If you're not using Firefox regularly for your day-to-day web surfing, you should be.

And if you're not using Firefox as a web developer, you're really missing out on a lot of great features.

Joomla wouldn't be nearly so much fun without the Web Developer Toolbar extension for Firefox. Go download it now, and then come back to read about why it's great.

The WDT has several great features that will really make your life easier with Joomla. The biggest of these is the CSS editing tools under the CSS menu. Simply choose "edit CSS", and you can edit the CSS for your Joomla page while watching, in real time, what your changes are doing (or not doing!).

After you've tweaked a bit, simply copy the entire changed CSS document, then go into Extensions-Template Manager, choose the template in question and edit the appropriate stylesheet. Just paste everything over top of what's already there. Don't keep track of what changes you made -- just copy and paste to replace the whole thing.

This feature alone saves me hours of work that I would otherwise spend tweaking the CSS from the administrator screen, saving, checking to see if it worked, and then going back into the CSS to tweak some more.  Joomla 1.5 adds the "apply" button, which helps streamline thing, but it's still slow-going without being able to "see" what you are doing.

Another great feature is the Outline tool. With Joomla, I mostly use it to outline tables and/or table cells, but I've also used it for outlining block elements and other elements on the page.

These two features alone are enough to make the WDT absolutely invaluable to a Joomla developer. There are many other tools buried in it that are also handy, including validation links, view source, resize features, the ability to turn images on and off, and so forth.

What are your favorite aspects of the WDT? Do you have other favorite Firefox extensions? Post in the comments.

(reposted and updated from jenkramer.org)