Sometimes in my rush to fix an issue or upgrade a component I commit the big programming no-no of updating production systems directly and forget to ever apply the new code to my testing environment.  Later on it comes time to make another update and I remember that my code base is out of sync.  Lucky for me there is a fantastic piece of open source software available that solves this issue.  It is called WinMerge, and it can be used to compare single files or even whole directories and sub-directories.  It differences in files are found, they can be investigated, which is where this product really shines.  WinMerge will open each file in a side-by-side comparison and highlights with different colors the discrepancies in the files.  This is a fast and easy-to-use solution for findng the differences in your code.

Another challenge I’ve faced is sizing elements in a front-end interface.  Before I would use a thuggish approach of setting a value and refreshing my app to see the results.  Now with the help of an awesome little tool from Mioplanet called Pixel Ruler I can measure the space of elements directly on the screen and adjust their size accordingly.  This small easy tool has saved me a lot of time.  Mioplanet also has some other pretty cool (and FREE) tools to checkout.

Hope these tools can help you out.  Code On!