The Slacker Manager (worth reading) has written a post about how to get the most out of del.icio.us. For those of you who don’t know, del.icio.us is a social bookmarking service where you can quickly and easily post, store, categorize, and search your web bookmarks online. It takes a bit of getting used to (particularly the idea of having non-private bookmarks, since there’s currently no option to keep marks private), but it’s pretty useful, especially when combined with the del.icio.us Firefox extension and the LazySheep bookmarklet.

A movie where that question is asked several times. This made my day.

Big, big exciting day. Firefox 1.5 has launched, a little over a year since Firefox 1.0. That said, go download it, then hit Addons.mozilla.org to check out some of the awesome extensions that are available.

If you’re an extension developer, don’t forget about the Extend Firefox contest. Tons of great prizes, and lots of time left to enter!

Just a reminder that the Extend Firefox contest is well under way, but there’s still lots of time left to create and submit your new or updated extension. Contest rules can be found here.

If you need help getting started, there’s a fair bit of documentation available a the Mozilla Developer Center, and an active IRC channel called “#extdev” on the irc.mozilla.org server.

Lots of great prizes are up for grabs, so now’s a great time to get started!

This is a cute, and useful, article. Install Firefox comes in at #5.

You love your mom, right? Remember all those times she took you to soccer practice? And that time when she was the only one clapping in the audience during your ‘recital’? She’s always been there for you, and this Thanksgiving weekend it is time to give a little love back. Since we are not the sentimental type here at Download Squad (flowers and puppies just don’t do it for us), we thought we’d offer up 10 tips to make mom’s computing experience more enjoyable. So, take a break from the annual long weekend of awkward conversations, bad football games, and watching TV reruns in anticipation of the big feast. It’s time to fix mom’s PC!

Building on yesterday’s list, I’ve found (through reader recommendations) six more web developer extensions that have been updated for Firefox 1.5. The caveat, however, is that I’ve only personally tested one of them (ColorZilla). Descriptions below are taken more-or-less directly from the extensions’ pages.

ColorZilla
Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies. With ColorZilla you can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program. You can Zoom the page you are viewing and measure distances between any two points on the page. The built-in palette browser allows choosing colors from pre-defined color sets and saving the most used colors in custom palettes. DOM spying features allow getting various information about DOM elements quickly and easily. And there’s more…

Console²
Console² lets you display errors filtered by type (Errors, Warnings, Messages), language (JavaScript, CSS, XML) and context (Chrome, Content). Furthermore it provides a simple search box (as seen in the History and Bookmarks sidebars) and some accessibility improvements.

IETab
This extension embeds Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox, letting you see how a page is displayed in IE with a single click.

LiveHTTPHeaders
This extension makes information about HTTP headers available in three ways: by adding a “Headers” tab in the “View Page Info” dialog; by adding an item to the “Tools > Web Development” menu that displays HTTP headers in real time; and by allowing you to request headers and “replay” a URL (beta functionality).

User Agent Switcher
Adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser.

Quick Locale Switcher
Quickly change and apply a different general.useragent.locale preference from the tools menu.

Someone asked about this in the comments on my previous post, so I thought I’d drop the link here. There is a version of Venkman that (apparently) works with Firefox 1.5. You can find it here. Caveat: I haven’t tested this myself, but other folks have said it works.

Update: mispaste on that URL. Should work now.

I recently tested all of the following extensions on Firefox 1.5rc3 and OS X. Your mileage may vary.

Web Developer extension
This extension has long been a mainstay for web developers, and I’m extremely happy that it’s being actively updated to work with the latest Firefox releases. When installed, the Web Developer extension adds a toolbar that gives you quick and easy access to a huge number of useful utilities, ranging from viewing and editing CSS through one-click CSS, HTML, and Section 508 validation. It is absolutely indespensible for serious web development work.

View Source With
The ViewSourceWith extension allows you to specify any external application with which to view the source of a web page. If you’re not a fan of the standard View Source system in Firefox, this extension gives you the freedom to use the application of your choice.

