I recently had my desktop PC give up the ghost, thanks to a burned out mother board, hence my lack of posts for the last bit. Happening just 2 weeks before I started up my company and a new contract job with a new, unfamiliar technology, this added a stress meatball to my already very full plate of technology spaghetti.

However, if there was ever a good time for a computer to fail, it was probably now.  As a freelancing web developer I was going to need to get mobile, with my "office" being where ever I happen to be that day, so this was a perfect opportunity to pick up a laptop.

It's always both frustrating/refreshing to get a new computer. You've gotta reinstall all your apps, maybe find alternatives if they no longer run on the new OS, dig up serial keys, update drivers.  But you're also forced to take a good hard look at you document structure and the programs you've been hanging onto but not using.

Here's my second post in this "toolkit/workflow" series, featuring my favourite Firefox add-ons.

Web Development

Firebug: The web's best javascript/DOM/css debugger and code explorer. I can't remember what life was like before Firebug.  Whatever it was, it was primitive, dark, full of weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Firecookie: Handy add on to Firebug to help you manage site cookies, be it exploring, deleting or creating on the fly.

Drupal for Firebug: great tool that helps you tear apart what Drupal is doing under the hood with its content and themeing.  Some people prefer Devel, but I think the processing overhead for that module sometimes isn't worth it, and Drupal for Firebug gives me all I need.

I thought I'd kick off this site with a post on my current toolkit.  This is something I had meant to do back in January, as a summary of all the tools, applications and websites from the past year that made my job and life easier.  Some of this stuff I discovered in 2010, but I kept the list updated with 2011 discoveries as time went on and this site got further delayed.

There's a few posts in this series, ranging from iPhone apps to Firefox Add-ons, but we'll start with web dev tools and text editors.