Aardvark Firefox Extension

This new extention for FireFox is pretty nifty. It’s called Aardvark Firefox Extension and it’s a tool for quickly identifying block level elements on a page. All you do is turn the extension on and then hover around a webpage and a red border illustrates ID’s on the page. You can also delete elements, make them wider, narrower, and even view the source of a portion of the page.

Aardvark screenshot

This is great for analysing how other sites have been built and also for printing (delete elements you don’t want to print!).

Here is a full list of what keys do what:

  • W Wider Select a wider area. For instance, if you have selected a table cell, pressing W will select the table row
  • N Narrower Undo the last "Wider" command
  • Q Quit Quit Aardvark (that is, stop selecting elements), until you restart it from the menu
  • U Undo Undo the last "remove" or "isolate" command.
  • R Remove Delete the selected element
  • I Isolate Delete everything surrounding the selected element
  • E Erase Clear the element of all content, while fixing its dimensions
  • B Black on white Set the element (and all contained elements) to be black text on white background
  • C Colorize Sets the element’s background to a random color
  • V View Source Shows the source code of the element (with indenting and color highlighting)
  • D "De-widthify" Removes any fixed width values from the element (and any contained elements)

Thanks to Michael for pointing this out :) .

Posted in Quick tips & recommended on November 25th, 2005 - One comment

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1 comment

  1. Comment by Richard
    November 30, 2005 @ 2:18 pm

    Book!

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