Birnam Designs Blog -- sharing tips, resources, ideas, and more on web development and design

As most Firefox-savvy web developers know, nothing quite beats the Web Developer Toolbar (WDT) extension. As if you didn’t already have enough good reasons to develop in Firefox instead of IE, the WDT gives you so much control that after using it, development in IE feels like building a house of cards in the dark. Even Microsoft recognized the advantage that WDT gave Firefox over IE, and developed their own version, called Developer Toolbar (DevToolbar). Isn’t that a clever name? DevToolbar, currently in beta 2, shares many of the same features of WDT but lacks overall polish and really feels like a beta. And Microsoft doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to finish it, either. It’s been in beta for a long time.

Recently I was pointed towards DebugBar, an IE addon that is the closest I’ve seen to providing developers a real impetus for using IE for development again. It combines features from three of my favorite Firefox extensions: Web Developer Toolbar, Firebug, and ColorZilla, as well as a few others like ScreenGrab, Live HTTP Headers, cookie viewers, source code viewers, and a couple of bookmarklets I use frequently such as Javascript Shell and RenderMode. It’s quite the toolbox.

Read on for more about DebugBar »

I’ve been experimenting with Windows Powershell (formerly known as Monad or MSH) recently. It’s currently in version 1.0, Release Candidate 2 (RC2), so it’s pretty much ready. Download it here to give it a try. I’ve struggled with a few aspects of it, but it’s very powerful and I’ve already started customizing it to help out with my day-to-day work.

If you’re like me, you’ve heard of how great the Linux/Unix shells (like Bash) are, but are pretty much just familiar with the old DOS command prompt. This will blow your socks off. There was just a *pop* and a realization that, ohhhh, so this is what a Shell is.

There’s a great introduction to Powershell (then MSH) at ArsTechnica that I highly recommend. But just to give you a tease, here is a one-line bit of code that will tell you how many pages Google has indexed for a specific site (I’ve used ArsTechnica again, you can see the reference in the url bit):

 
That’s really sweet.

update: Microsoft has recently revamped its Windows Live search to use much less AJAX and behave more like a traditional web search application. Kudos for Microsoft — they have bypassed much of what I’m am complaining about!

If you follow tech news, you have probably already heard that Microsoft has recently made available the beta version of its new search engine, Windows Live. Microsoft has tried to generate a lot of hype for this, going so far as to say that they will beat Google at their own game. Well, that’s a tall order. Google means more than just accurate results. When I first started using Google over Yahoo! and Altavista, it wasn’t because I thought the results were more accurate. It was because Google had a clean, open, spartan, quick-loading interface that didn’t get in the way. It wasn’t a portal. It was just a search engine. Later, Google also gained recognition as a leading developer of AJAX-based online applications, like Google Maps and GMail. These, too, utilized simple, clean, and responsive interfaces.

So, without considering the accuracy of search results,

how does Microsoft's newest offering compare to the Google way of life?

VB.NET or C#? It’s an age-old argument. Well, not really, since .NET has only been around for four or five years. But it’s a classic debate among .NET developers. I’m not here to say which is better for you, but I’ve found some statistics that you might find interesting if you are trying to make a choice between learning one of these languages.

I looked at CodeProject, SourceForge, Freshmeat, CMSMatrix, Monster, and HotJobs. I also did my best to look at every .NET-based blog software available, in order to determine what is used more. Note the distinction: not which is better, but which has seen more use by more developers that I could find. In other words, I’m letting developers that are more experienced than I speak.

Read on for the results »

Note: this post has been imported and re-editing from a personal blog. Time-sensitive material may no longer be relevant.

Since my preferred backup method is to archive all of my content to DVD, I have found myself with a very large collection of very full DVDs. To be honest, the problem started a long time ago, when I found that when I needed a particular file I had to go through each disc. It started out as a routine task. Then, as my backup CD collection grew, it became an annoying chore. Then, as the collection grew again and they were now full DVDs instead of full CDs, it became a bone fide problem.

What I really needed was an application that would save the directory structure — all the file names, dates, locations, etc. — of all of my discs. Something that I could search through even when the disc wasn’t in the drive. And I needed something that let me determine which copy is the most recent of any particular file. If you need similar software, read on — I found a couple of good ones!

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