Firefox Extension: FireBug

I’ve recently started working with a lot of JavaScript and CSS and trying to basically follow a complex solution to simplify my life (does that make sense?)

One of the tools which I’ve found to be absolutely invaluable for this is a free Firefox extension called “FireBug”.

You can do everything from DOM inspection to viewing a live JS console, CSS inspection, etc. And of course, the price is right too!

I’ve been using it with the Yahoo! UI library on the front-end UI driven on the back end by Perl/Mod Perl (perlrun) w/Template Toolkit. Not the easiest environment to debug, but this makes it a whole lot easier. Try <script> console.log(“message”); </script> or, if you’re using the Yahoo toolkit -> <script> YAHOO.log(“message”); </script>.

FireBug is available from Mozilla.org at https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1843/

Install, develop, be happy.

Until next time…
Trevor

My Rating: 4/5 (will probably call this one a 5/5 once I learn more about how to use it!)

Find and Run Robot

The first tool I’d like to bring attention to is a great little desktop application called “Find and Run Robot” from DonationCoder.com. This is a wonderful little freeware/donationware application which will speed up navigation of your desktop considerable. It sits silently in the system tray waiting for a key combo (Ctrl-Space by default, although I always enable Alt-Space as well) at which time it pops up the window below.

Simply start typing the name of the application you wish to run (firefox, for example) and it will search your start menu, desktop and any other folders you’ve defined. A list of options will start filling the box – weighted by a score based on frequency of use and pre-defined rules. Hit enter to run the first app in the window, or ALT-NUM to run any of the apps (by number).If you get tired of hunting around your desktop and start menu and clicking on endlessly nested menus – this is the solution. I can get to 99% of the applications I use daily with a simply hotkey and 2 or 3 characters of the name.

Find and Run Robot is free from donationcoder.com. You’ll need to join their forums for a free license key, or make a donation if you prefer not to join the forums.

My Rating: 5/5

Introduction

Welcome to my Toys4Techs blog. I will be covering tools and toys to make your life both easier, and a lot more fun.