Getting all options of a specific attribute in Magento is fairly easy:

$attribute = Mage::getModel('eav/config')->getAttribute('catalog_product', 'color');  
foreach ($attribute->getSource()->getAllOptions(true) as $option) {
    echo $option['value'] . ' ' . $option['label'] . "\n";
}

Magento is a complex system and without proper tools, development for the system can get complex, especially for beginners. In this article, we will examine some of most useful Magento development tools and extensions.