Firefox has always been a favorite of mine for many reason, and certainly it's web developer-friendly addons ranks high on the list. There are plenty of great addons that not only enhance your browser experience, but help with everyday design and development tasks and processes. Below you will find a list of 8 Firefox addons that are, in my humble opinion, essential tools for web developers and designers.

If I missed any essential addon(s), certainly let me know by commenting below!

Despite, the lack of a core blogging component for Joomla users, there is a very simple way to create a Blog Roll in Joomla, and the best part is that you do not have to purchase or install a complex blogging component first!

Here's the simple steps involved...

Is anyone else really wishing the 'Properties' right-click menu item was back in their lives with Firefox 3.6? I know I sure do! Just an awful decision on behalf of the Mozilla team to remove the 'Properties' menu item if you ask... definitely the dumbest move in Firefox history. Their concern with presentation and "making things pretty" will surely send a lot of users on a roll-back trip to version 3.5.

This evening I went through the site's users database and purged out all the unverified user accounts and those who contained obvious spam-related usernames or email addresses.

"I set the rules and you follow them blindly. Okay? And if you have a problem with that, then you can talk to our complaint department. It's a trash can!" - Michael Scott

When utilizing any kind of drop down menu and having some sorts of flash banner/header below that, you will need to work with the flash file and your CSS file in order to make the drop down menus appear on top of the flash banner/header below.

Here are some steps to take...

What: Metallica live in concert... World Magnetic Tour
When: December 5, 2009
Where: Mandalay Bay Events Center, Las Vegas, NV

11:35pm - Oh my god! Did that really just happen?!?!

In one truly amazing moment, the trip to Las Vegas (and my Metallica touring career to date) was stamped "best ever"! Mr. Lars Ulrich himself personally handing me a drumstick after the show... wow... un-freakin'-believable!

What: Metallica live in concert... World Magnetic Tour
When: November 12, 2009
Where: Times Union Center, Albany, NY

I had some high hopes for this show in terms of a quality, not-so-average setlist just from looking at the previous Albany setlists from past years. Last time around, Albany was treated to "The Outlaw Torn", which is by far one of my favorites Metallica songs!

So I left southern New Hampshire in the early afternoon and 4 hours later, I arrived in Albany. The drive there was a slow-paced scenic route through the Green Mountains of southern Vermont... nice, but a rather long route to take. Arrive in Albany, grab some parking and head into the arena, to the upper level seating areas. I also had every intention of filming this show, however once I saw my seat, I was quickly turned off to that idea. I had far too many obstructions in the way (the barrier, the guard rail, the stage setup ladder and wiring (see the pictures below). Not too mention that because I was the first row of seating, I had a constant flow of people walking in front of me. Not a good location to film anything but people in the crowd.

Sometimes it is necessary, or just easier, to put default values for your form's input and textarea fields, instead of putting the form field name above the field itself. Not too mention that it saves valuable real estate space as well.

When the fields are clicked on (a.k.a. in the "onfocus" state), the default value will disappear. If the user clicks outside of the field without adding his/her own text, then the default form field value will reappear inside the field.

This task can be accomplished many different ways using JavaScript inline coding, but that method can leave you with some very messy lines of code. MooTools, on the other hand, has a very effective selector class to handle our task easily.

Recently I have been setting up blogs in my Joomla sites using core features and a few add-ons (non-commercial of course). Here are my steps...

Joomla is pretty good at hiding things from the public, and then exposing them once the user logs in. However, what happens when you want to hide a module position, for example, when the user logs in? I had this problem with a customer's site. I put in a "Subscribe" module for people to sign up for their documentation but once people registered I didn't want the subscribe module annoying them anymore. Well, it turns out that it's only a few lines of code in the main template file to hide it.