Developer Toolbars for Internet Explorer and Firefox
There are freely downloadable developer toolbars that plug in to the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers. If you are developing a Web application that uses CSS or Ajax, you will find these toolbars particularly helpful, because they let you perform the following tasks:
- View and explore the document object model (DOM) tree that the browser created to represent your page structurally in the browser.
- Quickly find specific elements in your document.
- Temporarily disable style sheets to see how your document presents to assistive devices, such as screen readers, that do not use style sheets.
- Temporarily disable JavaScript to see how gracefully (or not) your document degrades if the user has JavaScript disabled in the browser.
- Clear the browser's cache completely or selectively.
- View cookies and clear session cookies or disable cookies temporarily.
- Validate the page for standards compliance. The toolbar provides quick access to validators for:
- HTML and XHTML
- CSS
- RSS Feeds
- WAI Accessibility
- Section 508 Accessibility
Installing the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar
You get the Internet Explorer toolbar from the Microsoft free download site at www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=e59c3964-672d-4511-bb3e-2d5e1db91038.
After you download the setup file and run it, follow the onscreen instructions to install it. After the installation is complete, you can use the toolbar by pulling down the Internet Explorer View menu and choosing Explorer Bar-->IE Developer Toolbar. To close the toolbar, click the close icon in the upper-left corner of the Firebug window.
Installing the Firebug Developer Toolbar for Firefox
The developer toolbar in Firefox is called Firebug. To install it, use Firefox to go to addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843. When you click the Install Now button, Firefox will download the Firebug file, open it, and provide onscreen instructions that step you through the installation.
After you install Firebug, you need to close all of your Firefox windows, then restart Firefox, in order to complete the integration of Firebug into your Firefox browser.
To use the Developer Toolbar, open Firefox, pull down the Firefox Tools menu, and choose Firebug-->Open Firebug. To close the toolbar, click the close icon in the upper-right corner of the Firebug window.
