handy firefox add ons

pretty much every developer I have asked uses firefox as their "working" browser, why? basically because the fantastic open source nature of it has allowed people to build extra functionality for it to help them out in their day to day jobs.

I consider firefox to be part of my development environment as do many other developers and I realised I'd never mentioned it here as part of my "tools" category.

so..here is a list of firefox add ons I would recommend to the developers amoungst you..just to be clear, I use these myself every day at work.

web developer toolbar - every developer should have this!

colorZilla - invaluable for just grabbing a colour off a web page, such a little add on for such a massive amount of time saved!

HTML validator - adds a whole new dimension to "view source"

the experienced users amoungst you will know that this is by no means an extensive list, a quick flick through the "add ons" pages of the firefox website currently shows 2266 add ons...obviously some restraint is needed in choosing which ones to install!

edit

mike from east coast interactive has pointed out a super useful extension I didn't know about in the shape of firebug ...now THIS is super handy!

0 comments - Posted by mark at 11:30 PM - Categories: Tools

FTP client

I am quite often asked to recommend a good, easy to use FTP client...so here is the answer (in my opinion of course!)

Filezilla has served me well both personally and profesionally for a number of years now...oh...and did I mention that its free? when I say "free", I mean it really is free..no ads, 30 day trial or spyware etc, just a fast, easy to use and reliable FTP client...cant get better than that can it?

Filezilla can be downloaded from the sourceforge site by following this link...enjoy!

1 comments - Posted by mark at 2:09 PM - Categories: Tools

Australian Pink Floyd AECC

Just got back from the Australian Pink Floyd gig at the Aberdeen Exhibition Centre...in a word...superb!

This was the second time I have seen them and I have to admit, they seem to get better and better...perhaps the best cover band I've ever seen.

There's always the niggling thought that going to see a cover band will be a little bit disappointing and in the case of a Pink Floyd cover band all light show and no trousers...not in this case, sure the light show was truly amazing and it was great to see thousands of people enjoying not only the Pink Floyd tunes but some of the bands own work too. Added bonus's were the 25ft inflatable pig with glowing red eyes and the similarly sized inflatable kangaroo (of course!), but the little touch of country and western style Pink Floyd covers during the bands break and the lyric swapping from "...english way" to "scottish way" that kept the crowd buzzing throughout.

If you see them coming to a venue near you, I thoroughly recommend going, I will definitely see them for a third time in Aberdeen when they come back.

1 comments - Posted by mark at 12:43 AM - Categories: Out 'n' About

east coast interactive blog

Some cool (and useful) articles appearing over at the spanky new east coast interactive blog, although if you've ever had a beer with mike who runs the blog, you wouldn't be too surprised!

Back in the gravity lab days, Mike was around a fair bit and yes..beer was drunk...but more importantly, a lot of ideas flowed.

As I currently do work for east coast interactive, I am in the unique position to confirm that these articles are based on real world problems and solutions and are not based on trying to look clever...if you've met mike you'll know he doesn't look clever...heh, sorry mike! but get him chatting about web technologies and in particular flash, and you'll soon discover that your own years of experience pale in comparison to what he knows, and more importantly...delivers.

For anyone interested in web technologies, this is very much a blog to keep an eye on.

1 comments - Posted by mark at 9:13 AM - Categories: Resources | Launches

whitespark design is online

just recently launched www.whitesparkdesign.co.uk

"We deal with web design specifically targeted to small business and startups. Utilising the in-house talent that handles the web design of both whitesparks and our whole network, we now offer the same level of excellence and straight talking to others at low cost with the reliability and quality you may already know about if you purchase print from whitesparks.

We're very excited at being able to offer this service and due to our close relationship with east coast interactive, there is virtually nothing that cannot be accomplished with your on line presence"

so...go check it out! www.whitesparkdesign.co.uk

0 comments - Posted by mark at 10:36 AM - Categories: General | Launches

moving house stage 2

right, so that's all the heavy lifting done and now all our worldly possessions have been transferred from their various locations and collated at the new hoose. Just got all the little bits and pieces to take care of now

I can truthfully say that its been the most exhausting 3 days of hard work ever.

lessons learned?.....yeh...don't ever move house...its just not worth it!

0 comments - Posted by mark at 8:35 AM - Categories: General

Mark McAulay vs Stuart Ebdy

Thought I would share our recent fight in the search engines with you.

On the gravity lab blog I posted an entry to counter Stuart Ebdy's post which appeared on whitesparks a little while earlier

Initially this was just a bit of fun...you know in a geeky kind of way..."i can get your name higher up google than your own website" kinda chatter but it did actually prove to be an interesting experiment in what will rank higher for which term.

For example, whitesparks uses a bespoke content management system which, until I got my hands on it, outputted table soup. The built in news section was where the posting for me...Mark McAulay was...and still is located where as the gravity lab blog used wordpress as a publishing engine and outputted nice clean(ish) xhtml

I won the fight at the time and successfully pipped Stuart Ebdy to a higher ranking in google for his name than his own site (gravity lab was ranked higher than whitesparks for the search term "stuart ebdy"), nowadays though stuart has fought back by using his own blog and now, at the time of writing this post, ranks second and third in google while my gravity lab posting(s) are third and fourth for the search term above

So...how are we doing on the search term "mark mcaulay" then? again, at the time of writing this post, a quick search in google shows whitesparks at one and two, gravity lab at three and this very blog at four. (It's worth noting that this blog is currently only 30 days old with a page rank of zero whereas the gravity lab blog is about a year and a half old with a page rank of four)

As I further optimise, promote and populate this blog, I'll be quite interested to see how these results move around....If anything radical happens, I'll add to this post..maybe Stuart Ebdy will join in with his take on our little "seo fight" and we can publish some conclusions up here to see what's what.

2 comments - Posted by mark at 8:33 AM - Categories: General