This month Daron Rowse announced his ProBlogger Group Writing Project. He tasked his readers to come up with a top 5 list of any kind. Lists are my specialty, and so is web development, so I offer the top 5 web developing tools that I use everyday.
#1 Dreamweaver 8
Macromedia’s Adobe’s Dreamweaver product is my essential tool for managing and developing all my products. The toolbar wizards for medial tasks cut down on my development time as well as file management to keep my files current. Dreamweaver is the preferred IDE for ColdFusion developers. There are many features that create robust functionality a few short actions.
#2 Firefox
All of your hard work needs to be seen, and that’s in the browser. Firefox is my pick because of the ability to customize the browser to your liking with add-ons. I use many of these add-ons to diagnose and discover areas of improvement in my display or coding. Here are my recommended add-ons from a previous post:
- Web Developer Extension: A suite of tools that tell you almost anything you need about the page you are on.
- Firebug: Awesome add-on that allows you debug your JavaScript, CSS, and HTML live on the page. The CSS inspector feature is great for finding those troublesome div tags.
- IE Tabs: Toggle between IE and Firefox rendered pages without having to fire up Internet Explorer.
- ColorZilla: What color is that on the page? Now you can see the hex and RGB of colors with an eyedropper that save the color to the clipboard. Great for web designers.
- MeasureIt: Get the height and width in pixels of anything on a web page. This handy add-on is essential for web designers and developers alike.
#3 SQL Query Analyzer
We run our major sites with Microsoft SQL as our database. The built-in query analyzer allows you to create on-the-fly queries and executing SQL statements. The drag and drop interface makes it easy to get the data I need. I build the queries there and past them into my ColdFusion component pages.
#4 Microsoft Excel
This may seem like an odd thing to include in a list about developer tools, but I have saved hours by using Microsoft’s Excel. An example is coding a set of CFPARAMs. The statement is as follows. <cfparam name="FORM.FirstName" default="Jason">. I will break up the first part <cfparam name="FORM. into one cell, skip a cell, then " default=", skip a cell, and finally ">. Use Excel to repeat the rows for as many variables that you have. Type in your variables into the first blank column. The next logical variable would be LastName, then the other blank column, you would put the default value. This saves me time of cutting an pasting the IF statement over and over.
#5 ColdFusion MX 7 Web Application Construction Kit
The CFWACK is an essential resource for us ColdFusion developers. The book is always within arms reach of me throughout the day. This is the first place I look for solutions to problems I encounter while coding.
May 9th, 2007 at 2:22 am
[...] My Top 5 Web Developing Tools by Jason Bartholme [...]
May 9th, 2007 at 3:58 am
I’ve never used Excel for Web Developing but I might try it.
May 9th, 2007 at 6:19 am
[...] My Top 5 Web Developing Tools by Jason Bartholme [...]
May 9th, 2007 at 6:57 am
Thanks for letting us know about the Measure it plugin, haven’t heard of it before.
Have a look at my Top5 blog post on my blog if you have the time.
May 9th, 2007 at 7:11 am
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May 9th, 2007 at 7:34 am
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May 9th, 2007 at 10:58 am
[...] My Top 5 Web Developing Tools by Jason Bartholme [...]
May 9th, 2007 at 11:21 am
Thanks for the list, partucularly the firefox add-ins and adobe dreamweaver.
May 9th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
Looks the same as mine except for the excel sheet.
May 9th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
@ carmelyne: I need to do a full-blown tutorial on saving time with Excel. You can use spreadsheets to line up your columns to do an insert in. It takes out some guess work when it throws an error.
May 9th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
I’ll look forward to it then
May 9th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
[...] My Top 5 Web Developing Tools by Jason Bartholme [...]
May 9th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Great post.
I use all of them
Cheers
May 10th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
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May 11th, 2007 at 8:58 am
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May 11th, 2007 at 9:45 am
I added a link to your list in my Useful Links page. I’m sure it’ll come in handy for a lot of folks.
May 12th, 2007 at 1:39 am
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May 12th, 2007 at 2:12 am
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May 12th, 2007 at 2:43 am
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May 12th, 2007 at 9:59 am
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May 12th, 2007 at 11:02 am
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May 12th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
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May 12th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
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May 12th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
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May 13th, 2007 at 1:24 am
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May 13th, 2007 at 9:00 am
Great list! I liked how you listed 5 extensions for Firefox - where they your top 5 extensions? Anyways, I haven’t heard of Firebug before so I’ll be checking that one out.
Check out my Problogger submission, which I think you’ll find relevant: Top Five Essential Practices for Developing Software
May 13th, 2007 at 10:37 am
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May 13th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
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May 13th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
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May 14th, 2007 at 9:14 am
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May 14th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
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May 16th, 2007 at 4:18 am
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August 12th, 2007 at 12:18 am
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August 18th, 2007 at 4:41 am
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November 5th, 2007 at 6:43 am
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November 29th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Very good tools