The Toolbox, Tools of my trade, Q4 2007

Posted by mkhairul - November 23, 2007 at 10:11:37 pm -

Categories: Development, Tips, blog

I’ve always wanted to post this stuff but never get around to it. The tools that I use to most of my development. It will change time to time. With each change I’ll make a new post and review my previous post.

The list.

1. Firefox 2
   
2. Selenium IDE (FF Add-On)
   
3. Firebug (FF Add-On)
4. MeasureIt (FF Add-On)
5. Komodo Edit 4.2
6. Notepad++ 4.6
7. Pixie
8. Hoversnap
9. Paint.NET
10. yEd
11. Subversion
12. Mantis Bug Tracker
    
13. and some few other stuffs
    

Most of the time, I’m on..

Firefox

well, sometimes I do my tests on IE6 and IE7 (No master,*whip sounds* I will test on IE6 and IE7, I’m sorry master. *cowers in fear*)

Firefox Add-Ons

Selenium IDE

This saves me alot of time and probably from Carpal Tunnel Syndrome when I have to test fucking huge forms. Argh!. Well, the forms could be divided into several steps but still, there’s lots of testing coming.

Web Developer

This is one of the tools crucial in my toolbox. View CSS, edit, view javascript, resize, outline and other stuffs important. I also use it to see how things are done. As words of old always say

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest. ~ Confucius

Which one would you choose? Most would probably choose the second one. But the truth is, the first is the most used with the Web Developer extension, you can’t just apply a hack or a script. You have to see how its done, and fits it accordingly. You reflect what other’s do into your work.

For example, long time ago when gandalf was still around, I tried to ignorantly and blindly combine Mootools and jQuery. They don’t play nice (maybe now they have resolved their differences and became best buddies, you have to find it out yourself). You have to choose one. One library to rule them all and make it consistent, damnit! Unless you want the next developer or maintenance developer to brutally murder you for choosing one too many library combinations.

Firebug

This is the most crucial tool in my toolbox. It is the heart (the brain is me of course) of my trade. I see dead people (sorry for the lame 6th Sense joke), xml requests, errors, javascript stuffs, element inspections and all of those kind of stuffs. I modify CSS on the fly through it, see which stylesheet and element get it styles from, detect overlapping styles and so much more.

MeasureIt

Instead of placing a ruler on my screen (no, I have never done it, but I think some folks out there do) or taking screen shots and measure it in an image editing program. I could just click and drag a box in my browser. It is that fucking SIMPLE!. Even though there are some third party application out there that does the same thing. This one really fits my Firefox puzzle in development.

Komodo Edit 4.2

This is new, quite new to me and I am thankful that I found it. Every 4-5 months, I went out to hunt an IDE that works best for me. Previously I used EasyEclipse (a variant of eclipse) for all my work. It works great and all but there’s some quirks with its autocomplete and the editor in general. It doesn’t indent to the column where its supposed to be in the next line when I press return. So anyway, its driving me nuts and I changed IDE.

Notepad++ 4.6

This is one of the most frequent application that I use. Not for main development but for quick edits. It works well and fast (quick edit need fast app, I dont want to wait for it to load). There’s a function list, hex editor, syntax highlighting, and many more. No autocomplete though (too overkill for this app, thats a job for Komodo Edit!).

Images & Colors

Pixie!

The best, although there’s other alternative out there. But this is just right. Its simple and minimalistic. It works. Very fast, but sometimes it gets kind of annoying when I open up an image editing program and some shortcuts overlap each other (e.g. Ctrl+Alt+Z).

Hoversnap

I use this a lot, to collect samples for ideas and references. There’s lots of interesting stuff out there in the web. This is my camera to immortalize it.

* While writing this I found some stuffs for this, 15 Ways to Create Website Screenshots.

Paint.NET

I use this time to time to crop images, adjust here and there. Not much, I don’t know much about image editing programs. I only use it for some basic needs.

Diagrams?

yEd

A nice graph editor. Can do lots of cool nifty diagrams and some cool effects for rearranging it too. Neat.

Revision Control!

SVN (Subversion)

I started using version control stuffs back on my first job. They use Visual Source Safe. I was curious about it, I looked into it and find alternatives (I always find alternatives to paid stuffs) and found out about all these CVS, Perforce and SVN. Proposed it to the company and was rejected (maybe my explanation didn’t tell much?) and used it quietly on my own for my projects.

Tracking Stuffs?

Mantis

This thing work great. Even though it might be overkill for the new freshmen but its powerful enough to do what I need it to do. I use it to track issues, requirements, email notifications of changes or new reports. The workflow, categories, assign user to projects, customization. Wonderful! The CSS is short and simple, no need to dive into CSS spaghetti bolognese. It can be integrated to an SVN repo. There’s a mod for it.

These are all that I can think of. If there’s something that I missed, I’ll include it in my next Tools of my trade post. If anyone might want to recommend something, feel free to leave suggestions in the comment. And I’ll try to look into it.

These are pretty much the general stuffs that I use. In the future it will change or should I say, evolve.

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