After nearly 10 years in web development, I have tried every tried many tools and many techniques. I thought I would just quickly compile a list of my favorite tools. If I was on a desert island, with only the items in this list, my laptop and an internet connection, I wouldn’t even miss a beat.
Mac OS X
I am not a fanboy (as all fanboys say), but Mac OS X is the perfect mix of a nice clean intuitive interface with a powerful BSD-like engine under the hood. As much as KDE/Gnome did to advance Linux, OS X is what linux users really want, and as far as using Windows, I don’t know how to get by without BASH and SSH.
Coda
If you are in search of a text editor for your Mac, I would suggest Coda (check out their FTP program, Transmit, it’s nice too). I know some love TextMate and I have no issue with that. I just tried Coda first and found that it had everything I wanted.
Photoshop CS2
Why CS2? Simple. I can’t afford to upgrade and Fireworks really sucks. Don’t even mention “The Gimp”.
Adium
Great IM software that works with whatever chat protocol your clients/friends/coworkers use.
MAMP
Mac/Apache/MySQL/PHP. All that in an easy to use interface. Makes upgrading and testing different version of MySQL/PHP a breeze.
Firefox
I use Firefox as my primary development browser, but of course, test a wide range of browsers. I couldn’t get by without a few favorite extensions…
Web Developer Toolbar
The best DOM/CSS debugger a webdev can have. Before this extension, things took a lot longer.
Firebug
This is the tool that took Javascipt from being a neat trick like a clock that followed your mouse around to being a serious programming language. I didn’t have a clue how to debug JS before this.
YSlow
A Yahoo tool to analyze your optimization efforts. It’s a must for post-launch.
VMWare Fusion
Still gotta test IE6, so a copy of this running on my Intel Mac makes it possible to ditch my Dell. I’ve used Parrallels and it’s a great, too.
Joomla
My CMS of choice for a bigger projects. Why do I use it? I am lazy. It kind of took a while to learn and I have a lot of re-usable code written for it. There could be better options, but Joomla is as good as any.
Wordpress
The defacto choice for blogs. Also works as a simple CMS. Lots of plugins, easy to develop themes, very simple to deploy.
JQuery
Prototype, Mootools, Sciptaculous…. and probably a dozen others, JS frameworks are a dime a dozen but JQuery blows my mind. Great API, very easy to understand and extend. There are tonnes of very useful plugins.
Google Apps for Domains
I use Google Apps for my freelancing email, calendar and documents. All of my files and contacts in “the cloud”, all with my own domain. Very easy to setup and administer. I even convinced RFX to switch over.
Google Reader
The only way to read blogs, in my opinion. I can keep track of what I’ve read, what I liked and what my friends liked. I don’t miss a thing with Google Reader.
Twitter
Great and fun way to communicate with the web. I find all sorts of gems on Twitter. Check me out, I’m all over the place on Twitter.
iPhone 3G
Since I got mine in July, it has not left my side. It’s been an invaluable tool in almost any situation. I don’t know what I did before I got it.
