ThemeShaper Forums » Thematic

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Useful tools

(37 posts)
  • Started 13 years ago by Chris
  • Latest reply from cannobbio
  • This topic is not a support question
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  1. Chris
    Moderator

    Hi,

    this thread contains tools that we recommend for Theme / Child Theme development.

    Chris

    Posted 13 years ago #

  2. Chris
    Moderator

    View Source Chart

    This is a nice add-on for Firefox that will format the source view.

    - quickly scan and identify the types of tags a document contains without reading a single tag
    - see how deeply nested an element is, just by looking to its left (no scrolling)
    - identify the ancestor tag types an element is nested within, without having to scroll and read them

    .. and it helps you to find tags without content or tags that are not closed.

    Posted 13 years ago #

  3. em hr
    Moderator

    Coda ( Mac only... sorry )

    I started out using TextWrangler excellent text editor and FREE to boot; but about a year ago I bought Coda and haven't regretted it one bit.

    Coda combines text-editor/ftp/svn/terminal/browser/css-editor/reference books It's extensible with plugin/code snippet support. I don't particularly care for the browser and css parts but the rest of the features well make up for the parts I dont like. My only wish is that there was a WordPress syntax mode plugin for autofilling commonly typed core functions and tags.

    The part that is priceless is the ability to close a window on a project and the next time I come back to it to return to all the open docs I was working on when I put it away the last time.

    Posted 13 years ago #

  4. Chris
    Moderator

    MPSOFTWARE - phpDesigner

    It took me some time to find a good PHP editor for Windows that offered all needed features to work on a project.

    For answering support questions I use NOTEPAD++.

    Posted 13 years ago #

  5. oscar
    Member

    This tool can not miss, web developer, a gorgeous addon, just for Firefox.

    http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/

    Success and Good Jobs for all,

    oscar

    Posted 13 years ago #

  6. em hr
    Moderator

    Since a lot of the questions around here are easily solved with css. Here's an introduction to specificity that people of all CSS skill levels and Star Wars fandom will enjoy.

    CSS Specificity Wars

    Posted 13 years ago #

  7. theorib
    Member

    Hosting Wordpress/Thematic Locally

    For those of you who want to develop in the comfort of your home computer but hosting your Wordpress/Thematic installation locally, Apache Friend's XAMPP is probably one of the easiest ways of running an Apache server locally for both Mac OS X, Linux and Windows.

    You can use it to run the famous 5-minute-Wordpress-installation and start developing with Thematic right away!

    Definitely worth checking!

    Theo

    Posted 13 years ago #

  8. jrobben
    Member

    FireBug
    Could not do anything without this - firebug - addon to firefox, the inspect element feature is the one of the best free troubleshooting and trial and error tools for css and other problems

    Posted 13 years ago #

  9. tinynow
    Member

    MAMP is a tool that I use to run wordpress on my home computer. I assume it does similar things than XAMPP.

    Posted 13 years ago #

  10. jrobben
    Member

    If you have IE8 installed make sure you have developer tools add on install so you can easily view page in IE7 mode

    Posted 13 years ago #

  11. joeangelo
    Member

    Yeah IE's dev. tools helped me a lot but it only goes back up to IE7.

    There's also IE Tester that mimics IE versions 5.5 to 8.

    Posted 13 years ago #

  12. folette
    Member

    CSS Edit and Espresso by MacRabbit are amazing. CSS Edit blows my mind all over the place, especially the x-ray mode (kind of like the element selection in Firebug but oh-so-much better!).

    Posted 13 years ago #

  13. helgatheviking
    Moderator

    Seconding Notepad++ as a text-editor. It is free and the syntax highlighting helps track down missing squigglies.

    Also can we make firebug a sticky post on its own? Or at least a sticky addressed to people with CSS issues. Of course there are some confusing CSS issues (like the menu etc) but the majority of CSS-related questions can be answered w/ a few seconds of pointing in Firebug (or equivalent).

    Posted 12 years ago #

  14. Robo
    Member

    On Mac: MAMP is great. CSSEdit for CSS and BBEdit for editing, with FTP built in.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  15. O
    Member

    I use Firebug Firefox Plugin. I <3 it.
    I also use EditPad
    And I use textreplacer.exe which searches & or replaces inside text files

    Posted 12 years ago #

  16. rawsta
    Member

    i love PSpad (www.pspad.com) for many reasons...
    it is the perfect nearly-all-in-one tool for me.

