A Few Good Tools for Miva Merchant Users

Greetings,

I was planning on writing a post on troubleshooting. However, it quickly became more of a treatise…so while I figure out how to break it down into digestible chunks, I’d like to share three great tools (Firefox plugins) that I can’t live without these days.

Two are old standbys that haven’t caught on with the Miva Merchant world, the other is a new (at least to me) plugin that is an answer to a daily (ok, hourly) prayer.

First of all, if you are not using Firefox, stop reading this blog right now and get it. No, and I mean NO store owner, developer, designer should be using anything else for work. (Of course, you’ll want to have other browsers on hand for testing what the great unwashed experience.) Fire Fox is a vastly superior tool: whether it’s a better browser or not I won’t argue about, but for working on sites, there is no comparison.

FireBug
The Firebug extension for Firefox allows the debugging, editing, and monitoring of any web site’s CSS, HTML, DOM, and JavaScript, and provides other handy Web development tools. You’ll most likely use it for its JavaScript and CSS debugging tools, as well as its feature that monitors the amount of time in milliseconds it takes to load and execute scripts and images on the page. Try not to be overwhelmed…there are many features in Firebug that will be beyond comprehension…however, they stay nicely out of the way.

Get Firebug here.

(Note, there are versions of Firebug for IE and Chrome, however, I have no idea of how they compare to the Firefox version.)

A Simple JS Error in IE

The Same JS Error Through Firebug

Besides the additional and clearly stated information, it"s all just a click away, letting you get to the actual page source without opening additional windows and losing your train of thought.

I also use another Firefox plug in called Web Developer. It has some similar features, though those are not as robust. The features of Web Developer I use the most are the “rulers” and other “Show Code” in the browser view tools. For example, a simple command outlines all the CSS containers or HTML tables in the page. Web Developer has truly hundreds of little tools to help you get through your day with your brain somewhat intact.

There is a God  (or at least there is “It’s All Text”)

I live in my text editor. I use it for creating modules, writing scripts, interacting with my outlook calendar, ‘droid phone, letters to my Mom, writing this blog, etc. Ever since I started working in Merchant, I’ve been praying for a way to just double-click on a template window and have the content open up in my text editor. Well, just a few weeks ago, I found this: It’s All Text!

While it’s missing the double-click, everything else is nothing short of amazing…no more Highlight/Copy/Switch Window/Switch to the correct window/whoops, not that window/Highlight/Paste…damn…I meant Paste not Copy…back to Text Editor/Highlight/Copy/Switch Window/Paste and Update. Now, I just click the little Edit button (right click also available) and bam! the contents of the Merchant template is loaded into my text editor with all its fabulous and familiar highlighting and features.

Your Dull/Boring Merchant Template

Your Merchant Template in Your Favorite Editor…any questions?

When you save the document in your editor, it automatically updates the contents in your template. Just click Update and you are done. You don’t even have to re-open the file for subsequent edits. Just make sure you click Update in the template after saving changes in the text editor.

That’s it for now. Stay tuned, I hope to get the Troubleshooting posts out as soon as possible.