Brennan’s Blog

Web Development Tools for the Power Developer (Revised)

April 2nd, 2007

Six months ago I wrote Web Development Tools for the Power Developer which covered the progress that has been made with tools for web development. It got picked up by a few popular websites and through the various comments I learned about a few additional tools I did not know about previously. The two most useful bits that I found were Firebug and jQuery.

You can see the power of Firebug and jQuery in a demo by John Resig which I have leveraged heavily since I have seen the video. I used his example to pick apart some effects used by the ASP.NET AJAX Toolkit as shown in my own video. And now my newest website, LinkMindr.com, is using jQuery as the main engine for the key functionality. Look at the source and you will be surprised that the Javascript running the website is under 40 lines of my own hand written Javascript especially for what it does.

Below is the revised list.

Tools and Debuggers

Firebug (Highly Recommended)
Web Developer Extension for Firefox
Debugging Javascript in Visual Studio 2005
Web Development Helper for IE/ASP.NET
Developer Toolbar for MSIE

Javascript

jQuery
jQuery Plugins (JSON, Effects, etc)
Prototype Javascript Framework (Improved Documentation)
Script.aculo.us
Yahoo! JavaScript Developer Center
Javascript Lint

Validators

Websites/Content

Pro Javascript Techniques by John Resig (Excellent Book)
A List Apart
Position Is Everything
Quirks Mode
WaSP
CSS Zen Garden
CSS Crib Sheet
Yahoo! Browser Grade Chart

ASP.NET

Blogs

John Resig's Blog (jQuery, Firefox, Javascript)
Dean Edward's Blog (Javascript)
Scott Guthrie's Blog (.NET)
Nikhil Kothari's Blog (.NET)
Identity Weblog

Proxy Tools

Am I missing anything? Please post your additions in the comments below.