Three Essential Firefox Addons All Niche Site Builders Should Use!
I wanted to write about something a little different today, something away from my usual tutorials that I tend to write, so I thought I would tell you about 3 Addons for Firefox which are an absolute must for me in my niche site building and my web designing. Now, I like to vary the browser I use to view the internet, my favourite is Google Chrome and I like using Opera as well but purely for some of the fantastic addons you can get for it I still LOVE using Firefox, even if it has got 'clunkier' as time's gone on.
Three Addons I can't Live Without
ScreenGrab Screen Capture Addon
Screengrab is a fantastic and powerful little tool which integrates a screen capture ability into your browser. Screengrab enables you to capture the entire window, the entire page (visible and non-visible) or a selection which you choose, whatsmore you can even save directly to file OR copy the image to paste into your favouriate image editing tool for later use. I find this tool particularly useful for my blog posts, it's a lot easier to capture images in this way and saves me having to open up a separate tool. If I hadn't have had this tool then creating the 35 page CompariPress manual with screenshots would have been a lot more time consuming.
The only problem I have found with ScreenGrab (this wasn't their fault) was that a recent update to FF caused it to stop working, they are working on this issue and I believe it's mostly working again.
Find out about or download ScreenGrab for Firefox here
FireBug Addon
Firebug is an absolutely fantastic tool regardless of whether you are a full time web developer or you are just starting out in niche site building and you want to understand the workings of a web page that little bit better! Firebug provides a wealth of tools which enable you to debug, edit and view HTML, CSS and Javascript live in any web page. I often see people asking questions in the forums where they are having layout issues on their website, I can usually crack open Firebug and have the problem identified and solved in around 30 seconds, that's no exaggeration either! It's so simple because you can open up Firebug and as you move over the HTML code displayed it will show you EXACTLY where on the web page that particular HTML tag or set of tags refers to, in addition you will also see the related lines of css in the right hand frame.
If you want to edit anything on your website and you're not 100% comfortable with HTML and CSS then I always recommend making the edit in Firebug first, this way you can easily see what effect your changes will have and then at least it only takes one refresh of the page to put it right if you mess it up.
Find out about or download FireBug for Firefox here
SEO Quake Addon
This is a great tool for any niche site builder, simply because it makes analysing some of the main SEO factors of competitor websites SO much easier, helping you to better understand the search engine competition BEFORE going after a keyword or set of keywords.
I don't want to re-invent the wheel by explaining what SEO Quake can do so check out this video which will show you how to use this fantastic tool!
Find out more about or download SEOQuake for Firefox here
What addons for Firefox, or any other browser for that matter, do you use and recommend that I check out? Let me know by commenting below!
I wanted to write about something a little different today, something away from my usual tutorials that I tend to write,
so I thought I would tell you about 3 Addons for Firefox which are an absolute must for me in my niche site building and
my web designing. Now, I like to vary the browser I use to view the internet, my favourite is Google Chrome and I like
using Opera as well but purely for some of the fantastic addons you can get for it I still LOVE using Firefox, even if it
has got 'clunkier' as time's gone on.
Three Addons I can't Live Without
ScreenGrab Screen Capture Addon!
Screengrab is a fantastic and powerful little tool which integrates a screen capture ability into your browser. Screengrab
enables you to capture the entire window, the entire page (visible and non-visible) or a selection which you choose,
whatsmore you can even save directly to file OR copy the image to paste into your favouriate image editing tool for later
use. I find this tool particularly useful for my blog posts, it's a lot easier to capture images in this way and saves me
having to open up a separate tool. If I hadn't have had this tool then creating the 35 page CompariPress manual with
screenshots would have been a lot more time consuming.
The only problem I have found with ScreenGrab (this wasn't their fault) was that a recent update to FF caused it to stop
working, they are working on this issue and I believe it's mostly working again.
FireBug
Firebug is an absolutely fantastic tool regardless of whether you are a full time web developer or you are just starting
out in niche site building and you want to understand the workings of a web page that little bit better! Firebug provides
a wealth of tools which enable you to debug, edit and view HTML, CSS and Javascript live in any web page. I often see
people asking questions in the forums where they are having layout issues on their website, I can usually crack open
Firebug and have the problem identified and solved in around 30 seconds, that's no exaggeration either! It's so simple
because you can open up Firebug and as you move over the HTML code displayed it will show you EXACTLY where on the web
page that particular HTML tag or set of tags refers to, in addition you will also see the related lines of css in the
right hand frame.
If you want to edit anything on your website and you're not 100% comfortable with HTML and CSS then I always recommend
making the edit in Firebug first, this way you can easily see what effect your changes will have and then at least it only
takes one refresh of the page to put it right if you mess it up.
SEO Quake
This is a great tool for any niche site builder, simply because it makes analysing some of the main SEO factors of
competitor websites SO much easier, helping you to better understand the search engine competition BEFORE going after a
keyword or set of keywords.
I don't want to re-invent the wheel by explaining what SEO Quake can do so check out this video which will show you how to
use this fantastic tool!
What addons for Firefox, or any other browser for that matter, do you use and recommend I check out?
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seo California (1)
I recently learned about SenSEO, which allows you to rate a site based on the keywords you are targeting for that site. It shows you exactly what you’ve done well, and what you should change.
Rochelle
Rochelle´s last blog ..My daughter is doing much better
I couldn’t live without Live HTTP headers, it shows me what’s going on when I interact with sites, GET & POST queries etc.
I also use DownloadHelper, which makes it a snap to save videos from YouTube and other media sites
Another must have tool is SearchStatus – http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/
This sits in the status area and instantly shows the Alexa and PR of the page/url you are on. But that’s not all, left-click on the little blue blue “q” icon and there’s a wealth of info about the site you’re on:
Meta tags, other domains on that IP,whois, robots.txt, sitemap, keyword density, indexed pages and more :)
Definitely worth a look
Ben, thanks for the great tips as always but I think I could really use that screen grab add on. Also, thanks Kev, I’ll also check out the SearchStatus add on as well – that seems like it could be a great help.
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@All – These seems like to fantastic tools, I’ll certainly be adding SenSEO and SearchStatus for sure. I try to keep the ones I have installed down to a minimum but sometimes I just can’t resist :).
Thanks everyone, keep em coming!
Ben
All of those mentioned above are great tools! I have two more that I cannot personally live without. FireFTP and ColorZilla. Simple and free browser based FTP client and the easiest color picker I’ve ever used.
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Melissa,
That colorZilla looks pretty cool, currently I use ColorCop but this may be something I use instead. Nice one!
Ben :)
I love ColorZilla! Works great. Another one I use is MeasureIt, for whenever I need to measure something (which is more often than I would have guessed).
Rochelle
Rochelle´s last blog ..My daughter is doing much better
Hey Rochelle. Thanks for the MeasureIT tip. A good find that’s going to be very, very useful to me :)
Kev
Glad to share!
Rochelle
I’ve heard that SEO Quake can cause Google to ban your IP address. Do you have any details on this?
Hi Mark,
Any time you are ‘firing’ queries to the Google database can lead to your IP being temporarily blocked, such as if you overuse certain functions on keyword tools like Market Samurai or Micro Niche Finder. The key is not to go over the top when using them, if you do then the worst that can happen is that you won’t be able to access Google search for an hour or so.
Ben