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What's in Your HTML Toolbox?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the utilities-of-the-trade dept.

Milo_Mindbender asks: "I've just ended up in charge of cleaning up an old and rather large website created by some non technical people. It has all the usual problems: paragraph tags with no ending tag; mixed case file names that work on Windows but not on a Linux webserver; files with mixed Windows/Linux/Mac line endings; duplicates or partial duplicates of files created when working on pages; and the list goes on. I'm wondering what tools you guys keep in your HTML/website toolboxes that work good for cleaning up this sort of mess. Things like pretty-printers, HTML 'lint' programs, dead file detectors, batch renamers (that change links and the files they point to into OS neutral names), and 'diff' programs that ignore HTML whitespace. I'm particularly interested in batch processing tools that actually fix problems (not just report them) because I've got a lot of files to deal with and don't have the time to edit every one by hand. So what's in YOUR toolbox?"

3 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. HTMLKit for Windows by SocialEngineer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    HTMLKit has a lot of great options for developers, and a good plugin system.

    --
    "Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
  2. Creating white space by M0b1u5 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The disaster that was "s.gif" (or "trans.gif" in some circles) used as a layout tool was horribly over-used - and the 'net is a worse place because of it. In most projects now, I seek to replace all instances with a "compatible" approach.

    I create a class: .spacer{
            line-height:0;
            font-size:0;
    }

    Then I replace all those hundreds (and sometimes THOUSANDS) of references to s.gif with the following:



    I use a span sometimes, as required - if the DIVs alone cause layout issues.

    Say hello to faster web pages instantly!

    --
    How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
  3. Firefox with plugins by bhav2007 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Firefox with the IE Tab (or IE View), Web Developer, View Formatted Source, and HTML Validator extensions.