ischroeder.com

Web Developer

This is one of the most powerful Firefox plugins you will find.  It's a web developer's swiss army knife.  I will list a few of the functions, but I definitely won't do this tool justice.

• Easily adjust your browser window to see what a page looks like under different screen resolutions.
• Disable a page's Javascript
• Disable or edit a page's CSS directly in your browser
• Superimpose your own style sheet onto a page
• View important form element information (name, id, etc.).
• Modify form element settings (enable disabled form elements, uncheck radio buttons, etc).
• Validate the page with a wide array of options (CSS validation, HTML, WAI, etc.).
• Display a huge amount of page information

If you don't have it installed, stop reading right now and go grab it.

phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin is a user-friendly web based database administation tool.  It allows you to do almost anything you would do from a traditional MySQL command line client.  However, allowing you to create and modify tables, data, and user privileges from a web browser is only the tip of the iceburg.  You can perform common tasks that almost every web developer will find themselves doing on a routine basis, such as exporting a result set to a PDF file.  All of these features come packed with an intuitive, easy to user interface.

You will find this tool installed on almost any shared hosting enviroment.  It also comes as an optional install within most WAMP packages (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl).  One thing you should note about this tool: it should be secured with a proper firewall and Apache configuration settings.  I recommend locking access down to your local subnet by using Apache's mod_access and a proper firewall.  Many google hacking search strings have exposed many vulnerable phpMyAdmin installs, don't fall into that trap.