Portable Apps

Hi Developers!

Today about portable apps. These are the applications that can be installed on removable memory sources like memory cards or pendrives.
Why are they useful? What's the benefits of using them? How can they aid in web design?
They are useful because on most of occasions they are lightweight and self contained. These are usually very useful simple editors, but also antivirus software, browsers, mail clients, etc.
Benefits of using them are: first of all they leaves no marks in system's register so they surely won't affect the functionality of the existing configuration and therefore they will probably work without problems (everything however depends on the system hardware requirements); second: they allow to bring whatever you do to the environment where some of the functionality required is not available, for example when you are given a new computer with nothing on it you still can have your toolkit with you. Third: you can take it anywhere and use it anywhere.
Aid for web design is therefore simple: you can always have your office, your e-mails, messages, pages, servers, editors, code, websites always with you.
So is it fully bulletproof?
Of course not. You can always forget your memory key (although it is your fault and not the portable apps nor your pendrive!).
And sometimes applications tends to freeze and generally are working slower due to limited transfer posed by USB itself.

Two great pages with portable apps are:

PortableApps.com

and

PendriveApss.com


See you soon Developers!

Web Developer Toolbar

Hi Developers!

Now here is a nice piece of browser plugin that works best to my mind with Firefox. Essentially it adds a new toolbar with some cool and unique tools for web design.

Here's a short briefing of what it can do and how it can help you debug the websites:

1. disable all styles -> it allows you to quickly specify whether the problem that you are encountering is of css nature or not;


2. inspect element style -> allows to see what style is associated with given element (I recommend firebug for that purpose - I will write about it soon) 


3. clear cookies -> it happens all the time that even though you have made and saved the change, after refreshing the page still looks the same - it's due to chache which is a browser memory; it can hold the older versions of the page browsed recently (to make it loading quickly since it is frequently watched/read) 


4. forms management -> allows to clear fields, add new and trace the forms 


5. images -> allows to mess around with size of the images, backgrounds, etc. 


6. information -> allows to get specific info about tags, like div size, etc. 


7. disable -> allows to disable various elements like JavaScript, Cache, popups, proxies, etc. 


8. edit CSS and HTML 


9. outline various elements 


10. resize elements 


11. view page source (very usefull but most browsers has it built-in) 


12. validate page source 


13. most importantly I guess it has a function called Ruller. It is really handy. This feature allows to create a resizable box with given dimensions that can be changed. It helps a lot with measuring how much space a div for example should take... 

Strictly speaking this plugin on it's own is a quite comprehensive solution but it suits better for debugging than for web design itself. Yet some of it's functions are unique and the biggest advantage of it is that it has all these functions "under one roof" and very easily accessible. It is definitely a must-have for a web design individuals.

 See you soon!