Useful Tools

No matter how feature-equipped screen-scraper may be, there are simply some useful external tools that we use quite regularly.
Some of them are browser add-ons and features, others are actual external programs. Browser tools are listed first, followed
by some external programs you may find useful.

Tools/Add-ons for:

• Chrome
  • SwitchyOmega
    
    SwitchyOmega provides a quick and easy way to switch between proxies with a strong indicator whether or not any
    proxies are in effect.
• Firefox
  
  • SwitchProxy (available for Firefox 2.0)
    
    SwitchProxy provides a drop-down menu in the toolbar for quickly switching to and from your configured proxy
    servers. Puts itself on a toolbar.
  • FoxyProxy (available for Firefox 3.0)
    
    FoxyProxy, like SwitchProxy, allows for quickly switching to and from configured proxy servers. Puts itself
    in the status bar.
  • Firebug (available for Firefox 3.0)
    
    Firebug allows you to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript in realtime on any web page. It
    works out of the browser's cached files, so there is no danger of making a permanent change of any sort.
  • Tamper Data (available for Firefox 2 and 3)
    
    Allows you to intercept and alter information coming or leaving your browser, like request headers and POST
    parameter data.
  • Web Developer toolbar (available for Firefox 3.0)
    
    Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.
  • Chinese Popup Translator (available for Firefox 3.0)
    
    Simply put, this extension will allow you read Chinese on websites.
  • Javascript Live HTTP (available for Firefox 2 and 3)
    This useful tool will help identify what happens when javascript is excessively used on a page.
• Internet Explorer
  
  • IE7Pro Add-on (available for IE7)
    
    Gives Internet Explorer enhancements and optimizations for security, proxy switching, inline searching,
    spell checking, speed, many other useful tweaks.
• Opera
  
  • Dragonfly (available in Opera 9.5 and higher)
    
    Dragonfly is Opera's official version of Firefox's Add-on "Firebug" (see above). It is built directly into
    Opera, so there is no need to download it seperately, or even update it. It is accessed through Opera's web
    servers, so updates are seen in realtime for the user.
  • Enable/Disable proxy server (option available through customization of a toolbar)
    
    Opera's toolbars can be customized to hold virtually any preference-toggling button, proxy server included.
    Follow the link to see how to place the option on a toolbar.

External tools for:

• Linux
  
  • gedit (gnome-based, open source)
    
    A great utility-knife of a text editor. Can use plugins. Includes most of the features listed in the "Notepad++"
    for Windows. Comes standard with Ubuntu distributions of Linux.
  • Eclipse (Open source)
    
    Wretchedly confusing to configure and update at times, Eclipse is a powerful IDE written in Java. Supports
    plugins to allow dealing with code written in other languages (called 'perspectives'). Default package to
    download is the 151mb 'Eclipse Classic'. Comparable to MS Visual Studio or Netbeans.
  • Kodos Regex Debugger (Open source)
    
    Intended to be a regular expression debugger for Python, but works just as well for most other regex flavors,
    such as the one used by screen-scraper and Java.
• Windows
  
  • Notepad++ (Open source)
    
    Features include zooming, multiple viewports for documents, code completion, default and user-defined source
    highlighting, code folding, macro recording, file updating when changed externally, saving sessions, auto
    indent, regular expression find/replace, line numbers, etc.
  • Editpad Lite (Freeware, 'Pro' version available)
    
    Lightweight text editor. Simply beats out Notepad. Lacks almost all of the features listed above, unless
    you buy the full version ($50). Does, however, do line numbers, 'go to line x', Windows
    <-> Mac
    <-> Linux line breaks, and an auto-indent feature.
  • Eclipse (Open source)
    
    Wretchedly confusing to configure and update at times, Eclipse is a powerful IDE written in Java. Supports
    plugins to allow dealing with code written in other languages (called 'perspectives'). Default package to
    download is the 151mb 'Eclipse Classic'. Comparable to MS Visual Studio or Netbeans.
  • Kodos Regex Debugger (Open source)
    
    Intended to be a regular expression debugger for Python, but works just as well for most other regex flavors,
    such as the one used by screen-scraper and Java.
  • Large Text File Viewer Application (Free)
    
    This is a very useful application for opening text files that are much too large to be opened with regular
    text editors. It can open text files that are several gigabytes in size with ease, which can be particularly
    helpful for viewing large log files.
• Mac OS X
  
  • Eclipse (Open source)
    
    Wretchedly confusing to configure and update at times, Eclipse is a powerful IDE written in Java. Supports
    plugins to allow dealing with code written in other languages (called 'perspectives'). Default package to
    download is the 151mb 'Eclipse Classic'. Comparable to MS Visual Studio or Netbeans.
  • Kodos Regex Debugger (Open source)
    
    Intended to be a regular expression debugger for Python, but works just as well for most other regex flavors,
    such as the one used by screen-scraper and Java.
• Decompilers
  
  • showmycode.com (Free, hosted)
    
    Online SWF & Java Class decompiler. Have only tested on a few SWF files with mixed results.