/dev/null [tony lombardo]

Anything and everything ASP.NET and more. Expect to see tips and tricks, opinions on new technology, and fun code samples, along with the occasional rant.
'Must Have' Tools for Developers

If you do web development, you know that there's an easy way and a hard way to do just about anything.  We spend so much time just trying to 'get it done' sometimes, that we don't have a chance to see what tools are available to help.  I'm going to list a few tools that I use almost daily, and I think it would be great if you could add comments with additional tools that you find valuable.   

Developer Tools

  • .NET Reflector - Lutz Roeder has made my life exponentially easier.  If you have ever used ILDASM, you know how difficult it can sometimes be to browse though a compiled assembly.  Reflector makes browsing through any assembly an enjoyable task.  With goodies like the ability to find all callers and callees of a given method or property, reflector has earned its way to the top of my developer tools list.
  • IE Developer Toolbar - This Internet Explorer addin is pure gold for anyone working with CSS, or trying to figure out positioning, etc.  The latest version allows you to see ALL css rules that the browser is applying to a give element, showing you exactly why your div has a 2 pixel margin that you don't remember setting.. 
  • WebDevHelper - Another Internet Explorer addin, this tool allows you to trace HTTP request/responses, and even has a handy JS debugger window.  Additionally, the latest version has a JS class viewer as well as an UpdatePanel 'decoder' which is capable of decoding the primitive update panel messages.  I like using this tool to quickly show which JS files, images, and stylesheets are being loaded, and from where.  It's a perfect way to find out if you have 'missing' resources - just look for the 404
  • Firebug - We all know that Internet Explorer isn't the only browser out there, so why should we limit our debugging to IE only?  Firebug is an extremely useful DOM inspector and JS Debugger for Firefox.  It combines the debugging power of VS2005 along with the DOM inspecting of the IE Developer Toolbar. 

Blogging Tools

  • Windows Live Writer - A smart client app, which is capable of posting to all of the major blogging engines out there.  It has built in functionality for inserting tags, and maps, and makes marking up your text a snap.  I've been using it for a while now, and don't plan on going back to the web interface I used to use.
  • Copy Source As HTML - This wonderful utility makes posting code to your blog a snap!  It copies code snippets out of VS2005 and keeps formatting and coloring.  I've been using it for a few months now, and it really has made my life easier, and my blogs more readable.

Misc

  • Snagit - I always thought print screen and mspaint was the easiest way to do screenshots.  I was wrong.. A few of my co-workers used to pass around annotated screen grabs almost daily.  I wondered how they were so efficient at it - and how they drew their lines so straight!  The answer was Snagit.

One of the tools I'm still on the market for is a nice Regular Expression Builder.  I've been using RegEx Workbench lately, and found it to be pretty useful - perhaps you know of something better or want to 'vouch for it'?   

Posted: 15 Aug 2007, 11:34

Comments

Jeff said:

One of the tools that is used around here the most is SnagIt. Testers have it open from the minute they come in to work, and it makes life easier when they have to send screenshots to me.

Even Camtasia from the same company is used a lot, I use it to record issues in the software that a user is having but can't explain or I don't believe them :-).  

Now about Lutz Roeder .NET Reflector, I have used it but at the top of your list? I have used it to make sure that the compiled assembly is obfuscated but that’s about it. How often are you browsing through a compiled assembly? Are these assemblies of your own (Company) and if so do you not have the source code to look through? I know you mentioned that you use it to find all callers and callees of a given method or property, but can you not do that in the source?

The other thing that I wonder is what bug tracking system people are using, we currently use OnTime. I found for the value it’s the best, but there could be more I haven’t looked at.

# August 15, 2007 1:12 PM

Tony Lombardo said:

The source tracing inside of VS.NET works well when you're inside of a single project, but it can't handle multiple libraries.  I also have come to love Reflector's inheritance tree that shows all classes derived from a given class or interface - from multiple assemblies!

If you're obfuscating your code, Reflector is going to be pretty useless, but for unobfuscated code it's a time and life saver.

# August 15, 2007 2:01 PM

Tony Lombardo said:

Matt - I was just about to post your comment, and I accidentally deleted it with the 10 other spam comments.  Would you mind reposting the comment?

In case Matt doesn't have a chance to, he commented on how he uses Expresso - a shareware regex builder.

# August 16, 2007 11:24 AM

Matt said:

Hi,

Yeah I use Expresso any time I need to build Regular Expressions. I happened to come across it from a Codeproject article on a 30 minute introduction to regular expressions as I was new to them at the time and the article included using this program so whenever I need to create and test one I write I'll just use that. I haven't really used any of the other RegEx builders so I can't compare how well it stands up to others.

Just some other tools I would use, One would certainly be Lutz Roeder's reflector. Sometimes I find it's just quicker to open an assembly with it and browse than opening Visual Studio that may contain 30+ projects against sourcesafe.

I use a freeware screen capture application instead of snagit. It's called MWSnap but would certainly not be as elaborate as Snagit but then it is free. But when I want to grab a piece of the screen quickly I can just hit the Keyboard accelerator and mouse drag my region.

One last tool I'll mention is red-gate ANTS Profiler. I will use this tool on new versions of the software we build to track down any memory leaks or performance issues and find it to be a very useful application that's helped me identify both those problems numerous times.

# August 18, 2007 5:39 AM

ThirstyMind said:

For RegEx development, Expresso is the best.  There is no better product available yet. It is available at http://www.ultrapico.com/Expresso.htm

# August 23, 2007 5:58 PM

David McClelland said:

Also, Scott Hanselman posted his updated-for-2007 "Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows":

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2007UltimateDeveloperAndPowerUsersToolListForWindows.aspx

# September 19, 2007 11:51 AM
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