I miss X-Ray

I really hope that Stuart Robertsson, the maker of the ingenious Firefox Add-on X-Ray, updates it to work with Firefox 3 soon! I don’t think I’ve realized how much I’ve relied on this add-on in my daily work until now that it doesn’t work anymore.

So what is X-Ray?

For you who don’t know what X-Ray is. It’s an add-on for Firefox that enables you to see the HTML on a web page without having to look at the source code. It justs shows tags around the different elements directly on a web page and gives you an instant glimpse of how the page is built.

I use it to get a quick understanding of how web pages others built are structured but also to see what class or id a certain element has, which header level a heading has and things like that on the pages I’m currently working on. It’s one of those small tools that have proved to be really useful.

So please, Stuart Robertson, update X-Ray to work with Firefox 3 as soon as possible!

Update [2008-07-10]: I just discovered that Stuart has posted a comment at designmeme.com that he actually have submitted an updated version to addons.mozilla.org, but I can’t find it. Is there anybody else who has?

Update 2 [2008-08-21]: It’s finally here! And it’s been available for the last six days, I just haven’t noticed. It’s with pure joy I can say that I yet again can use X-Ray in my daily work. Install it now from addons.mozilla.org.

About the author

Gabriel Svennerberg is an independent Interaction/UI Designer and Web Developer living in Sweden. When he's not busy building web application designed for humans, he writes about all things web on his site In usability we trust. Gabriel is the author of the book Beginning Google Maps API 3 published by Apress.
  • http://www.arcadx.com illicit1

    I found the updated version of X-Ray here https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addons/versions/1802 its listed as an experimental addon so you have to login to get it, but there is another problem as FF3 wont install it because it says the addon doesn’t provide secure updates :(

    Yes i miss X-Ray too!

  • http://www.svennerberg.com Gabriel Svennerberg

    @illicit1: Thanks for the link! I also tried to install it but got the same error as you did. But then there is hope after all. Maybe there will be an installable version out soon!

  • http://www.arcadx.com illicit1

    An update! i got it working on my system :) thanks to these instructions found here http://www.ideashower.com/learned/how-to-disable-will-not-be-installed-because-it-does-not-provide-secure-updates-warning-in-firefox-3/

    tho i don’t like the idea of really disabling such an important security feature so for now i will just use it when needed, so hopefully this is just temporary fix.