In an earlier post, Ryan posted a few links to some tools to help you increase productivity. Here is a similar list of development related tools that I simply cannot live without. In development, especially for AspDotNetStorefront, there are two tools which you absolutely must have in order to do any kind of extensive development in the .Net Framework.

1. Visual Studio Express Edition Visual Studio is an editor that will help you make modifications to any pages throughout your site. Visual Studio Express is absolutely free, as it is a lightweight version of Microsoft's Visual Studio. Visual Studio has many different Express options which are geared toward different types of development. Depending on what you're familiar with, you may choose a different version. If you're not sure, choose the Visual Web Developer Express edition.
2. SQL Server Express SQL Server Express is also free, as it is a lightweight version of SQL Server. With SQL Server Express, you can set up a new database, perhaps a copy of your AspDotNetStorefront database, and configure your application to use the new database on your local machine. This way, you can make changes to your site using Visual Studio, and you can see the changes locally, instead of making changes directly to your live site.

Beyond those two must-haves, there are several other tools I use on a daily basis:

• Firefox Generally, I do all of my initial skinning and development in Mozilla Firefox. We always test in all the top browsers before releasing code into the wild, but Firefox is my favorite browser to work in because of all of the great tools available.
• Firebug Firebug is a Firefox extension that helps enormously with debugging Javascript, CSS, and HTML issues. Because this is an add to to Firefox, you can easily use this tool to check errors and issues directly on the site you're browsing.
• Web Developer Toolbar
This nifty Firefox add-on is something I end up using every day, on every project. Installing this will add a toolbar to Firefox that provides a multitude of options. It also comes with handy keyboard shortcuts to enable and disable certain features. One of my favorites is the CSS View Style Information feature. You can activate this by selecting it from your toolbar, or by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Y on your keyboard. When activated, a red border will appear around certain elements on the page, and the red border will follow your mouse movement. Once you've highlighted an area you want more detail on, clicking will open up a pane in the bottom of your browser window and give you all of the CSS styles that are associated with that element. Another great tool with this add-on is the resize window feature, which allows you to resize your browser window to different dimensions with a single click. You can set your own dimensions so you can always have the dimensions you like to test in readily available in a dropdown menu.

These tools allow efficient AspDotNetStorefront Development and Customization for your online store.

Tags: code, Coder's Corner, coding, coding environment, debugging, developer tools

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 10:30 am and is filed under Coder's Corner, Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.