Okay, so some of the best web tools out there, in my opinion, are free or even open source.  While I’m not the biggest fan of the current direction Firefox has taken, it remains a leader and a major player and has a lot of tools available as addons.  There are also a number of platform independent tools available, so long as your using a computer platform.

Just like my last post, list items in bold are the bees’ knees.

FIREFOX

• Firebug ::: Particularly useful for inspecting elements and seeing a real time “update” to whatever change you make.
• Web Developer ::: This is a great plugin for inspecting elements and has quick links for the W3C Validator.
• SearchStatus ::: Set this one up and enable MozRank and Compete Rank and get some great SEO stats.
• YSlow ::: Why is your site running slow and great recommendations regarding performance. (Requires Firebug)
• ColorZilla ::: Great for those of us who are colorblind and need to grab a quick hex value… ie. me.
• QuickJava ::: Adds button to quick enable/disable JavaScript.  I use this regularly when checking just how gracefully degrading some of my JavaScript really is.
• Google Toolbar ::: Pretty useful for quickly bookmarking sites to your Google account, getting to your documents, calendar, etc.
• Foxy SEO Tool
• Dummy Lipsum ::: Lorum Ipsum Generator… for all those times you have a client who wants a really sweet design so they can “put cool words and stuff on it… you know, for people to read”.  If you are one of my clients, please do not download this tool.  It won’t help.
• Jiffy ::: Displays Javascript timer measurements
• Window Resizer ::: Select a screen resolution you’d like to check out.  This will automatically resize the browser window.

FREE / OPEN SOURCE

• FTP ::: CyberDuck ::: Grab this and you won’t ever need another FTP client.  Outstanding.
• Text Editor ::: Smultron ::: I’m no Mac fan, so I can’t remember why I liked this one… just being honest.  I was on a Mac for a few months and ended up stumbling upon this and using it for the duration and jettisoned the Mac as quickly as possible.
• Fake a LAMP Stack ::: MAMP ::: Cooler than xamp in terms of GUI and simple development use, but not nearly as nice as it’s Windows counterpart, WAMP.
• Fink ::: Unix Command Line & More
• MacPorts ::: Unix Command Line & More

• Text Editor ::: Emerald Editor (Formerly Crimson Editor) ::: Not quite as cool as Vi, but no configuration is required at all to get it how I want it usually.  Vi has a lot more to it.
• Text Editor ::: Vi ::: A port of the linux command line editor to Windows GUI is available.
• FTP ::: WinSCP ::: A bit buggy with keeping connections alive, but it’s free and it’s support for configuring multiple editors is pretty outstanding; something FileZilla lacks in my opinion.
• Fake a LAMP Stack ::: WAMP ::: It’s in French, but there’s an English version.  Works well.
• Multiple IE Installation on the same Desktop.  Make sure to get the IE7 standalone installer as well.

• FileZilla ::: FileZilla is great except for it’s live editing capabilities.  What I mean is, it does an outstanding job with transfer queues, but is not good at handling “vi for CSS” and “Aptana for php” and “Photoshop for PSD” for example.  For live editing, I prefer WinSCP… but on crappy servers that tends to drop connections easily, so I don’t like it for large file transfers.
• Netbeans ::: A full featured multi-lingual complier, checker, ide, etc.  Pretty sweet and developed by Sun Microsystems.  The only downside I’m aware of is the lack of “word wrap” of all things.
• Aptana ::: This one has “word wrap” but is very resource intensive. Also multi-lingual.
  
• Eclipse ::: Comon… everyone knows about eclipse.  Pretty neat stuff, lots of plugins, etc.

WEB BASED

• cleancss.com ::: Great site for optimizing your CSS.  Aggregates and simplifies markup.
• jscompress.com ::: Compress your JavaScript online with several methods to choose from.
• filterforge.net ::: Create seamless tiling backgrounds.
• checkdns.net ::: Well, you do want to check your dns right?  RIGHT?
• stripegenerator.com ::: Create seamless tiling striped backgrounds.
• browsershots.org ::: Design check across multiple browsers and platforms.  Free.  Only downside is SLOW.
• litmusapp.com ::: Free & Paid versions.  This is the only known option out there for standalone email campaign checking.
• emailonacid.com ::: As good as litmusapp.com but free!
  • Recently, emailonacid is no longer a completely free service.  It’s tiered.  It’s still a great service and worth paying for, but should probably be removed from the list.
    
• mailchimp.com ::: eNewsletter Application ::: Has a built in design check feature.  It’s pretty much just like Constant Contact, but I like mailchimp better.
• pastie.org ::: Share small bits of code in various languages
• projecteuler.net ::: Sharpen your programming and problem solving skills online

Tags: compressing javascript, email design check, free web tools, ftp clients, optimize css, testing email design, tiling background generator

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 7:01 pm and is filed under Local Development, Web Development, Website Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.