Wanna see whats happening on your webpages? If you’re a FireFox user then get the following add-on FireBug. This little add-on will show you a wealth of information concerning the webpage you are currently viewing. But there’s a better reason to install this.

Once FireBug  is installed then head over to YSlow.  This little add-on will tell you exactly WHY your website is so slow and what needs to be done to improve it. This is a simply MUST have tool for any web developer in South Africa! Once you have both installed, restart Firefox and then go to Tools –> Firebug –> Open Firebug

Firebug will show you your HTML, CSS, SCRIPT, DOM as well as how long everything took to load. The console will show any errors in your XHTML or HTML.  Then its time to analyze the page using YSlow.

In the Firebug pane, click on the YSlow tab. It is the last tab at the bottom.  Once you click this, Peformance and Stats buttons appear above. If you wanna test the performance of the page then click performance. YSlow will then grade the page and provide recommendationson how to speed up your page. Selecting the stats option will show basic information regarding Empty and Full Cache sizes for the page.