10 free apps that I use for design & development
I have been using a bunch of application for inspiration, design, database, coding, testing and versioning purposes on my MAC OS Lion machine. I bought some apps and today i wanted to share the ones that are available for free. Here are my top 10 that I use frequently.
1. LittleSnapper (download) for inspiration
I use LittleSnapper to collect for design inspirations. With an easy click of shift+command+4 in mac, I collect loads of screenshots for logo, homepage, manifesto, typography inspirations. LittleSnapper gives me a neat interface to categorize and annotate them.
2. Virtual Box (download) for browser testing
A Windows machine on my MAC OS? I use Virtual Box to do all my IE and Windows-based browser testing. Since the application runs within my MAC, i do not even need to log out to do any Windows-based testing.
3. Sublime Text (download) for coding
This is a multi-purpose code writing app. If you are familiar with TextMate or Coda, give this a try too! It has built–in support for syntax highlighting, themes and plugins that makes it a powerful, yet a very light-weight editor. For continued use, you must buy the licence.
4. Mou Editor (download) for writing
I create a markdown readme file for almost all projects and this neat markdown editor and viewer makes it easy to write in markdown and view its rendered html easily.
5. Scout App (download) for coding
If you use sass and compass for your front-end design with css and do not want to use a command line, then this little app is neat.
6. MAMP (download) for localhost
I use MAMP for localhost testing and development for wordpress generally. For a php, mysql and apache development, this is a neat tool for any local testing.
7. GitX (download) for versioning
I prefer to use the command line for git commands during coding, but after hours of coding, i fire up this app to give me a graphical overview of all the commit, branches and changes i did with git.
8. Go2Shell (download) for terminal
Every finder has this Go2Shell menu item for me and I can fire up a terminal window in the current directory of the Finder. I use it all the time! No more ‘cd’ to the correct directory with my working file.
9. Total Terminal (download) for terminal
Go2Shell and Total Terminal go hand in hand when trying to access the terminal. With just a hot-key, the terminal window opens up and closes. This gives me a greater and faster control to work with the entire screen area with many windows open.
10. Sequel Pro (download) for database
An easy MySQL database connection, management and view. This gives a neat table view for all the database elements.
Which one of the above 10 do you use as well and are there any other interesting ones?
Thanks to Elisha, Adrianna and Chinmay for their demo and introduction to many of these apps.
