Web Developer Add Ons for IE Explorer and Firefox

For small business owners who prefer do-it-yourself website design, the design tools reviewed here will help you analyze your site and debug defective code much easier. These toolbars take up very little space on your browser, and the one button code validation to W3C standards for HTML or CSS is invaluable.

I highly recommend that novice website designers download the free web developer toolbars for either FireFox or Internet Explorer linked below. These tools allow you to view your website design by blocks of code, tables, divs, etc, or disable CSS or images to see how things change.

The one click access to online validation services for html, xhtml, css, and accessibility is a great timesaver. The code validation may be done for online website html files or those stored on your local computer which saves more time.

Specifying color, or just identifying the html code used may be done easily with the color picker tool in FF or IE. This allows you to identify the RGB or Hexadecimal values that may be useful in creating grahics or adjusting colors specified in your html code. Downloads are free and may be found here:

• FireFox Web Developer Toolbar download
• Microsoft IE DOM Explorer Toolbar download

One of my favorite tools in the FireFox toolbar is the “Display Ruler” located under miscellaneous. This allows you to instantly measure various elements on any page you visit with a grid pattern and x-y dimensions in pixels, plus actual x-y coordinates for web page positioning.

The Netscape Add Ons page information states that most of the latest FireFox extensions are compatible and may be installed on Netscape, so although I haven’t tried, you may want that option if you prefer Netscape.

HTML and CSS Validation Websites

To manually validate CSS use this W3C CSS Validator. For HTML code validation use wither W3CSchool’s HTML Validator or the Use this W3 HTML Validator.

Take Screenshots of Entire Webpages With Screengrab

The ScreenGrab Add on for Firefox allows you to take a screenshot of an entire webpage without having to scroll up and down, piecing it together.

Help for Website Designers with Code Problems

Although our core business is custom website design for small business, website designers with problems are welcome to contact us about services for code repair. Our website designs are done in a word processor by hand coding in XHTML and CSS, so if you use software to generate HTML code that has problems, we can help with code repair.

For assistance in solving code problems, please contact us by email for a prompt reply and a quotation for the solution.