Archive for the ‘Tools’ category

Grabbing the xml request generated by a web service client.

November 14th, 2011

I recently needed to confirm the request values that were being generated by a webservice client that I just developed.

I had to find a tool to intercept the request being submitted.

I came across this awesome, easy to use tool which I used to grab the xml request that was being submitted to a web service.

tcpTrace (http://www.tcptrace.org/).

Install tcpTrace.exe and configure the port and server as follows:

Listen on Port# : 81

Destination Server : <your server>

Destination Port : <your destination servers port>

<soap:address location=”http://localhost:81/<rest of the url>“/>

In your wsdl replace the server and port with the tcpTrace localhost address (ie.localhost:81).

Run your program, and tcpTrace will output the xml request.

This is ideal for webservices that don’t return the actual request.

Designing with a grid system (such as the twitter bootstrap) in mind

November 10th, 2011

Something I, as a self taught designer, hadn’t gotten into the habit of was designing with a grid system in mind. This is something that I have quickly remedied. Designing this way means that the rest of the project flows as smoothly as possible and makes future structure changes a LOT simpler.

With structure comes the freedom to be creative without constantly worrying about how the structure will affect the build process. I will briefly cover two helpful tools that I feel work well for me. They allow your design grid to be set up faster and easier, allowing you to spend more time designing.

 

Designing with the grid system in mind

Designing with the grid system in mind
» Read more: Designing with a grid system (such as the twitter bootstrap) in mind

Great tools we’re using right now…

October 26th, 2011

I will be maintaining this blog post on an ongoing basis, but here are a few very smart tools and “ways of doing things” that we’re either using right now – or will be using when the opportunity next presents itself.

Twitter Bootstrap

“Bootstrap is a toolkit from Twitter designed to kickstart development of webapps and sites.
It includes base CSS and HTML for typography, forms, buttons, tables, grids, navigation, and more.”

» Read more: Great tools we’re using right now…