27 great tools for web design and development

26 Mar 2009

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My web design toolkit

I have been working on websites and graphics since 2000 and my toolkit has ben changing and upgrading with every better, cooler stuff I found or read about. Starting with Corel Draw and Corel Photopaint I turned to Photoshop, when I started to do design for more than a hobby – helping in a small photo studio, building my first website in Dreamweaver and then turning to Notepad++ and PSPad, learning HTML and CSS from W3Schools.com… It’s been a long story, but everyone has started somewhere…

Here is my current setup on Windows 7, I use Open Source and free software, when I only can, but sometimes simply there isn’t a free alternative…

Design

Adobe Photoshop – bitmap editor with great image compression for web – a must for a web designer (I know – GIMP but…)

Adobe Illustrator – vector editor, I use it mostly for print designs

Adobe Flash – to create animations, interactive elements

Desktop Color Finder – neat Adobe AIR app from Colour Lovers, that gives you colors, color schemes, patterns based on specified color

Coding

Komodo Edit – I was trying to use Ecplise for great SVN integration, but I didn’t like the auto completion, was too slow, then I switched to Komodo Edit, set up a dark color scheme to save my eyes and dove in to coding

Sandbox Tools

Wampserver 2 – PHP + Apache installation for Win, I also used Vertrigo and Xampp

TortoiseSVN – probably best and most intuitive Windows SVN client with great Explorer integration

PuTTY and Pageant – for security keys handling and server side operations

FlieZilla – great FTP client

SQLyog – superb fast database editing but only local- but thinking about MySql Workbench

Firefox 3 + Firebug + HTML Validator – absolutely a must for any serious web development and theming

MS VirtualPC + IE6/IE7 – an evil must for QA

Opera 9.6 – again for QA

Safari 4 beta – again only for QA

Blogging

Websnapshots – great Adobe AIR app for automated website screenshots creation

Shrink-O-matic – for batch image resizing, again an Adobe AIR utility

Spellchecker.net – spell checking online, since english is not my primary language

Time Logging

TimeLoc – another AIR app for time tracking, with great project/task management – considering to use Klok instead

CMS

Drupal – voted as best Open Source PHP CMS – I use Drupal for all websites I build, for its great theming and customization possibilities, security, permissioning and categorizing options and for its amazing community

Wordpress – best blogging platform, I use it for this blog

What’s in your toolbox?

Share your experiences with tools, programs that you use. Let me know pls when you have anything that I should switch to… thanks.

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Tags: design, development, open source, toolkit

22 Responses to 27 great tools for web design and development

Brandon Cox

April 4th, 2009 at 6:26 pm

Awesome list – and I’m lovin’ the design of your own site – quite nice!

[Reply]

mogdesign

April 6th, 2009 at 12:35 pm

@Brandon Cox – I didn’t design my blog – it is a free worpress theme, see footer for more

[Reply]

Brad

April 10th, 2009 at 10:29 pm

Thanks for the tip on Komodo! Trying that out now.

Just a heads up (I know English isn’t your 1st language) you used the word ‘then’ incorrectly “…more then a hobby…” It should be ‘than’, “…more than a hobby…”

“Then” refers to time “I did this then I did that”

“Than” is a comparison “this is better than that”

Not nit-picking, just helping you out! It is a common mistake even for those who have English as their ONLY language! :)

[Reply]

Brad

April 20th, 2009 at 5:25 pm

Sorry to pick at you :)

BTW – Absolutely LOVING Komodo! It has replaced Notepad++ for me. Thanks!

[Reply]

mary

April 21st, 2009 at 4:40 pm

Nice list. I just recently installed Komodo Edit and like it so far. I’m also a huge Drupal fan, and dig MODx CMS just as much.

For FTP I like to use FireFTP.

thanks much

[Reply]

css galeria

April 22nd, 2009 at 9:53 am

Wow … thanks for that, you save my life and other 3 billions of people.
(sarcasm).

[Reply]

Shane McCallum

June 11th, 2009 at 12:18 am

Forget about the Virtual PC setup for IE versions just get the MS Expression Web SuperPreview (free) and you can test IE 6,7, and 8 no muss no fuss.
http://www.microsoft.com/expression/try-it/superpreview/

[Reply]

web design and development

July 17th, 2009 at 12:43 pm

I think this web design and development tools are really helpful and i am also use, not all………….Blogging always best………Tahnks for such a nice information.

[Reply]

zoyz

August 4th, 2009 at 9:19 pm

Hey its great list, though many are new for me as I am learning my own, I will try all of them step by step, and

yeah people pls recommend if there any learning materials which might help me.

Thank you

[Reply]

Best of the web – week #46 | Master Design

November 12th, 2009 at 12:55 pm

[...] 27 great tools for web design and development tweetmeme_url = ‘http://huibit05.com/tutorials/best-of-the-web-week-46/’;tweetmeme_source = ‘huibit5′;tweetmeme_style = ‘compact’; Author : admin Mr.D is a webmaster showcasing more about Design Inspirations, Freebies, Tutorials and Resources on the web. For more updates, follow us on Twitter [...]

Website Design

March 10th, 2010 at 8:14 am

very cool and good looking designs, thanks for sharing . I want to see more design on it, that would be very helpful, so i have bookmarked and waiting for more designs.

[Reply]

Solarpore

March 17th, 2010 at 6:02 am

Very good tools. Thank you.

To share the tools, I used PNGGauntlet to optimize PNG image file. And NetBeans IDE is also great for PHP edit and debug. You can find the information at Drupal website http://www.solarpore.com .