2. web developer
web developer is an extension that allows for real-time debugging and manipulation of HTML, DOM, JS etc. and is a must-have. it also has build-in links to HTML and CSS validator websites and many handy features.

3. colorzilla
colorzilla allows for picking colors right out of your browser and features a color picking tool as well. really really useful!

4. selenium
selenium is a functional test engine with huge capabilities. it allows for recording of macro-style snippets which can be timed and fired to make testing easier. check out the selenium server (which provides features like multiple browsers from your system etc.) too

5. vimperator
vimperator makes your FF behave like VIM! it looks complicated in the beginning but if you are a hardcore VI/VIM user, you will instantly love it.

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Good news is, you just need to install it, call rake fckeditor:install and do some simple steps to get it running:

1.) Add a form field override to your model (let’s say our model’s name is news and we want to equip the newstext field with an editor):

def newstext_form_column(record, input_name)
  fckeditor_textarea( :record, :newstext, :name=> input_name, :width => FCKWIDTH, :height => FCKHEIGHT, :toolbarSet => FCKTOOLBAR )
end

def newstext_column(record)
  sanitize(record.newstext)
end

Notice that I added the constants FCKWITH, FCKHEIGHT and FCKTOOLBAR to my config/environment.rb to make sure we can easily edit the attributes of our editor and switch toolbars without editing 1.000 files

2.) Copy over _create_form.html.erb and _update_form.html.erb to your app/views/posts/

3.) edit them by adding the following instead of the submit button tag (bottom of the file):

<input type="submit" value="Create" class="submit" onClick="var oEditor = FCKeditorAPI.GetInstance('record_<%=@record.id%>_<%='newstext'%>_editor'); document.getElementById('record_<%=@record.id%>_<%='newstext'%>_editor').value = oEditor.GetXHTML();" />

Now just replace Create with Update in the _update_form.html.erb and restart your server – here we go

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How to get it:

sudo gem install railroad json

Then use railroad to create a dot diagram (I go for a model diagram here):

raiload -o doc/mymodels.dot -M

Or create a diagram of your controllers with…

railroad -o doc/mycontrollers.dot -a -C

Then, use dot to create a graphic out of it:

dot -Tjpg -o doc/mymodels.jpg doc/mymodels.dot

You can also use -Tsvg (for vector graphics) or -Tpng etc.

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Here is a quick mashup of useful plugins you might want to check out for your Rails development:

Paperclip:
A very streamlined and easy to use file upload – there is also a bridge plugin that makes it work out nicely with ActiveScaffold. Get it here !

Gramos’ Easy FCKEditor:
Since tiny_mce is one hell of an editor for your web projects but does not work with ActiveScaffold, I have decided to switch back over to FCK for those AS-FCK-EasyUpload needs. Get it here !

Render Component fix for ActiveScaffold:
You may have noticed that the good guys over at the Rails core team have decided to kill render_component, which is especially nasty when it comes to using ActiveScaffold and has_and_belongs_to_many relations with subforms (guess what? they won’t work ^^). The solution is installing the render_component fix via:

ruby script/plugin install --force git://github.com/lackac/render_component.git -r rails-edge

FlickRaw:
Allows for accessing flickr data from your account via the flickr apis. I have tried quite some other plugins put flickraw is the most intuitive (and… well… it works). You can find a HOWTO and info here .

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