Personally, I'm a Firefox user as the web developer toolbar and Firebug is a must-have for a web designer/developer and, also, appreciate what Mozilla does for web.

Right, these tools or similar ones also exist on other browsers like Chrome (which can be my next browser with the performance offered).

There are also other great ones like Opera or Safari and it is very normal not to consider IE at all as every version used to come with its own issues.

Maybe, this can be changing as Internet Explorer 9 Beta is out with serious improvements like:

• new and faster JavaScript engine
• support for HTML5, CSS3 and SVG
• simpler UI
• and multiple features for faster browsing

It is not hard to guess that IE9 is still not a strong option for web designers/developers with the lack of dev-tools and reputation it has.

However, it is a big step forward and hopefully a good-enough product to motivate IE fans to upgrade and end up increasing the "modern browser usage ratio".

Also, considering the activity on the "web-dev products side of Microsoft", seeing new IE-compatible designer/developer tools in the near future won't be a surprise.

P.S. Internet Explorer 9 Beta only works with Windows Vista and Windows 7.

You'll remember Deep Zoom, a format which lets you explore an image easily no matter what size it is.

Zoom.it is a free service by Microsoft which enables us to view and share high-resolution imagery using the Deep Zoom.

It can be used by simply pasting the URL of the image to the form on the website or via the API provided.

The service returns a shortened URL of the zoomable image for sharing easily and embed link for inserting into web pages.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit is a free tool from Microsoft for improving a website’s relevance in search results.

It simply analyzes a website & recommends how to make your new or existing site content/structure more search engine-friendly.

Some features of SEO Toolkit:

• full-featured crawler engine
• query builder interface that allows you to build custom reports
• display of detailed information for each UR
• ability to manage robots.txt file
• ability to manage sitemap.xml file

It requires an IIS7 enabled computer to run which is basically Vista, Windows 7 or Server 2008. After that it can analyze any local or remote website.

P.S. Besides standard installation, SEO Toolkit can be installed easily using the Microsoft Web Platform.

It is easy to guess that most of the web designers/developers are not the fans of Microsoft.

On the other hand, lately, they are frequently creating interesting stuff for the community like the Web Platform, Expression Web SuperPreview & now WebsiteSpark.

WebsiteSpark is not a software, rather, it is a program that targets small web design companies & offers them valuable softwares to ignite their businesses.

The program has no upfront costs for 3 years & requires various amounts of payments depending on the products you want to use after that period. Also, you can quit the program anytime by only paying a $100 fee which is still acceptible.

The softwares included are:

The Web Platform Installer Beta (Web PI), makes it easier to create a web development environment on your PC.

It provides a single, free package for installing and configuring Microsoft’s entire Web Platform, including:

• IIS7
• Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition
• SQL Server 2008 Express Edition
• .NET Framework.

You can mention whether you’re an ASP.Net developer or even choose support for specific features like ASP, SQL Server driver for PHP, etc. besides installing the complete Microsoft Web Platform

Considering the IIS version to be installed is IIS7, the installer is compatible with Vista & Microsoft Server 2008.