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.
