27 great tools for web design and development

Mar
2009

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.

Tags: design, development, open source, toolkit

About the author

CEO of Mogdesign.eu - Drupal design and development firm. Designer, blogger, christian, husband, father...
http://about.me/jojototh

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21 comments so far

N_Lite, April 04 2009

Great Tools! :)

Brandon Cox, April 04 2009

Awesome list - and I'm lovin' the design of your own site - quite nice!

Jozef Toth, April 06 2009

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

Brad, April 10 2009

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! :)

Jozef Toth, April 11 2009

@Brad - thanks, I corrected it :)

Brad, April 20 2009

Sorry to pick at you :)

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

mary, April 21 2009

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

css galeria, April 22 2009

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

Shane McCallum, June 11 2009

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/

neon, July 03 2009

thank you very much.. very good web site..

web design and ..., July 17 2009

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.

zoyz, August 04 2009

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

Home design, February 16 2010

really thanks for your tool I have bookmarked this.....

Website Design, March 10 2010

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.

Solarpore, March 17 2010

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 www.solarpore.com .