April 24, 2009

Web development tools

I always find it interesting to know what tools other people use for their web development.  Here’s my list:

  • MacBook (black) – I love the portability
  • Bluetooth Mighty Mouse – Apple please fix the scroll ball.
  • TimeCapsule 500GB – Backups, to be honest its mostly got videos on it.  I need more space.
  • LinkSys ATA – VOIP to the office in NZ.
  • Software:
    • Firefox 3.0.9 – Im getting tired of how long it takes to open Firefox.  Being a developer, I usually have lots of tabs open… right now I have 34 tabs open.
    • Firebug – Best development helper ever.
    • Coda – panic.com/coda – Best code editor I’ve ever used, but please fix the search feature (why doesnt it find all strings that match the search text the first time?! – I have to to a Search/Replace multiple times to get all matches, ew)
    • Versions – versionsapp.com – Subversion client.  Love.
    • Things – culturedcode.com/things – Keeping track of to-do’s, ideas etc.  I also have the iPhone version.
    • Terminal – multiple windows always open.  I made a custom theme that looks like the first computer we ever had (black background with yellowy-orange text)
    • Mail – Great built-in mail app.
    • VMWare Fusion – vmware.com – All my development is done on local virtual machines (VM’s/VPS’s) running Debian Etch/Lenny.  I always have at least one open, often more.  I generally run them with only 128MB RAM each (my MacBook only has 2GB RAM which doesnt seem to be enough).
      I also have non-cli operating systems installed for testing code on different browsers.
      I would love to move this off to another machine to save me some memory: http://twitter.com/robertkern/status/1605041064
    • VPN – Built-in Mac VPN client for connecting to the office.
    • Adium – Chat connected to multiple chat systems including our own OpenFire installation for internal communication.
    • Transmit – panic.com/transmit – Great FTP client.  I dont need to use FTP too often, but when I do, this is a great app to use.
    • Photoshop – When I need to make image edits I use Photoshop, although I think i’d like to move over to Pixelmator.
    • FileMerge – For diff-ing files.
  • Pot of tea with damnfinetea.  Or a plunger of coffee.  Bottle of water.

I generally have most of these apps open at the same time (excluding probably Transmit and Photoshop which I dont use often enough to keep open).