Five must have developer tools

28 April 2009

Here are my five must have developer tools (mostly for Firefox) - I'm sure there others that are also useful, but here goes.

Developer toobar

Quite probably my most used tool - there almost everything you need, from disabling javascript, style and cookies to outlining elements on the page. Very useful and a must have!

Get it here

Firebug and Y-Slow

I use Firebug mainly for debugging JavaScript - as you can easily see where errors are. That said, it's a mighty fine DOM inspector as well

Get it here

HTML Tidy

A good way to quickly check for valid mark up, telling you which lines have errors, and what they are.

For some reason, the mac version isn't on the Firefox addons page, but you can download it here. For Windows, click here.

MeasureIt

Does exactly what it says on the tin. Not something I use too regularly, but especially handy when picking up someone else's code.

Download it.

Multiple IE/IE Tester

Probably a surprise choice as I've said on this site that IE6 users should not be allowed on the internet. But for commercial website, everyone should get the same experience, especially those in businesses where they're locked to IE6 for some reason.

IE Tester incorporates a number of IE browsers in one. Quite a good bit of kit, and save spending money on Microsofts Web Superpreview (although a full version of this is meant to be able to support all Windows based browsers!).

My preference though, is Multiple IE - standalone versions of each browser, going all the way back to IE 3 (should you need to!). I have come across an issue where by installing IE8 seems to stop forms being used in the standalone versions, but even just from a layout perspective, a great bit of software.