…and it’s a plugin for Firefox: Firebug. I’ve been catching the buzz all over the design blog feeds I read daily, and I have been using it to develop this site, but I didn’t decide to link to it until I saw the developer’s screencast. I’ve barely been scratching the surface of its functionality.
For those of us who need to test web sites on multiple browsers: How to Install Two Versions of IE (IE6 and IE7) on One Machine: “While it’s not easy to install (there are 19 steps) and there are some gotchas (the hard drive image Microsoft provides expires on April 1, 2007), this is still a less expensive way to test your creations on IE 6 while taking advantage of all the changes in IE 7.”
It would seem my only other options are to nuke Ubuntu Linux off my old AthlonXP machine and reinstall Windows 2000 Pro, or make my old machine an Ubuntu/Win2kPro dual boot machine.
Update: go straight to the source.
Wake up and smell the IE7!: “Put simply, if you’re using JavaScript or server-side logic to serve different styles to different browsers, you need to make sure that you’re not inadvertently excluding IE7.”
Stupid htaccess Tricks: “Apache server software provides distributed (i.e., directory-level) configuration via Hypertext Access files. These .htaccess files enable the localized fine-tuning of Apache’s universal system-configuration directives, which are defined in Apache’s main configuration file. The localized .htaccess directives must operate from within a file named .htaccess. ”
If you care about standards in web design, regularly use a feedreader and run a blog or other site that is frequently updated, this XHTML Validator to RSS widget by Ben Hammersley could be invaluable. I never remember (and frankly don’t want to have to remember) to validate my blog every time I post something. I used Ben’s widget to set up a feed on my Google homepage (rather than Google Reader). Thankfully there are only three errors which I’ll fix later. I can envision grabbing the Perl source code, installing it on my own server and setting up a feed for each of my clients’ web sites that I maintain.