slidebar.
• Jetstatus – Jetstatus is a Twitter client for Jetpack. It polls the service for new updates and displays popup notifications for every entry in the friends timeline.
• GTranslatifier – To translate a web page into your language, just click on the Google Translate icon in your status bar.
• Image Editor – Let’s you use the Pixlr image editor to edit any image you find on the web. Simply right-click an image, select “Edit Image”, and you’re editing away.

Here are a couple of other places to get Jetpacks:

• Jetpacks in the Wild – Mozilla Wiki
• Recent Jetpacks – UserScripts.org

I am happy to see that Jetpack development is alive and well.  It really brings new and interesting ways to change your own Firefox installation or interact with your favorite web sites. The Jetpack Gallery is well worth diving into.

One thing is for sure, with the correctly equipped Firefox browser, you too can become a better web designer or developer. How so? Well, Firefox has some really great tools for both of these jobs. Finding the one that doe the best job, is another job all on it’s own.

Firefox has a lot of web development add-ons you can use, however these are the best of the best at what they do.

• Console² – Console² (pronounced Console Squared or Console Two) replaces the JavaScript Console with what could be the next generation Error Console. From v0.5 includes the Console Filter extension previously available separately from the Console² website.
• User Agent Switcher – The User Agent Switcher extension adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser.
• Firebug – Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.
• MeasureIt – Draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage.
• FoxyProxy – FoxyProxy is an advanced proxy management tool that completely replaces Firefox’s limited proxying capabilities. It offers more features than SwitchProxy, ProxyButton, QuickProxy, xyzproxy, ProxyTex, TorButton, etc.
• FirePHP – FirePHP enables you to log to your Firebug Console using a simple PHP method call. You must have Firebug installed and the “Net” panel enabled to use this extension.
• ColorZilla – Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies. Perfect color picker tool for Firefox.
• Stylish – Perfect for testing those tiny CSS tweaks, you can also restyle the rest of the web too with this unique user styles manager.
• View Source Chart – Graphically displays HTML tag boundaries, nesting tag orders, structure and hierarchy. In other words, it makes it all pretty looking.
• Web Developer – The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.

Disagree or have your own suggestion for the perfect web designer or web development add-on that should be on this list? Drop in a comment and let us know. We’d love to hear your feedback!

To use, all you need to do is right-click on one of the tabs, and select URL Lister.  Next, you will see a box (like the one above) that will give you URLs (one per line) for each tab you have open.  This makes it super easy to copy and save the links for later. You also have the choice to save the list as plain text URLs, a HTML coded list (for use in a web page), or a Linked List, which would give you the list of links with both HTML code around them an the traditional “list” HTML tags too. 

This extension will also open a number of links.  So if you have a list of links you need to open in bulk, paste them into the text box, and hit the “OK” button. After doing so, you should have each URL open up in its own tab.

You can grab the URL Lister add-on at the Firefox Add-ons site or learn more about it at the author’s official site.  If you love lists and links, you will love this browser link lister.

This video does a great job at giving you a basic walk-though of what Jetpack development looks like thus far:

Mozilla Labs Jetpack – Intro & Tutorial from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Overall, I am really excited about this!  I always love to tweak away at Firefox using tools like Greasemonkey and Stylish (which Jetpack reminds me of, in a sense of being simple ways to extend the browser).

Word of warning, this is an extremely early release of the software, that is still being designed and developed.  This version that is out now is pretty much just for the developers and testers who want to start getting their hands dirty.

Grab Jetpack, and play around with it yourself.  It might not be for everybody, however should really help to inspire those of us who like to tweak around with our browser to make it work for us.

There are eight add-ons for Firefox that do this job very well.  The only problem is that there is not that much difference between them.

• Text Link
• Right-Click-Link
• Plain Text Links
• Direct Link
• Plain Text to Link
• CoLT
• URL Link
• Text2Link

Know of a number nine I might have missed?  I wouldn’t be surprised.  This seems like a very popular idea to do for a Firefox extension for some reason.  Since today is my birthday, just consider these eight gems your present from me.

View Source Chart – This extension does one job and does it well. It draws colored boxes around different source codes to help you read the information better. Instead of black and white confusing stuff – it’s all colored man. Look at all the pretty colors. Far out!

FireShot – This screen grabbing extension does the basics. It takes pictures of the web page your looking at. Unlike other extensions that do this job, this plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify captures and insert text and graphical annotations.

Palette Grabber – This one is really new (at least to me). It creates a color palette for Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, GIMP, Flash, or OS X based on the current page.

What alternative web development extensions are in your toolkit?

Perform multiple validations and take screen shots in one go. This 5-in-1 validator works with external, internal, or local web pages using the Total Validator service or local copy of the Pro desktop tool… Provides true HTML validation (HTML 2.0 to XHTML 1.1) using the official DTDs, plus added attribute checking. So you no longer have to put up with the limitations of the W3C validator (no type checking) and tools like HTML Tidy which interpret the standards incorrectly (they don’t use the official DTDs).

For more information on and about the Total Validator make sure you check out and bookmark their web site TotalValidator.com.

+ Download and Install the PDF Download Extension for Firefox!