Mozilla Firefox Add-ons 101

Author: Santhosh Tuppad
Reviewer: uTest

Introduction: This crash course will help you in learning about various browser add-ons that will help you in your testing activity for web applications. Although Mozilla community provides thousands of add-ons, most testers do not utilize them in their testing activity. Therefore, this course will be informative for some testers; if you know of others, feel free to author the 102 course for Mozilla Firefox Add-ons.

Installing an Add-on: 

You can find add-on at https://addons.mozilla.org. In order to install add-on you need to be using Mozilla Firefox browser while adding it to add-on of your Firefox.

To look at the existing add-on in your Firefox use the following menu –

Click on “Tools” -> “Add-ons”

Then you must see the add-on dialog window as follows:

Things to Remember: 

1. Bug or No Bug – Sometimes what you see as a bug might not be a bug because that is something happening due to installation of a specific add-on – Be careful before concluding something as a bug
2. Some add-ons do not work with the latest versions of Firefox, so you might want to have different profiles of your Mozilla Firefox [ Example: One with no add-on, One with add-on, One with your personal use ]
3. We do not teach you how to use these add-on but we will tell you little bit about how they can be useful in your testing activity for web. We want you to explore more about each add-on on your own.

List of useful Firefox Add-ons

1. FireBug

Most of you might have been using FireBug add-on with your Mozilla Firefox browser. This is helpful in,

• Inspecting element – You just take your mouse to any of the module and it will display the source code making it easy for you to know what is the code written for that
• YSlow – This is one more add-on that is integrated to FireBug which helps you in monitoring the performance – This is provided by Yahoo INC.
• Modifying the source code – I, used to modify it from notepad before to do some changes and save it as a webpage on my Desktop before many years but thanks to FireBug as you can modify the source code on the fly and very quickly

There are different tabs in FireBug and every tab tells you different information.

Download URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843/

2. ExtendedStatusBar

This add-on gives the following information about the page –

• Number of images on the page and how many are loaded
• File size
• Speed
• Time taken to load the page

If you want to analyze the performance you can use this add-on but you cannot completely rely on the results. You might want to cross check with other utilities like HTTPWatch, Fiddler and etc.

Download URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1433/

3. MeasureIT

This add-on will tell you the height and width of anything you want to measure in a webpage. Now, you might want to know how this help? This helps if you want to check the image size. Example: In requirement document the customer has said he / she needs image of 90 x 89 [ Height and width ] and this add-on can help you in doing that. You just need to activate the add-on and use your mouse to mark the area of the image or anything and you will get the height and width.

Download URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/539/

4. Behind the Asterisks

This add-on reveals the password which means it shows the characters behind the asterisks. Look at the below screenshot,

Now how this is helpful?

Suppose there is a maximum length of password characters allowed for a password text field and after the visible area of text field you do not know if your characters are being typed or not as you just see asterisks and you cannot differentiate as all the characters are asterisks. Now, you can use this add-on to see those characters and see if your characters are really being accepted or it had reached the dead-end.

NOTE: This crash course is not responsible if reader uses it to crack the password or anything for bad purpose.

Download URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59265/

5. CheckFox

 This add-on is helpful in checking / unchecking multiple checkboxes in a webpage. Example: There are 100 checkboxes in a webpage and you need to test them. Now, you cannot spend time in checking those 100 checkboxes one by one. And also there is no Global checkbox for checking all checkboxes. Now, you need not wait till the developer get that global checkbox for you to test. So, using CheckFox add-on you just need to drag the mouse [ left click ] and leave it where you want to stop checking / unchecking the checkboxes. Now, right-click and choose check / uncheck.

So, now you see that how easily you can check / uncheck many checkboxes in very few seconds instead of few minutes.

Download URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2393/

6. Web Developer

We want you to install this add-on and explore what all it can do because there are many options in this add-on. This is a cool add-on that you might want to use for better testing of web application.

Download URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60/

Note: There are many add-ons and you have to explore these and see how they can be helpful in your testing activity.

I hope this course has been informative for you; if you know of others, feel free to author the 102 course for Mozilla Firefox Add-ons.