We have all used the great Firefox extensions that make our lives easier, there are thousands of lists out there of the top 10-15 Firefox extensions for web developers. There is of course a lot of resistance from web developers against using Internet Explorer because of its lack of standards support. A lot of this is carried over from IE 6 being so fundamentally broken at rendering web pages with CSS. There are always time though when we need to test web sites in IE6 or IE7 and just like we use our extensions for development in Firefox— it is a huge help to have add-ons installed for Internet Explorer that will allow us to do our job more effectively.

IE6 and IE7 add-ons for web developers list

I have been using several IE add-ons in IE6 and IE7 that have helped me a lot in discovering why I web site is broken in one of those browsers. I’m going to list here the top add-ons for Internet Explorer that I use to make my life easier.

#1 IE Developer Toolbar

http://www.windowsmarketplace.com/details.aspx?view=info&itemid=2695980
Add-on for: IE6 and IE7
This add-on for Internet Explorer has the most features by-far of any that I have found. It has about as many features as the Web Developer toolbar for Firefox has. You are able to check elements and the source of the elements, it has a pixel ruler, you can outline divs/objects, highlighted source code viewer, you can disable css/javascript, a color picker to pick colors from any page and a lot more. I use this one quite a bit for numerous tasks in Internet Explorer.

#2 Debugbar

http://www.debugbar.com/?langage=en
Add-on for: IE6 and IE7
This Internet Explorer add-on is quite handy when it comes to CSS and JavaScript development. You can use its drag option to highlight an object and view its source code. It does have a limited CSS editing feature that allows you to edit existing and browser default styles for elements. This can come in handy when you are attempting to fix an IE6 or IE7 issue. This toolbar for Internet Explorer also has a lot of DOM Scripting options that come in handy when working with JavaScript.

#3 Aardvark

http://karmatics.com/aardvark/bookmarklet.html
Add-on for: IE7
One of my favorite extensions for Firefox is Aardvark, so when I discovered that you could use it in IE7 I was very excited. This isn’t so much of an add-on as it is a javascript applet that you can run on any page. The Aardvark for IE7 works by dragging a bookmarklet to your “links” toolbar (or favorites) and simply clicking on it to activate Aardvark on any web page with Internet Explorer 7. It doesn’t work in IE6 unfortunately, which would be incredibly useful.

#4 IE7Pro

http://www.ie7pro.com/
Add-on for: IE7
This extensions for Internet Explorer 7 has quite a bit of features in it that can help you with just using Internet Explorer. There aren’t any real web developer options with this add-on but it does have one of my favorite features built-in to Firefox in it. The auto-spellchecker, which will automatically spellcheck as you type into inputs and textareas in Internet Explorer. Great for avoiding looking like a dunce if you accidentally misspell something. It has a lot of other pretty cool features and preferences that may come in handy, but I don’t use them.

There are more web development add-ons for Internet Explorer

I found quite a bit of add-ons that would come in handy for web designers and developers but I chose not to include them on this list because they cost money. I would rather not promote them because it is ridiculous how much some of them cost. For instance, I found one that took a screen shot of the web page. Thats it. The cost for this add-on was $19.95. Yeah… I even found some add-ons that cost nearly $200 for the full versions after a 30 day trial.

If you are interested in finding some of these non-free Internet Explorer add-ons you can visit the Windows Marketplace and browse through their line-up. I wouldn’t recommend spending any money on them when you can just use Firefox and not spend a dime— while getting a better features set, standards support and developer base.

I hope these extensions help everyone in developing for Internet Explorer, if you have found other add-ons for Internet Explorer please list them in the comments. Also, if you enjoyed this article and would like to see more like it please subscribe to my RSS feed for a direct feed of more great content.

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