Firefox Web Developer plugin
If you work with websites at all, you need the Firefox Web Developer plugin. It is a fantastically useful analysis tool, and will make your life a lot easier. I’ve seen this many times: the really good stuff seems to come from people like Chris Pederick, who created the plugin. Adobe couldn’t make a tool this good if their lives depended on it.
I made a donation to Perdick, and he sent back a nice thank-you reply. If there’s a piece of freeware that you use a lot, consider its “Donate” button. I’ll leave it to economists to figure out why there’s so much great stuff that people make for free, leaving payment optional. But here’s my theory: the author wants to know, when someone pays them, that the product was really worth something. In a world full of “just barely good enough” and chrome-plated sham, real value is all too rare.
That and I think some people take pride in being the best at something. Being able to say I have the most badass awesome website tool is quite a title. Coupled with the title of shitty programmer, for making something that sucks, and the incentive to have better code at least doubles. It seems a decent amount of programmers do not want to produce Adobe or Voting machine quality stuff. They want something that people want to use and would gladly share with friends and family.
I forget too often to give back to such programmers, thanks for the reminder.