Speed up your Web development using the Firefox Web Developer Extension

As a web developer, we always look for tools which can reduce development time because it’s very challenging to develop things in a short time which can run smoothly on all browsers. If you’re fresher, then things can be too complicate for you to manage all without knowing web development tools. In this article, I have listed some practical, everyday uses of the Firefox Web Developer extension to improve your web-building methods. This Web Developer extension adds various web developer tools to your Firefox browser. Using these tools, you can manage your images, CSS, Forms. Also you can troubleshoot, edit, and debug your web projects without ever clicking away from Firefox.

Get Page Objects details quickly with the Ruler Tool

We often have to copy and paste the screenshot onto Photoshop to know the dimension of a particular page object with the select tool. But Firefox developer extension provides with the Ruler Tool (can enable it via Miscellaneous > Display Ruler) which can speedily size-up objects inside the web browser. it’s a amazing tool with outline information options such as Information > Display Div Order option or Information > Display Block Size option, allowing you to detect the amount of padding and margin between elements.

Change Running HTML without changing original web files

Sometimes we have to do upload changes without testing server. In this case we are not sure about output, Firefox provides very handy tool to edit running html by going through (Miscellaneous > Edit HTML). Here is example how I was able to change DZone.

Original html Page:

Changed html Page:

Check your web pages look on specific web browser

Currently most of people access website through mobile devices. So it becomes necessary to determine whether your pages are rendering correctly on all device screens. You can easily check screens rendering through (Resize > View Responsive Layout). This surely you from purchasing costly mobile devices with data plan only just for cross-browser checking.

Populate web form fields

Form tool (Form > Populate Form Fields) provides functionality to fill your web form automatically. it’s helpful when you’re testing a page with web form and needs to fill form values repeatedly.

In the example below, you can see that it populates web forms very intelligently:

Display CSS Style Information

When working with CMS website, we have to handle large css. In this case it’s very time consuming to find css style of a particular container. Firefox developer tools provide easy way to do this. Just go through the ( CSS > Display Style Information) and see the exact css style.

View Topographic information

This tool displays objects state. Just use (Information > View Topographic information) which give you a visual representation of the depths of the page elements, where darker shades are lower than lighter shades of gray.

View JavaScript and CSS source code

If you want to view complete JavaScript and CSS source code, go through the (Information > View JavaScript) and (CSS > View CSS) options. It will instantly display all the JavaScript and CSS in a new browser tab.

Display Image Paths with Image size

During theme customization, we want to know used image path in a web page. By going through (Images > Display mage Paths) and (Images > Display mage file sizes)

Validate CSS, HTML, Feed and Links

You can easily validate CSS, HTML, Feed and Links etc through w3c validators. Just go through (Tools > Validate CSS), (Tools > Validate HTML), (Tools > Validate Feed) and (Tools > Validate Links) to validate your web pages.

These are few quick tips you can utilize using Mozilla Firefox Web Developer extension to enhance your web development experience. This isn’t limited to these discussed tools; there are many more with this extension.

So if you have other tips and strategies on how to further utilize the Web Developer extension? What are the ways you use Web Developer extension in your project? Share them here.