I've already posted about the Free Download Manager. Recently I've checked and they have a new version, which enables you to download videos from YouTube, Google Video, Blennus, DailyMotion, LiveDigital and MySpaces. Probably the list of supported sites will keep expanding.
It enables you to automatically convert the downloaded Flash video (.flv) to some of the popular video formats - .avi, .mpg, .mp4, .wmv, etc.
It comes also with a built-in (as an option) torrent downloader.
Yesterday evening my laptop with Vista already got too slow for normal work that I started to think about reinstalling. But instead I decided to use the performance tools in control panel and I made serious maintenance plus I turned off some features like visual styles.
An improvment in performance was immediate. And then suddenly a baloon pops up from my system tray explaining that there are solutions to my Vista problems (format? :-)). Desiring the better performance I follow the link and download the update. For all here's the link to KB article from which you can download the update for 32-bit or 64-bit Windows Vista.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/941649
After installing the patch and restart - the difference is obvious. Performance is better.
The best performance improvement I notice is that my SharePoint Designer crashes immediately instead of freezing for 2 minutes first :-)
The third in the series of tools for web developers is for the ones that don't want or don't have the option to install any software or addons and just need a quick access to a tool for inspecting DOM
1. Mouseover DOM inspector v. 2 - MODIv2
This thing is pure JavaScript, DHTML and CSS so you really don't need anything else for inspecting a DOM of a certain page. All you need is to bookmark a link on the help homepage:
And then go to the page you want to inspect the DOM, and next just call the script from your favourites.
And you're already exploring the DOM.
It doesn't contain as many tools as the previously described toolbars, but it's a very good solution for quick start and instant DOM inspection.
In my previous post I've presented a tool that I find very useful when debugging display, creating javascript related to HTML DOM, etc. The tool is intended for Internet Explorer. The FireFox users aren't deprived of such tools either. There are two tools available:
1. Web developer toolbar for Mozilla Firefox
It offers quite a wide array of tools for web developers, such as ruler, css validation, DOM explorer, etc.
It has a nice feature when exploring DOM - it displays all the parrent elements - so you can see how any element is nested. 
A neat add-on to that feature would be to be able to pause the selection and view the nested DOM, since there are a lot of times too many nested elements and the text goes out of the screen.
2. Firebug
A good combination of both - ie and firefox dev toolbar, it has very good tools for debugging HTML, CSS and JavaScript. What I like about it is that you can select the elements and it automatically also selects the HTML. And to manipulate the HTML, JavaScript and CSS in real time is very easy.
What I like about it is that it is easy to use, it has ability to monitor, debug and execute JavaScript, it helps with visualising some of CSS properties, and its toolset is nicely organized and easy to use. On the image below you can see how easy is to manipulate HTML in real time.
The problem of displaying too many nested elements is solvet neatly with a simple solution: the elements are ordered in opposite sense - it displays nested elements from right to left - instead of html > body > ... div it displays div < ... < body < html.
Many times to refference or change the the element's properties in a DOM of a web page, I was just going crazy. Especially in SharePoint this can be difficult, because some elements are nested DEEP within other elements (table > div > div > div > ... > input).
You can help yourself a bit with javascript:alert() or by viewing code, but there are tools to make your life as a web developer much easier:
1. Internet Explorer developer toolbar
This tool is a super add-on to Internet Explorer, with which you can easily explore the dom elements and their properties simply by mouse over and click.
Some screen shots |  |
Color picker | Ruler |
