Tools of the Trade

Posted by Phil on July 2, 2008 under Web Development | Read the First Comment

tools-of-the-trade

I just thought I’d post a list of the tools that I use whenever I web develop.  You may be using some of them, or you might not.  Some of them probably don’t even fit under the “web development” category, but that’s the beauty of the DevBlog, I’m just throwing out what I use and you’re free to take it or leave it (also if you have a tool that is awesome that isn’t listed, throw it in the comments).

Browsers:

  • Firefox 3 – Great browser, much better than the bloated version 2 release.
  • Safari 3.1.2 – awesome browser, lacking in tools
  • IETester – uses the IE5.5. IE6, IE7, and IE8b1 rendering engines
  • Opera 9.5 – when I have a ton of ram and cpu to kill – see previous post

You can use Firefox as a standalone browser through a usb stick by going to portableapps.com and downloading the standalone version.  They have some tutorials there on how to move your profile etc.  There are many other good apps there as well.

Browser Specific Plug-ins/Add-ons:

IE:

  • IE Developer Toolbar – The wannabe firebug utility for IE
  • Fiddler2 – shows all of your http requests (helpful for finding leaks, or where files really are).
  • IEPro – Firefoxerize your IE… well kinda

Safari/any browser:

  • XRAY (bookmarklet)

FireFox:

*Honorable Mention: YSlow is a Yahoo tool that tells you how well your site performs based on speed standards formulated by Yahoo.  Since Yahoo was one of the first sites to use sprites for all their images, they may just know what they are talking about.  This tool will tell you how long it took to load your page, and grade it.  It gives you a ‘report card’ that you can use to make your page better.  I don’t use it all the  time, but it’s a nice little addition to the portable Firefox3 usb stick I have…

Color/image Tools:

  • ColorPic – Really nice color selection/palette utility
  • Gimp – like photoshop, only really different
  • colorwizard – I have a feeling adobe ripped this off for Kuler, but I can’t prove it…
  • adobe kuler – I actually found this at adobe labs before the color wizard, so my suspicions on who made what first may be based on the quality of them…

Measuring and Screenshot Tools:

  • jRuler – Fantastic pixel measuring tool.
  • fsCapture 5.3 (last freeware version) – My favorite Screen Capture utility.
  • ScreenHunter – Screen Shot util (one of Dustin’s fav’s).

Misc Tools:

Completely unrelated to web developing sites/tools:

  • SpiralFrog – PC users (with “playsforsure” media devices) rejoice!
  • Songza – Everyone rejoice! (internet jukebox)
  • LastFM – personalized radio station
  • Pandora – LastFM was kinda based on this… so was songza… hmm…
  • imeem – Like the 3 above, and yet more, social
  • lifehacker – A great site for information and tutorials on hacking your life
  • netvibes – Fantastic RSS collection util, all the sites you read on one page, fantastic (kinda like igoogle, yahoo, etc.)

That about wraps up the tools that I currently use when developing, but feel free to throw more suggestions in the comments.  Who knows, maybe I’ll have to do a follow-up post with all the goodness that gets suggested.

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