There are several useful online search tools/services that you should familarize yourself with. These tools will help you to find a lot of content related to web development.

Del.icio.us - Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking system. What exactly does that mean? Instead of using Favorites in IE or Bookmarks in Firefox, your bookmarks are stored online and available to other Del.icio.us users and web surfers in general. Del.icio.us is organized with tags; rather than putting a bookmark in a folder, users use relevant words or tags to describe the web site content. For example, if you were to add a del.icio.us bookmark for this site you might use tags like: web, xhtml, css, tutorials, design, etc.

Del.icio.us bookmarks are available everywhere, since they aren’t stored on your own computer. In addition to being able to search and browse your own bookmarks by tags, you can also do the same with other members bookmarks. Del.icio.us bookmarks can also be integrated easily into your web site; in the menu to the right I am displaying my most recent Del.icio.us bookmarks.

After signing up for a Del.icio.us account, install the Firefox bookmarklet found on the Del.icio.us About page. You will then be able to easily add sites to your Del.icio.us account via the Firefox bookmark toolbar.

Technorati - is a blog search engine that also employs the use of tags to organize and find content. Technorati displays the hour’s top searches on its homepage.

Sage, RSS and other Goodies - Learn to embrace and love RSS! Use tools like GooRSS, PubSub, Bloglines, blo.gs, Feedster, or any other news aggregator or RSS tool.

Use Google’s new blog search to find current, relevant information on web development.

There are a lot of great search tools available for Firefox. These tools come in the form of extensions. You can learn about Firefox, its usage, and installing extensions in my tutorial Using Mozilla Firefox.

Here are some extensions that I find useful:

Web Developer Toolbar
ColorZilla
HTML Validator
Aardvark
EditCSS
Spellbound
Sage
Paste and Go
Tabbed Browser Preferences
Google Preview
Link Checker
IEView

Here are a few of the extension resources that I have mentioned in recent posts:

Essential List and Resources on Firefox Extensions from Lifehacker
Extending Firefox for Web Developers

While were installing Firefox extensions, let’s also get the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar.