My Monkey Do

A Log of Coding Solutions

Tools

TrueCrypt

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TrueCrypt is an amazing free open source tool that allows you to encrypt files very easily.  Anyone can do it as long as you can remember your password.  It acts like another drive on your computer so you can view edit and delete the files as if it’s a normal drive.  Any files copied into the “drive” gets encrypted on the fly.  Once you’re done with the files you can dismount the drive and that’s it.  Best of all you can transfer the “drive” from a Mac to a PC without any hiccups.

Usage

I have company passwords that I share with a few other people.  Some are on Macs, some are on PC.  We don’t have an intranet or local server so what we do is we store all of our passwords in a TrueCrypt file which is stored on Google Docs.  That way all of us have access to it and if the file were to be compromised the file would be of no use without the file’s password.

So my typical usage of this is:

  1. Download the TrueCrypt file from Google Docs
  2. Open TrueCrypt
  3. Select the file in TrueCrypt
  4. Click a button and type in the password.
  5. View/edit/whatever to the files within what appears as another drive.
  6. Click on Dismount when done.
  7. Reupload the TrueCrypt file to Google Docs.

Looks like a lot of steps, but I just listed out each and every button press.  Anyway if you want to know more, you can head on to TrueCrypt’s website.

Firebug

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I don’t know how I used to develop web pages before Firebug.  It is the single best tool you can have when debugging a webpage.  If something doesn’t look right I open Firebug and find out what styles are being inherited.  If some javascript functionality is not working I open Firebug and enter debug statements.   If some ajax call is messing up and the page isn’t showing the response correctly, I open Firebug.

Installation

The best thing about Firebug is how much time it saves you on debugging.  Even better than it being free.  That’s a lot considering how I watch my money.   I only use Firebug with Firefox.  It can be downloaded at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/firebug/.  What’s good is that it’s available on both Mac and PC.   Just click on the Add to Firefox button and it’s mostly done for you.  That easy.  A firebug was also developed for IE but I haven’t tried it recently.  I tried it a couple years ago and it didn’t help me very much so I stuck with just using the Firefox one.

CSS

When you need to see why an item on a webpage is not showing as its supposed to you can right click on it and select “Inspect Element”.  Doing this opens up the firebug window and it will tell you exactly what styles are being applied to it and what styles have been overwritten.  You can even change the values of anything you want to see the outcome in real-time.

Javascript

Browsers can tell you the last error code that happened, but firebug can let you watch expressions, look at the stack, insert breakpoints, and print out statements in the console.

Request / Response

Any and all requests to the server can be inspected on the Net tab.  You can see each javascript include file, each image, each ajax request.  This means that if an ajax call goes wrong, you can inspect the parameters that were sent and the response the page got back from that request.  It makes debugging a breeze.

Firebug can be downloaded here: http://getfirebug.com/

Edit Plus

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EditPlus is a text editor, HTML editor, PHP editor, Java editor and Hex Viewer for Windows. While it can serve as a good Notepad replacement, it also offers many powerful features for Web page authors and programmers.

– http://www.editplus.com

I have been using this editor since starting to program back in 2001.  This editor has met all my needs and wants.  I have not found any other editor that has all of the following features:

  • Ctrl-click – highlights the whole word
  • Right click on a file and have the option of opening it in Edit Plus
  • Simple FTP setup and connection
  • Easy syntax highlighting plugins
  • Word/character change case/etc
  • Brace highlighting
  • Starts up in 1 second or less.
  • Efficient Find All in files.
  • Free*

[typography  size=”10″ size_format=”px”]*technically it is not a free editor, but the 30 day trial expiration does not prevent you from using it over 30 days.  I will pay them some day…. Note: newer versions may not allow this.[/typography]

One of the best features that is in Edit Plus is the Find All in files.  This feature is in many other editors, but the speed of this feature in Edit Plus stands out.  When tracing new code you want to be able to find specific words in many files as fast as possible.  Edit Plus allows you to do this without having to break your train of thought.

Another feature that stands out is the Ctrl-click feature.  This is also available in MS SQL Management Studio.  Holding down the control button while clicking on a word highlights the whole word.  When you need to copy paste a word, you simply hold down ctrl, click, click to your destination, press v (ctrl-v).  The alternative would be double-click, click to your destination, press ctrl-v.  Not very different, but if you copy-paste frequently, it makes a big difference.