Firefox and Web Design

I’ve long been a fan of Firefox both as a browser and as a web developer. If you haven’t jumped on the Firefox bandwagon yet, get yourself a copy of the latest release here and start having fun.

If you’re just starting out with CSS, the Firefox Web Developer toolbar is a must have. Like a lot of web developers out there, I start my browser testing in Firefox and then tweak for the others after. Once I’ve got my basic code in place, I fire up Firefox and start the fine-tuning.

The beauty of the Web Developer toolbar is the ability to edit your CSS file directly in your Firefox window and see the changes immediately. This is great for fine-tuning font sizes, div sizes and other core components. But I also find it handy for diagnosing issues I’m having with the CSS.

For example, with the Firefox Web Developer toolbar, I can outline my divs or images to see why my floats aren’t working as expected - it’s great for highlighting oversights I’ve made in my pixel settings.

The toolbar also has built-in validation tools to make sure your code is up to snuff with web standards. Nothing like seeing that green ‘congratulations’ bar show up!