But what if a user wants to use different source code viewers and editors depending on the object to be analysed? Some web designers might want to view HTML code in a program like Notepad++ but XML or CSS in a different program that is better suited for that code.

Dafizilla ViewSourceWith is the ultimate Firefox add-on for this purpose. The add-on can be easily used to add multiple source code editors, image viewers and editors and other editors to the web browser which can then be selected to open a specific object or file in Firefox.

A right-click will display an additional View … item which is different depending on the location the right-click was performed. It can be View Source or View Image for instance. The programs that the Firefox user wants to use to view and edit the source code and objects need to be added in the options. The add-on supports relative and absolute paths which is great for portable use. Keyboard shortcuts can be configured so that it becomes even easier to open objects in external programs.

Firefox users can also:

• open page source as DOM document
• open CSS and JS files present on page
• open images using your preferred image viewer (e.g. GIMP or ACDSee)
• open PDF links with Acrobat Reader or Foxit Reader or what you prefer
• edit textboxes content with your preferred editor and automatically see modified text on browser when you re-switch focus on it, this simplifies wiki pages editing
• open server side pages that generate the browser content, this simplifies web developer’s debug
• open files listed in Javascript console. When editor opens file the cursor can be moved to line number shown on javascript console

Dafizilla ViewSourceWith is available for all Firefox 2 and 3 browsers. The developer maintains several faqs on the project website which can help in configuring the program for advanced uses.

Highlight’s source is included in the download, even in the Windows version which is slightly unusual. Installation should not pose a problem at all, the user is asked if he wants to add a Sent To entry to Windows that could be used to right-click documents and send them to Highlight for faster processing.

The Source Code Analyzer is compatible to more than 120 programming languages from html over php to c++ and css. It is probably a good idea to change the default skin of the software to a skin that adds contrast to the source code. The skins do not change the main program interface but display the source codes in the right pane differently.

Highlight uses a three tiered interface. The left pane contains the sources that have been loaded into the application, the middle pan is being used to change certain options like line wraps, numbering of lines or the output format (html, xml, xhtml, latex, tex, rft and svg) and the right pane displays the currently active source code.

The source code analyzer provides an interesting alternative especially for those users who edit source code with a normal text editor.