Ishmael’s Blog

At work, I do a lot of website tweaking, and I used to update stylesheets on my desktop, and upload them via ftp to see the changes. This was tedious, typically because many times, I did not write the stylesheet, and was only making minor changes to it. It was a lot of trial and error, to say the least.

Then I found out about a Firefox extension called “Web Developer Toolbar.” I had previously heard of it, and wanted to stay away from it, just because I thought what I was doing was simple, and that this tool couldn’t possible help me in the way I wanted. This was until I read that it could edit CSS in realtime. It allows you to edit HTML, highlight or label divs or other page elements, and more. It has become an indispensable tool for me.

At the same time, I had heard of Firebug (a similar extension), but never tried it because the other tool had worked so well, and I didn’t need two of them. Boy, was I missing out. I just installed Firebug, and with only a few clicks, it amazed me. Content was highlighted when I moused over a section of editable HTML, which was very well structured, properly displaying the tabs. I only used it for a few minutes, but it looks incredibly promising.

I will post back in a few days, after I try it out some more. I’m extremely excited to play with it.