Utilities and Tricks

This is stuff that didn't fit anywhere else, but that we thought was worth passing on.

Capturing and Optimizing Screenshots for Print
The first half of this article is of interest to web builders. And one day, when SVG is the way of the world, the second half will come in handy too.
FileZilla
Our favorite FTP program. Some FTP programs connect and say, "Yoo hoo, Mr. Computer? I know you're busy and I hate to be a bother, but if it's not too much trouble, whenever you have a little spare time, could you please let me have this file?" FileZilla says, "Gimme the file NOW!!" Free, open source, pretty near bulletproof, and does not go to sleep waiting on a port that your firewall has blocked.
Slayeroffice Favelet Suite
This is a beautiful suite of useful tools for web developers. Works on Opera 7.5, Mozilla, and Firefox. Yippee!
Variable Opacity With PNG
You probably know that one of the lovely things about the PNG graphics file format is that graphics files can have variable transparency, called alpha channel transparency for reasons we won't go into. You probably know too that MSIE 5.5 and 6 don't support alpha transparency for PNGs. Michael Lovitt's article on A List Apart explains how to make MSIE do right by PNGs with alpha transparency.
Web Developer Extension for Moz
Chris Pedrick's extension adds a toolbar and a menu to Mozilla and Firefox with a whole slew of useful tools. If your default browser is Moz or Firefox, you probably need it.
W3Dev Menu for Opera
Toby Inkster's W3Dev menu for Opera 7 and above adds a menu with a lot of useful tools for web developers. By the way, if you also want to install Nick Bradbury's blogging menu to Opera, see this article on Bob's weblog to make the two of them play nice together. Update: there's a few more menus on Opera 7.5, but the process is the same: install Toby's stuff, install Nick's stuff, then merge them like Bob's blog article says.
XHTML Semantic Validator
The title is a little deceptive. This is a page conversion helper more than a validator, ands it automates a tremendous amount of work in converting a web page from old-style markup to XHTML+CSS. In Stage 1 it scans for ornamental markup and gives you the equivalent CSS, which you can put into your web page. Stage 2 checks for missing alternate tags and accessibility problems. Stage 3 lets you select a layout (1, 2 or 3 columns; header or footer or both; aligned left, center or right) and generates the code for the now very nearly standards-based web page. There'll still be a little hand work to do, but the heavy lifting is done, thanks to author Benjamin Sekulowicz-Barclay.
Button Maker
From Kalsey Consulting Group. You've probably seen these buttons before, but you probably didn't know they were pure CSS, no GIFs or PNGs. Since the button maker automates it all, you can make your own "valid necromancy" or "approved by my dog" buttons.
Accessible Web Publishing Wizard For Office
Accessible HTML from PowerPoint and Word? Well, PowerPoint's not so bad but Word? You must be mad! Ten tons of inaccessible cruft that breaks every web browser but one — strike that: it breaks MSIE too. Well the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign and the Division of Rehabilitation - Education Services have developed a wizard that allegedly makes Word and PowerPoint publish accessible HTML. We'll believe it when we see it. It requires .NET Framework, and we've been trying to keep our machine clear of that. Later: We installed it and tested it a little, and while the quality of the web pages is better than Word produces by itself, they aren't by any stretch of the imagination good.
Web Development Bookmarklets
From Jesse's bookmarklets. Drag the ones you want onto a toolbar or save them in a bookmarks folder on Mozilla, Firefox, or Opera.
Email Obfuscator
From Mike Pepper. A "mailto:" URL is a nice way to get feedback from visitors to your site. Unfortunately, spam harvester bots can scrape email address off your webpages. Mike's got a cute little app that foils those bots by obfuscating your email address (your email program can still read it), along with some good advice on other things you can do to frustrate the spam harvesters.
Live HTTP Headers
Keeps the last exchange between your browser and the web server around so you can examine it (Tools - Page Indo - Headers) in Mozilla and Firefox.
Small Screen Rendering
One thing missing from the Web Developer Extension for Mozilla/Firefox/etc. is the ability to see what your web page will look like on a small screen like a PDA or cell phone. Disruptive Innovations has a free extension that adds a "Small Screen Rendering" option to your View menu. (In case you use Opera as your baseline development browser, Opera already has something similar on their View menu).
AIS Web Accessibility Toolbar
By Accessibile Information Solutions, Australia. Here's a toolbar for that wallflower at the Standards' Senior Prom, Microsoft Internet Explorer. A great toolbar that helps not only with accessibility but with the two pillars that hold it up: XHTML and CSS. So now all your Windows browsers (well, except Lynx) can help you with web building.
How to Use the DOM Inspector
Tutorial by clagnut on how to get the most out of the DOM Inspector in the Mozilla/Firefox Web Developer Extension.