The Web Designers tools of the trade…
People often ask ‘What tools do you use for your web designs?’ so I thought I would share with you my preferred web design tools of the trade. I have to be honest that I only use a few tools on a regular basis and these tools are invaluable for making my life a whole lot easier!
Coda
Having been a hand coder all my web design life and never being a fan of Dreamweaver, Coda came along and just rocked my world. Awesome tool that lets you view all of your sites in a cool way, is an fantastic HTML editor, CSS Editor and lets you view your changes within a web page in the program. That is just the main bits as it can do so much more and makes coding not only easy but also a lot of fun. Love it…!
Transmit
Even with the great file transfer in Coda, sometimes it’s just easier to use Transmit. For me, as an FTP client, it is unparalleled and as it’s made by Panic, who also make Coda so you know that not only will it work fantastic but it will also look blooming great too!!
Things
I Love Things! Maybe it’s because I need it to keep myself organised, maybe it’s because it syncs beautifully with my Things app on my iPhone or maybe I love it because it looks so damn good!!!! In my opinion the best organiser out there, give it a try now…
Fireworks
I’ve always preferred Fireworks over Photoshop for the images I use on the web. Makes it very easy to create great web buttons, cool image effects and also gives a good rate of image compression, ideal for web images! I also plan all of my web designs using Fireworks so that I can give my clients a view of the web design before I start coding it. This allows me to be creative and to make changes to the web design before the client signs off the final plan.
Firefox
Now whilst I use Safari for my web browsing, it is still a must to have Firefox running at the same time. Great add-ins such as the SEOBook Rank Checker and the Firebug tool are essential for checking how a site is performing. Add to this tools that allow you to view the keyword density and speed that a site loads using Yslow and you can see why it is an essential browser for a web designer. Now that Safari is open to add-ins then maybe in the future some of these will find their way onto Safari as well.
Skitch
What a simple and great tool! I am always cutting bits of websites and highlighting the areas of importance to show to people. Allows you to take a screen print and then draw on it, now that has to be fun doesn’t it? You can then drag the picture quickly into an email or another program such as Fireworks with ease.
iTunes
For me, it is so important to have good music on to do great web designs and so what else to use than good old iTunes. Now I know that it can sometimes be a little frustrating to use and now has a pretty poor new dock icon, but it is still the best place to play music on my Mac.
I would love to know what tools other web designers use, please feel free to leave a comment…