Now, don’t get me wrong – it does still display the flag as I mentioned above, but there are so many other neat features this add-on delivers that I never knew about until I tried it.  Some of these include:

• Site safety and malware checks
• Finding similar sites and reviews
• Automatic translation to your language
• SEO and web development research
• Diagnostics like pings and traceroutes
• Whois and DNS information
• Page code validation
• Quick URL shortening
• Copying a server’s IP address or other info
• or you can create your own custom actions!

If you looked over this add-on before because you thought you could probably live without knowing where a server is located – please give it another shot.  It delivers much more than you would ever think from an add-on that is based around such a simple idea.

You can pick up FlagFox for Firefox from the Firefox Add-ons website.

Many web designers and search engine optimizers will tell you that it is important to keep a high text to code ratio when developing a web site.  I have just stumbled upon an add-on that will help you do that very task.  The Text to Code Ratio add-on will provide you a simple percentage based score at the bottom of your Firefox browsing window to tell you what your text to code ratio is.

Here is a little more about this Firefox add-on from the developer:

This add-on can be used to determine the text to code ratio of any given page. It will automatically fire when you select a new tab, although this option can be disabled and will also run when clicked. On hovering of the status bar text for the add-on it will bring up further information about the text to code ratio on the page as well as specific error information if a page cannot be checked for whatever reason.

As mentioned before, this will help you determine when or if you need to increase the ammount of text on a page, or maybe cut back on some of the web site code you have been using.

You can pick up the Text to Code Ratio add-on for free on the Firefox Add-ons web site.

One big complaint about search engines is they are all rather vanilla with their visual representation.  Wouldn’t it be better if you could color code things a ‘bit more?  One Greasemonkey script that does a great job at this is Colorful Search.

Once you install this user script, it will generate a random light background color for Bing, Yahoo and Google.  Colors are decided and grouped together based on the domain name they come from.  So you can quickly see that if Firefox Facts results are light blue, and you see 7 out of the 10 results are light blue, they all came from here.  It makes the visual representation much more useable. 

Want to color code your own search engine results? You can pick up Colorful Search from userscripts.org.

By simply right-clicking on any page you can find out the following:

• Yahoo Site Explorer Backlinks & Index
• Google Backlinks, Index, Cache
• Archive.org
• Bing Index
• Delicious saves for a domain.
• Highlighting of NoFollow links.
• Whois Info
• and much more!

You can get more information about yExplore 2 via TwisterMC.com or the Firefox Add-ons web site. It never hurts to do your homework when it comes to looking up more information about web site links or domains out there, and the yExplore 2 extension for Firefox makes that task a whole lot easier.

For more web development add-ons for Firefox, be sure to check out my hand-picked selection of the 10 best tools out there.

Any of these add-ons would be great to add to your own proverbial web designer’s toolbelt.

• ColorZilla – This advanced eyedropper and color picker will help you find out exactly what color is being used on somebody else’s web site, so you can use it on your own.
• 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.
• FireFTP – Looking for an FTP client you can reach from inside of Firefox?  FireFTP is a free, secure, cross platform FTP client built into and for Firefox.
• IE Tab – Quickly embed Internet Explorer into an open tab of Firefox, for cross browser web site checking and testing.
• Picnik – Get quick access to your own online image editor with this add-on.  It adds a menu option to import images right into the Picnik online image editor.
• Stylish – This add-on is often considered for web site tweakers, however it can also be used to add or remove CSS and design elements on the fly, without even having to login to your web site.
• Web Developer Toolbar – By far, the king of the web development Firefox extensions.  It adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.
• User Agent Switcher – Another good one to have for cross browser testing.  It adds a menu to the toolbar so you can quickly change the user agent of the browser.
• FireShot – Take a screenshot and also add notes to it.  If you are a designer, wanting to highlight key features of a design to a client, there is no better Firefox add-on out there to do just that.
• SeoQuake – Aimed at the search engine optimization crowd, this extension will help webmasters deal with the promotion side of their domains.

What Firefox add-ons and services help you get the job done when it comes to web design?  Drop in a comment, and give me your own “best of” suggestions.

Welcome Digg.com Visitors! Appreciate you stopping in to check out the list. If you have any other suggestions for web developer Firefox add-ons, please add them to the comments, and I’ll be putting out a “reader-inspired” version of the list soon!

While your here, remember to subscribe to the RSS feed to get all of our updated delivered to your favorite feed reader. You can also get our posts delivered to your e-mail inbox once a day, so you never miss another Firefox tool, add-on, theme or tutorial!

Rankquest SEO(Search Engine Optimization) Toolbar provides you quick access to more than 30 intuitive SEO tools. Once you download and install the SEO Toolbar you are only one or two clicks away from carrying out most of your day to day SEO operations.

+ Learn More About and Install the RankQuest SEO Toolbar!

+ Learn More About and Install the SEOQuake Extension!

Want to know why Google or Yahoo! ranks pages? If so this is the Firefox extension for you. SEO for Firefox pulls in many useful marketing data points to make it easy get a more holistic view of the competitive landscape of a market right from the search results.

[Learn More About SEO for Firefox!]

[Learn More About the Niche Watch Tool!]

[Learn More About SEO Tools!]