Professor X Extension for Firefox
by Stuart Robertson on June 19th, 2006 | tools, web design
My second Firefox extension is ready for download today! Professor X let’s you see inside a page’s head without viewing the sourcecode. This is the companion extension to X-Ray which reveals the underlying code within a page’s body, although either extension can be installed and used on its own.
Once installed the Professor X command is available by right-clicking as well as in the Tools menu. When applied to a page it will display the contents of the page’s head element, including Meta, Script and Style content. This can help you see how a website was constructed without having to go back and forth between the sourcecode and the page in your browser.
Professor X was created with a little bit of JavaScript, and a lot of CSS 3, to display and style elements in the head of the document. CSS 3 selectors and CSS generated content helped make this a more visually pleasing tool than I had originally planned (If people are interested I’ll post some more details about how the code works). Special thanks to Mark James for his outstanding Silk Icons!
Just like the X-Ray extension (which will be updated very soon), Professor X was developed to help my students learn how web pages are constructed. However, since developing the first test-version I’ve found it helped me quickly spot errors between the head tags on pages I’d looked at dozens of times before. I hope other web designers will find it a useful extension to add to their toolbox as well.
If you find either of these extensions useful, please consider making a small donation to support future development work. Thanks! 
Preview
Stuart Robertson
pickupjojo on June 19, 2006 at 10:54 am
Very nice extension, good job !
Stuart Robertson on June 20, 2006 at 9:31 am
Thanks.
Professor X will now work with the Flock Browser as well.
Professor X Firefox Extension « Blog Archive « www.lattimore.id.au on June 21, 2006 at 12:01 am
[...] Ever wanted to look into the
section of a web page without having to constantly view the source? Well, good news folks – Stuart Robertson has released a new Firefox extension named Professor X because it gets into your head! [...]X-Ray Update for Firefox and Flock | Design Meme on June 21, 2006 at 8:13 am
[...] The new version of X-Ray adds support for displaying tags for table, tr, script and a few other elements! The update also improves compatibility with the new Professor X Extension—also available for both Firefox and Flock. [...]
Chris Granger on July 30, 2006 at 8:26 am
On sites with a lot of meta tags and so forth, it fills more than one screen’s worth but there are no scrollbars… Might need a tweak there. Otherwise, very handy.
Markus on August 3, 2006 at 5:11 am
Good Job!
I love this Tool already, but there is one thing missing, it’s the http response code that would be nice to have in this extension.
456 Berea Street on August 3, 2006 at 12:17 pm
Look inside the head element with Professor X…
A Firefox extension that lets you see the contents of an HTML document’s head element without viewing source….
Nate on August 3, 2006 at 12:50 pm
I’d like to put in a second request for the http response header. I mean it’s available in the web dev toolbar, but the format you made here is so much nicer.
Stylegala - Web Design Publication on August 9, 2006 at 6:08 pm
HeadY on August 28, 2006 at 6:22 pm
Whould be nice if the .js Files are clickable…
Thats the main reason for me to stealth into other ppl header´s.
Thx for the next update
that is some bomb tea » monday is my favourite time of year on September 11, 2006 at 7:14 pm
[...] I’m gonna tell you what I really think I like about Mondays. I have one class. It’s at 1:30pm. And it’s Web Design. Oh man. We were talking about Technorati today. Technorati! There are only like 4 friends of mine who know what Technorati is, none of whom go to Gumber. The guy teaching the course, Stuart Robertson, is the U of G webmaster, writes Firefox extensions and has had an article posted to the front-page of Digg. Pretty cool. [...]
Forchheim on September 30, 2006 at 5:39 am
I´d like to have the opinion of another background-color or just have a lighter grey for the text to get a better contrast.
The rest is fine !
Yours Forchheim
MMWeb on October 31, 2006 at 9:32 am
All in all great extension. Good looking and useful.
One bug: can’t select the headers and copy them
berbs.us on February 24, 2007 at 3:12 pm
My Favorite Firefox Extensions…
One of my friends recently asked me what I’m using for extensions in Firefox 2, then suggested I share my list with the world. So, that’s exactly what I’m doing here. I’ll split them up by category so you can…...
tadhg.com » Firefox on April 14, 2007 at 2:18 am
[...] Professor X and X-Ray, both commonsensical web development plugins that let you see either head or body tag information/structure without leaving the page. [...]
StumbleUpon » Your page is now on StumbleUpon! on October 28, 2007 at 10:42 am
Vision on November 8, 2007 at 11:37 pm
http://www.designmeme.com/2006/06/19/professorx-extension-for-firefox/Selenium is a test tool for web applications. Selenium tests run directly in a browser, just as real users do. And they run in Internet Explorer, Mozilla and Firefox on Windows, Linux, and Macintosh. No other test tool covers such a wide array ofdezign on January 8, 2008 at 6:48 pm
What a fabulous!! tool for web developers, designers & educators …
thank you sooo much !