FireBug is the Swiss army knife of web development gadgets: an extension for Mozilla Firefox that allows you to debug, edit, and monitor any website’s CSS, HTML, DOM and JavaScript; it also provides other web development tools [1]. It permits the logging of web pages, page error reporting, page inspection, AJAX request logging, and to top it all off - Live Page Editing.

It has wound up being one of the most useful utilities that I have at my web page development/surfing disposal. One of its most useful tricks is the HTML inspector (view screenshot). If you are ever on a page, and are curious about the layout or inner workings of the HTML, just open up FireBug, click on Inspect->HTML and navigate your mouse to the section that interests you. FireBug will highlight the HTML code you are curious about, and you can look at it in all its raw markup glory. You can use this to easily find out how a nifty feature, or a design or layout works-or even to figure out a way around a pesky pop-up JavaScript link when you want to just send a link to someone.

In fact, one of my favorite uses is, when developing DOM interactive JavaScript, I can easily find an object within the entire document. And once it’s found, I can do all the nifty JavaScript manipulation I need.
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Here in WA we are about to begin converting our database management system from Rapattoni to LAMPS. From some of the conversations I had at the Tech Directors Conference I’m curious to see how the process will play out.

I’d love to hear success stories, pitfalls, what to watch out for… anything that will let me peer into the world of LAMPS.

Of particular interest to me is LAMPS’ Website Manager. What kind of front-end code does it output? Is it XHTML? Does it pay attention to web standards? Will I have control of design and layout with CSS? If anyone can relate their experiences with this, I’d be eternally grateful.

What are your experiences, positive or negative, with LAMPS?

I must say I spend the vast majority of my day in Firefox which is probably the case for many web developer types out there. It is the de facto browser for development for a myriad of reasons… adherence to W3C standards (for the most part) being the biggest. But I think what gets me most excited about Firefox is the mind boggling array of add-ons available to developers. The foremost of which, in my opinion, is Chris Pedrick’s Web Developer Toolbar.

This add-on has so many amazing features that I will only introduce you to a few that I use regularly… ones that can save you huge amounts of time in debugging and help make your development cycle more efficient in general.

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Google’s App Engine is cool. Really cool. It’s not a revolutionary step for them, but rather another front in their march toward true “cloud” computing. In brief, let me explain what the Apps Engine is… Google has opened up their infrastructure to any developer who wants to create and host a web app on their servers. This removes the need for a developer to pay for servers, hosting, and setup of a LAMP/XAMPP environment. In my opinion, anything that lowers the barrier to entry in the delivery of services is a great thing.

So how does this move us toward cloud computing?
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So I don’t know about you but I do a lot of image editing and optimization in my everyday web development tasks. Typically, in times past, I’ve used Adobe Fireworks CS3 and Adobe Photoshop CS3 for these activities. I’m still a heavy Fireworks user (I just love the CS3 update) but sometimes I want to do some quick and dirty editing without having to deal with the overhead of a desktop app (Photoshop I’m looking at you!). Enter Picnik.

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