Every developer has his/her set of "making my day to day life easier" in the workplace.
Most in this list are free while the rest has 30 day trials you could download from their site.
I'll go in depth on how to use each one in the weeks to come, but for now a short description and links.
Resharper -
This for me makes coding a whole lot easier with real time compiler error notifications, Code refactorings, Safe Deletes, Safe Renames, a more robust "Find" function, Code Analysis and my favorite. Unit testing and integration with dotTrace Profiler.
Fiddler -
I Can't remember how many times this small free app has saved me days of debugging hell, pretty much this app acts as a proxy capturing all http "REQUESTS" from your browser as well as capturing all "HTTP RESPONSE" that you will get from the web server you're requesting from.
it will provide various information that isn't normally seen like, file sizes, html raw formats, request hops, cookie information, XML.
if you're doing custom Requests to a web server or sending unusual POST messages. this is the tool that will make things a whole lot faster.
Notepad++ -
This is what the standard notepad of windows should have been, Text Compares, spell check, text compare, XML formatting, HTML cleanup, Tabbed interface.
SandCastle -
Making inline comments, XML code comments into a generated help file or set of html files, code documentation just got easier. to top it off it's free!
Red-Gate SQL
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Red-Gate's SQL Toolbelt is the one stop tool for database control, with tools like SQL Compare (table, Stored procs, views etc).
SQL data compare.
Data Generator (with customizable rules).
SQL Doc - ever had problems remembering who last modified that table or stored proc? or what it was a month ago?, fast and easy to use database documentation is the answer.
and my personal favorite SQL Prompt - integrates with your management studio and provides a much needed intellisense, auto complete and refactoring.
FireBug (firefox addon) - Simply the best javascript debugger out there, view your DOM, add breakpoints, notifies you of errors you never thought were there.
iMacros - Ever had one of those web apps where you have to go through steps 1 - 5 to be able to debug step 6? this firefox addon captures all your http requests and response to get you to step 6 with a click of a button.
Hope you enjoyed this post as much as I did writing it. I'll go in depth with these tools in the coming weeks to come.
