This post contains some of the useful and interesting tech links I found during this week. To keep up to date with the latest information, subscribe to the feed or  follow me on twitter @v08i

jQuery 1.4.3 Offline Learning Kit – http://goo.gl/zoAb5

What features would you like to have in PHP? – http://goo.gl/Q84B9

35 Useful and Time saving Firefox Add-Ons – http://goo.gl/ZQQhF

Beware the Trailing Comma of Death – http://goo.gl/P3LqX

2010: Yet another great year for PHP – http://goo.gl/WO0uY

The major incidents on the Internet in 2010 – http://goo.gl/lbfM1

Ten Alternative CMS Options to WordPress – http://goo.gl/1q9ly

3 Lightweight Alternatives to phpMyAdmin – http://goo.gl/izsZc

Rocking Out With CoffeeScript – http://goo.gl/5FCYl

50 Best jQuery Techniques 2010 – http://goo.gl/4TfBF

Being a web developer there are some tools which I need and use on daily basis. Here are 5 such addons I think every web developer should install on their firefox.

1- Web developer toolbar

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

Install: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60

This addon adds a toolbar and a menu to firefox. The toolbar contains several mini tools in it to perform various tasks. It has 11 built in menus for different tasks like cookies, css, forms, html, images and many others. You can read a review of web developer toolbar here.

2- JSONView

Home: http://benhollis.net/blog/2009/02/24/jsonview-view-json-documents-in-firefox/

Install: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10869

JSON is becoming more popular day by day as a data exchange format. JSONView allows you to view json documents in the browser itself without having to open in any text editor and format it. Local files can also be seen if they have .json extension. It formats the document nicely and also provides options to collapse/expand nodes too (just like XML).
In case of invalid json it reports an error.

3- Fireftp

Home: http://fireftp.mozdev.org/

Install: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/684

You will not have to open a separate ftp client if you use this. To open Fire FTP, go to Tools -> Fire FTP on firefox menu bar. It opens an easy to use interface in a new tab. You can create multiple accounts and you will get all the features that you expect from a ftp client.

From the site: “Along with transferring your files quickly and efficiently, FireFTP also includes more advanced features such as: directory comparison, syncing directories while navigating, SFTP, SSL encryption, search/filtering, integrity checks, remote editing, drag & drop, file hashing, and much more!”

4- IE Tab

Home: http://ietab.mozdev.org/

Install: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419

Use IE tab if you want to check display of your web pages in Internet explorer. Instead of opening IE separately, it will open a tab in firefox which will display your page using the IE engine installed on your machine.  It will put an icon on your status bar using which you can switch engines.

5- Firebug

Home: http://getfirebug.com/

Install: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843

How can a firefox addons list be complete without Firebug.

From the site: “Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.”

Firebug needs no inroduction to web developers. It reduces the development time to a great extent, specially if your application relies on javascript/ajax too much. It provides rock solid debugging for javascript where you can add/remove breakpoints, watch variables in real time and much more.

Want more? You can inspect and edit html/css on the fly to change the look and feel of a page. You can also check the download time for your css files,scripts, images and html pages using the net tab which are helpful for optimizations.

Firbug has a number of addons too (yes! addons for an addon). I recommend both the addons given below.

Page Speed : It is an addon from Google which is used to analyze the loading performance of a page. It tests a page against Web Performance Best Practices which you can read here. After this a score out of 100 is provided. Greater score means faster page load. Install it from this link.

YSlow: YSlow is a addon similar to Page Speed. It is created by Yahoo. YSlow measures a web page’s performance against a set of rules for high performance pages created by Yahoo. You can download it from here and read the performance criteria here.

Bonus:  Colorzilla

Home: http://www.colorzilla.com/firefox/

Install: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/271

Need to pick a color from any web page, text or image within browser? Just click colorzilla, which sits at extreme left of your status bar, and point to that location. Now right click on colorzilla and you can copy rgb and hex color codes for that color.

It comes with a built in Color Picker and Palette Browser.

I am a regular reader of web development articles and in this process bookmark a lot of them. Out of that collection I present to you a list of 10 articles which themselves are lists of 10(tips, functions etc). Not all of them are top 10 but equally good. All these articles are related to php, javascript, html, mysql and web development in general.

1- 10 code snippets for PHP developers

Simple and handy functions for common tasks like validating email address and XSL transformation.

2- 10 Advanced PHP Tips Revisited

Detailed and excellent tips from famous PHP gurus Chris Shiflett and Sean Coates.

3- Top 10 PHP frameworks

PHP frameworks are quite popular among developers these days. This site is dedicated to php frameworks alone. In this article all frameworks have been compared for features. Very useful to help you in decision making if you are planning to use a framework for your next project.

4- Top 10 custom JavaScript functions of all time

This is my favorite one. These 10 functions are a must in every web developer’s toolbox. Functions like getElementsByClass, toggle and cookie functions are included.

5- 10 JavaScript Quick Tips and Best Practices

Another good article on javascript best practices.

6- Top 10 Firefox Addons For Web Developers

Who hasn’t heard of Firebug or GreaseMonkey. This article lists similar addons for firefox that are a great help in web development.

7- 10 Ways to Improve Your Web Page Performance

From the article:

This article primarily focuses on front-end performance since it’s the easiest to work on and provides you the most bang for your buck.

8- 10 Dirty Little Web Development Tricks

Simple tips to help you in web development.

9- 10 Rare HTML Tags You Really Should Know

List of 10 html tags that are not used frequently. Check them out. It is possible that you have not heard about some of them.

10- 10 Useful articles about Database design

From the article:

The list includes some tips to define relationships-entities model, common database design mistakes, database normalization, how to use PHP and SQL to create tables and relationships and a correct approach to define relationships between tables.

Firefox users have finally got the feature they were requesting for a long time. Pre-release of Firefox 3.1 Beta was done on 8th Dec. This release includes an option to surf the web in Private mode among many other features.

This is similar to the Incognito mode of recently launched Google browser Chrome and porn mode of IE8.
To use the private mode, go to the tools menu and click “Private Browsing”. A dialog box confirms your selection and then all the open tabs & corresponding sessions are saved & users will enter the private mode.
Enabling private mode will not save web history, search history, download history or any other data in you machine. After you are done click Private browsing again and your previous sessions and tabs will be restored.
Although Mozilla says that the private mode is perfect for online holiday shopping, I guess users will find it suitable for many purposes

More information available at Mozilla developer center and Ehsan Akhgari’s blog (Ehsan is the person responsible for implementation of this feature)