Web Developer Power Tools

Revise

Every web developer has a bag of tricks that (s)he relies on to be productive. Things like text editors (and plugins for same), Firefox extensions, quick references, server-side debug tools, client-side testing frameworks, etc. It would be great to see a session where a “definitive” collection of these were presented in rapid-fire fashion, with a brief demo to accompany each.

I would be happy to pull something like this together by polling the community and assembling a “best of” presentation, but perhaps this would be better run as a lightning talk session where attendees could register to quickly show off their tool of choice in two minutes or less. Failing that, a panel format with representatives from the Windows, Mac, and Linux developer communities showing off competing tools might work well too.

Idea # 32Presentation Ideas

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Cool Idea.

This would make an excellent panel.

Why stop at the Devs, bring in the designers too for a rapid fire shootout of tricks and power tools

could be a whole BEST OF series... Best voted CMS etc...

I like the idea of this too.

Don't forget though that you are dealing with an audience with a large percentage of "power users". I would hate to waste a session on showing off a whole bunch of FF extensions that everyone in the room used on a daily basis. It would be tricky to get right, but not impossible.

I don't think the Windows/Mac/Linux thing would work so well. People have kind of made their decisions about this sort of thing - I just don't think they're going to be very influenced by 20 minutes from even an absolute gun coder.

What do others think?

a developer can never have too many tools

I think the Win/Mac/Linux aspect could be to show alternatives for the different OS users, rather than trying to get people to switch.

Just as an example, many Mac users can't live without their Textmate bundles, but not many Windows users realise they can use e-texteditor to get similar features. Like a best-of-breed for each OS.

It's a bit subjective, but it would provide plenty of passionate discussion for a panel format as people share their faves.

a session concept I've been keen on for some time is "secrets of the debugging ninjas" - looking at tools and techniques a number of highly experienced developers use.

I guess the important thing is that it goes beyond a catalogue of cool tools - firebug, xray ;-) etc, and more to workflows and techniques. So, based more on "here's a common problem folks have" (say layout problems with IE compared with other browsers, JS performance issues) and then "here's what I do to help me solve that" - so we see the tools in the context of the problem solving.

Would potentially be a great one hour high paced session methinks

What about a software version control system shoot out too.

What about a timed competition at the end for some common tasks? See if the 'power' tool users really deliver?

Maybe:
* a fairly advanced CSS issue fix across browsers
* debugging a JS problem
* automating a sequence of actions on a page

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