The following is a collection of some useful cost-free tools for web developers.
You wouldn't publish a book without spell-checking it, and you shouldn't publish a webpage without validating it. The following tools will scan your page and give a detailed summary of the errors they find.
- CSS Validator
developed by the same organization that created and standardized the CSS language, is the most used and most reliable CSS validator available. It's a free and open source web-based tool that will scan your CSS source and explain any lexical or syntactic errors it finds. - HTML Validator
developed by the same organization that standardized the HTML language, is the most used and most reliable HTML validator available. It's a free and open source web-based tool that will scan your HTML or XHTML source and explain any lexical, syntactic, or structural errors it finds. - Link Checker
developed by the same organization that standardized the HTML and HTTP languages, is a free and open source web-based tool that will scan your website and report any broken links it finds, as well as other relevant information. You may specify an arbitrary number of pages deep to check. - Link Checker
developed by the same organization that standardized the HTML and HTTP languages, is a free and open source web-based tool that will scan your website and report any broken links it finds, as well as other relevant information. You may specify an arbitrary number of pages deep to check.
Here are some useful web development extensions for the Mozilla Firefox web browser.
- ColorZilla
is a little tool that sits in your statusbar and offers an eyedropper, color picker, and rudimentary full-page zoom settings. It's useful for quickly grabbing and comparing colors on a webpage. The full-page zoom settings resize the text and images, but backgrounds and other stylistic aspects are left the same. - ColorZilla
is a little tool that sits in your statusbar and offers an eyedropper, color picker, and rudimentary full-page zoom settings. It's useful for quickly grabbing and comparing colors on a webpage. The full-page zoom settings resize the text and images, but backgrounds and other stylistic aspects are left the same. - Firebug
made by the creator of the DOM Inspector, is a powerful and easy-to-use tool for debugging scripts. It includes three main features: a console which lists errors and allows you to execute any arbitrary JavaScript code at any time in the scope of the webpage itself; a debugger which shows you all of the JavaScript source with errors highlighted; and an inspector which allows you to navigate the page's DOM, element styles, computed layout, and associated events.
Here are some useful web development add-ons for the Internet Explorer web browser.
- Developer Toolbar
developed by Microsoft, is the closest thing you'll get to Firefox's Web Developer extension and DOM Inspector in Internet Explorer. It was clearly designed to be familiar to people who have used the Web Developer extension, with most of the same features organized in the same way. It doesn't yet offer live CSS and HTML editing, arguably the most useful features in the Web Developer extension, but it does have a DOM inspector (also modeled after the Firefox equivalent) and an eyedrop color picker, though it doesn't yet have a spectrum color picker. The Developer Toolbar is available for Internet Explorer 6 and 7 with no cost.
Use the technology!!!