Firefox for Web Designers

For our everyday browsing, we in the Needmore Labs use Safari. Fast, elegant, and nearly crash-proof, it is the most practical browser to run on your Mac. But there are a lot of things you cannot do with this browser, the biggest shortcoming being the inability to write really creative extensions.

That is when you pull out Firefox. It may not be as fast as Safari, it may not render fonts quite as well, and it does not look nearly as lovely or lickable as an Apple program, but it makes up for these shortcomings with its expandability and better adherence to standards. And it can be made even better with a few web designer must-have accessories:

  1. The Web Developer Extension Toolbar by Chris Pedrick. So incredibly useful for understanding and stress-testing a site in development, I cannot remember life before this plugin.
  2. The Google Toolbar, finally for Firefox, and consequently finally on a Mac. The best way to learn about your PageRank. Enough said.
  3. The DevBoi sidebar. It shows all features of HTML, CSS, the DOM, XUL, and even Ruby and Rails. Double-click on any feature to get the official and detailed specs, including browser compatibility.

We might love Safari with all our hearts, but I can’t imagine building a website these days without a tricked-out copy of Firefix!

Raymond Brigleb

Creative Director, dreamer, partner, father, musician, photographer. Has been known to ride the rails. Pulls one heck of a shot.