By now you should have installed the
Firefox
browser and the
Web Developer
toolbar extension. If you have not yet done so, use these links to go to the installation instruction pages.
Each week I will present information on key features of the Web Developer toolbar which are associated with the content of the week's lecture. Since we've just installed the toolbar, a brief discussion of some of the toolbar setup options seems like a good place to start. The short commentary below is by no means a comprehensive overview of all the available options, but rather a quick exposure to the options that I think are more immediately useful.
At the right end of the toolbar, click the Options menu, then choose Options. The Options dialog box appears with links to nine option views in the left column. I will focus on just three of these option views.
Keys
The Keys view displays the preprogrammed keyboard shortcuts for 12 commonly used toolbar functions. It might be a bit early to begin memorizing keystrokes but you can revisit this page once you get a feel for which tools you use often. The first keystroke I memorized was "Validate Local HTML" - Ctrl+Shift+A. That was easy to remember because A is the first letter of the alphabet and validating my Local HTML is the first thing I do!
Resize
Next click on the Resize link in the left column of the Options dialog box. Here you can optionally set up specific screen sizes so that you can emulate a particular browser window size with the click of the mouse. Just click the Add button and fill in the blanks. There is more on using Resize coming up in a future week.
Sidebar
Several of the Web Developer features are already programmed to open in a sidebar on the left side of the browser window. This option allows some of the other tools to also open in the sidebar. Personally I find using the sidebar to be less cumbersome than dealing with multiple windows or tabs. I like having Style Information and the DOM Inspector appear in the sidebar. Choose the options that work best for you. If you change your mind, it's easy to alter these options at any time.