    Opera (and the built-in Dragonfly (like extended Firebug))
    superfast and reliable browser which works out-of-the-box without 64612543extensions

    browsershots.org (for browser-compatibility check)

    Posted 12 years ago #

  17. yannibmbr
    Member

    For Windows peeps IEtester http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage has been invaluable for me. It allows you to test all versions of IE, from 5.5 and beyond. Tabbed browsers and such. It's a really solid dev tool for testing Internet Eggsploder.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  18. joperron
    Member

    On OS X:

    Coda, CSSEdit and Transmit.

    Some people think it's strange I build mockups in InDesign... but I'm a big fan of it's Smart Guides... I guess it's my print background showing itself timidly :)

    Posted 12 years ago #

  19. relequestual
    Member

    XRefresh. You save a file, it refreshes your browser page. No more loosing focus of your text editor to click refresh in your browser to see the effect of the changes you just made.
    http://xrefresh.binaryage.com/

    Posted 12 years ago #

  20. andrewlloyd
    Member

    hello there!
    Nice site!

    Posted 12 years ago #

  21. andrewlloyd
    Member

    and useful too!

    Posted 12 years ago #

  22. helgatheviking
    Moderator

    Chris has a really helpful visualization of the action hooks on his site. i had never seen it before today!

    http://visualizing.thematic4you.com/

    Posted 12 years ago #

  23. Jonny Janiero
    Member

    not so much a tool, but if using a PC and dreamweaver cs4, the snippets function is handy to store all the available hooks, filters and overrides.
    it speeds things up for me (instead of cut and paste).

    you can import these, so, if anyone requires them i'll email you the file.
    jonny (at) janiero (dot) co (dot) uk

    Posted 12 years ago #

  24. Thompson
    Member

    On Mac OS X, my favorites:

    TextWrangler (for XHTML and PHP, free)
    Cyberduck (FTP/SFTP, free)
    CSSEdit (for CSS obviously, but not free) - nicer than text wrangler for CSS b/c it 'intelligently' finishes statements for you, saving time
    And MAMP too for developing locally. (free)

    Posted 12 years ago #

  25. kwight
    Member

    It's a great time-saver to be able to search a single term within multiple files/folders (useful for finding which Thematic file has a certain function, etc).

    I use this plugin for Gedit on Linux:

    http://oliver.github.com/gedit-file-search/

    Posted 12 years ago #

  26. Cosmo
    Member

    Hi...

    And thank you helgatheviking for the link to http://visualizing.thematic4you.com/.

    Really helps in err... visualizing.

    I'm new to trying to do anything in Wordpress other than use standard free and premium themes [Thesis].

    I can recommend Transmit for ftp, BBedit for coding. Still haven't been able to master Mamp.

    Cheers ... Kent

    Posted 12 years ago #

  27. lastraw
    Member

    Chrome dev tools are useful. Cosmo I had trouble with MAMP at first too, but finally it's painless. If I can get to that point anyone can :)

    Posted 12 years ago #

  28. wowodirect
    Member

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    Posted 12 years ago #

  29. boden
    Member

    i find eclipse php the way to go for dev of php (well for any code really). sure its a bit bulkier then just a lil editor, but imo its worth the weight.

    download it here: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/eclipse-php-developers/heliossr2

    ex on how to dev a plugin w/it: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-eclipse-wordpress/index.html

    in my workspace i always add a project with the thematic src and also the wordpress source -- this allows eclipse to lookup functions from those respective sources.

    why i think its worth the bulk:
    * auto search/complete functions as you type including params and function docs
    * warns you of invalid html tag/structure
    * nice searching
    * you can do an F3 on a function call and it finds its definition in the source and brings you there
    * can setup a hot-key and automatically run php quickly
    * all the goodies you'd expect with a fully functional php based editor
    * allows me to dev my other code (perl, js, shell scripts, etc.) in the same place and test

    if you're serious about development, take a read at its features -- you may find it to be a time saver

    Posted 12 years ago #

  30. boden
    Member

    for image dev:

    * GIMP - General image creation (forget photoshop): http://www.gimp.org/
    * Inkscape - vector img creation: http://inkscape.org/
    * cool stripes: http://www.stripegenerator.com/
    * Ajax loading: http://www.ajaxload.info/

    Posted 12 years ago #

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