Creating and debugging web pages using XHTML and CSS isn’t as easy as it should be. I find myself jumping between my text editor, browser, and various other helpful tools. But, one thing that has made my life a whole lot easier is the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar. Its functional equivalent on Firefox is Chris Pederick’s Web Developer Extension. Microsoft just released Beta 2 of the IE Developer Toolbar. With Beta 2, they added a color eyedropper (for getting the exact color on a page), plus a few stability enhancements. If you are developing web pages with Visual Studio, you have to install this toolbar. It will make your life a whole lot easier. The DOM Tree view is worth the download all by itself (no more view source and trying to find the elements you are looking for). And, once you think you found the element in the DOM, select it, and the toolbar will outline it on the page for you (with Beta 2, it will even scroll it into view).
I can’t wait until Quartz goes beta, so I can get a real Web Designer. Hopefully the things that I love about the IE Toolbar are also included in it’s IDE.
The one thing that is missing from IE Toolbar has to do with CSS. Would someone please create a CSS debugging tool that will not only tell you all the CSS Attributes of an Element, but also which CSS Rule set that attribute. When working with someone else’s CSS design, it isn’t always easy to figure out which rule is has cascaded down to set an attribute.
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