Measure It
If you’ve ever needed to know exactly how many pixels it is from point A to point B on a web page, Measure It is here to save the day. This little extension allows you to “pull” a ruler from any point to any other point within the browser window to get precise pixel measurements for height and width. It’s turned on and off with a simple click in the bottom left-hand corner of the browser. Very handy for those pixel-perfect layouts.

View Rendered Source Chart
This is easily one of my favourite new-to-me extension discoveries. View Rendered Source Chart creates a beautifully formatted and shaded rendering of your page source (including dynamically-generated source, static source, and JavaScript output) that clearly and cleanly displays the nested elements. I’d say this is a must-have extension for developing today’s complex page structures.

Link Checker
Fast, simple, visual link checker. This is an absolute godsend of an extension for maintaining web pages and fending off the nefarious demons of link-rot.

UrlParams
Essential for testing and debugging form submissions or other URLs that contain a number of name-value pairs, this extension stays continually updated while you surf. In a nicely designed and compact sidebar, the extension displays the bare URL (without parameters), the referring URL, GET and POST values, the ability to add more name/value pairs to a set, and the option to submit or resubmit (in current window or new tab) the URL values.

Screen Grab
Requiring Java (JVM), you can take full “screen shots” of entire web pages with this extension. Unlike normal screen shots that only capture what’s displayed within the confines of the browser window, Screen Grab will capture an image of the whole page from top to bottom.

EditCSS
While still imperfect, EditCSS is a quick and easy way to view and play with the CSS files for many pages. The CSS file is loaded into an editable area in the sidebar, and the main window is dynamically updated to instantly show the results of your changes and additions. This is a handy extension for CSS debugging and experimentation.

View Cookies
Adding a new tab in the “Page Info” dialog (accessible on any page via the right-click context menu), View Cookies displays all of the cookies and cookie values associated with a page. This is an obvious boon for tracking and debugging cookies during development.

There are many other incredibly useful web developer extensions out there, but not all are updated to work with the latest releases of Firefox at this point. I’ll update my list and do another post like this after Firefox 1.5 is released. If you know of other web developer extensions that are updated for Firefox 1.5, leave a comment here.

Shaver very helpfully pointed me towards Drew Willcoxon’s Bookmark Tags extension this morning. Despite having to futz with hacking the maxVersion so it would install on Firefox 1.5 RC3, it seems to be working nicely.

As far as I can tell, the extension itself doesn’t seem to introduce any revolutionary technology, it simply takes advantage of the existing Firefox bookmarking system, and makes it much, much easier to keep your bookmarks organized.

After installation, the extension adds two items to the Bookmarks menu, adds some UI elements to the Add Bookmark dialog, and adds a new “Tag Browser” system.

Bookmarks Menu

Add Bookmark Dialog

The premise (as I understand it) is simply that adding a “tag” to a bookmarked URL places a copy or reference to that URL in a folder of that name. Multiple tags places the URL in multiple folders. Adding a tag to the system adds a folder of that name in your bookmarks. The Tag Browser streamlines the process of tagging existing bookmarks, as well as browsing through the tagged items. Double-clicking a bookmark in the Tag Browser opens that URL in the main Firefox window.

Tag Browser (click for fullsize version)

Bookmarking existing URLs is very easy when you’re in the Tag Browser — you can navigate through existing lists and folders of bookmarks, then just right-click on the bookmark (or folder, if you want to batch-tag all items it contains), and select Properties.

Bookmark Properties dialog

Given that the extension is based off the existing bookmark system, it does suffer from some of its associated limitations. For example, my Bookmarks menu, when displaying the tag folders, is unmanageably long since I added several dozen tags (and, therefore, folders) to it this morning. Also, the Bookmark sidebar search doesn’t seem to include folder names in the results, which is a bit of a pain in the butt. Alas.

Bookmark Sidebar

The only feature I think is really missing right now is the ability to search tags and bookmarks in the Tab Browser, but I get the feeling that might be sort of complicated. Not being an extension developer, I really have no idea :)

Anyhow, kudos to Drew. This extension has helped me efficiently deal with the unbelieveable mess my bookmarks had become over the past couple of years.