Tools

Here are a few tools I’ve stumbled upon on my trips across the net, these should serve to make your life easier. If there are any tools you just can’t live without, let me know and I’ll add them to the list.

Web Related

Fiddler
So far, this little gadget has proved itself quite valuable. Being able to see just what’s going on behind the scene is a must for web developers. It the short time I’ve used it, it’s quickly climbed my list of favorites.

MZ-Tools
This is the only IDE add-in I actively use - it’s the only one I need. This covers all the features that Microsoft left out. It’s well worth the money, just go buy it. You’ll be happy you did.

CentralOps
This is one of the fairly few web sites you’ll see here. This site includes a number of tools, such as whois, DNS lookups, e-mail validation & information, you name it. This has been one of my favorites for some time, it’s really a very useful resource.

InstaCalc
This is a great concept, very simple online calculator with some really interesting features. My favorite is that fact it’s shareable, you can create permalinks to your results, I really like this idea.

Everything Else

evalTray
I’ve written a small utility that may be of some use to VB developers (or anyone familiar with VB or VBScript). This is basically a wrapper for the Microsoft Script Control’s Eval() method, the idea being to test simple lines of code or quick math tasks. Also included are a few wrappers to functions included in the .NET Framework.

NirCmd
This is a handy little command-line tool that can adjust certain settings just by calling a simple command. Very useful for simple tasks such as muting the system sound via a desktop icon. Simple, but has proved itself useful.

Taskbar Shuffle
I tend to be a bit picky about the layout of the Taskbar; I like certain windows in certain places, like Outlook is always the first window, Opera is always the third. Keeping things in the same place makes it a lot easier to find the window you are after on a crowded desktop. The problem with this is that there is no way to move items, you have to close everything and start over. Enter Taskbar Shuffle, this is a simple, no non-sense program to enable drag & drop on the taskbar. Best of all, it’s free. Highly recommended.

SysInternals Suite
This full Microsoft SysInternals utility collection rolled into a single download. This is a must, no other way to put it.

More on the way

I’ll be adding more as I dig through my collection and write up the (short) reviews.