FireFox is the Web Designers best friend. Addons galore that will help you with all kinds of tasks. Once you start using it Mozilla FireFox will become the most valuable tool in your web designers tool box. Here are a few of my most cherished finds.

First and foremost there’s FireBug. This will place a small bug icon at the bottom of the FireFox web browser. When clicked a panel will pop up below the web page you are viewing which will allow you to examine the insides of how a web page is held together. Great for trouble shooting and learning how others websites do what they do.

Web Developer is another great tool I couldn’t do without. There’s just so much there. Too much to even talk about in this entry. So I recommend just clicking each option and seeing what happens. You won’t break anything so go to town.

Next is FireFTP. A totally free FTP that will open up right in a new tab.

YSlow is a tool that will install into your FireBug panel so you have to have FireBug to use it. Open Fire bug and click the YSlow option to see an analysis of why your site might be rendering slow, and how you might fix it.

SeoQuake is a tool for search engine optimization, and will help you analyze your sites search engine rankings. A very cool tool.

ErrorZilla Plus will add extra options to your error pages to help your find what you need. It’s such a simple concept that it really seems strange that it’s not a built in feature (on all browsers).

TAW3 is a tool to help you make your site more user friendly for those with disabilities. A community which is too often overlooked by web designers.

Of course there are many, many more. So have fun trying these out, and then try browsing through the other FireFox web developers addons. I’m sure you’ll find your own favorites.