Web Development Apps

LazyD

LazyD

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Dec 7, 2006
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Not sure why, but I have decided to try and compile a list of commonly (and uncommonly) used applications to aid web developers. Hopefully it will benefit all developers with applications you may have never seen nor known existed - Anyone is welcome to post there favorites, ill start with a couple of mine...

Applications

UEStudio - This is my daily use application of choice for HTML, CSS, PHP & JS. UEStudio is the full IDE type editor with more features then I care to count. It has a little brother called Ultraedit-32 which I use as well (UEStudio @ Home, Ultraedit32 @ Work). Both feature completel syntax highlighting, auto-indenting, projects (UEStudio has CVS/SVN for projects), ftp/sftp and for UEStudio it has popup tips for PHP syntax/functions, etc. All around, an excellent program well worth the money.

Photoshop - Need an explanation?

DBDesigner/Mysql Workbench - Recently DBDesigner turned into MySQL workbench (and now they charge I believe), there is also an app called DBDesigner Fork that is free. These programs are a GUI wrapper for creating database structures, relationships, etc. They are a great way to build and store database structures for complex projects, they easily generate SQL queries & reverse engineer existing databases.

Putty - SSH client...

Cygwin - All the things you love about the *nix shell in a windows environment. Command prompt on hardcore steroids.

Firefox Add-ons

Firebug - Get it, seriously.

Live HTTP Headers - This addon allows you to see the headers for all GET & POST requests, useful for debugging, scraping and a variety of other things.

ColorZilla - Gives you an eyedropper to easily select colors on a page and get the hex/rgb values.

Poster - This addon lets you create arbitrary POST/GET requests on a URL. This is great for testing web services where you will be posting shit without having to create a form. etc.

MeasureIt - Lets you drag a ruler across the screen to give you pixel dimensions for your selected area.

Adobe AIR Apps

It doesnt seem like people have jumped on the Adobe AIR train yet, but please do - Its worth your time to checkout the apps people have been creating especially since so many of them are directly related to web design. Im not going to list them here because I thought Web Resources Depot did a great job making there own list, but here 27 AIR apps for developers... 27 Adobe AIR Applications - Handy For Web Designers

Everyone, feel free to comment, add your own, etc.
 
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Reactions: cheshire, kblessinggr and Rage9


Yar, I know quiet a few people who use Zend, ive never been a huge fan of it ever since they switched over to being an Eclipse plugin. Im not an Eclipse fan in general but for all you folks who need a multi OS IDE for a variety of different things and has loads of plugins, Eclipse is a good choice.

Eclipse
Eclipse PDT (PHP Editor)
 
One more I just remembered....

WinSCP - All your FTP program are teh suck. WinSCP handles FTP & SFTP, great for people like me who dont want to setup FTP on there VPS and just use your SSH login.
 
LazyD said:
Yar, I know quiet a few people who use Zend, ive never been a huge fan of it ever since they switched over to being an Eclipse plugin. Im not an Eclipse fan in general but for all you folks who need a multi OS IDE for a variety of different things and has loads of plugins, Eclipse is a good choice.

Eclipse
Eclipse PDT (PHP Editor)
Click to expand...

I downloaded the zend studio eclipse plugin and was like ohh fuck I don't have eclipse this sucks I don't want eclipse and don't know how to use it.

Once the zend studio was downloaded I installed it and it seems to be the full suite, I have yet to see a single mention of eclipse anywhere in it, I don't know if I got a fucked up version or something but everything works perfect and at first I hated the environment they deal with for PHP but after coding with it for a few hours and getting used to there shortcuts and how things work a little bit then its fucking great I love it.
 
Currently I typically use the following (was using dreamweaver, but since I stick to codeview 99% of the time I've found alternatives).

YummyFTP - One of the better straight forward FTP clients that will automatically edit with an editor of choice and upload automatically upon saving. Also a fully capable SCP/SFTP client.
Text Wrangler - Free version of BBEdit, a very nice straight forward text editor.
Coda - What I pretty much been using instead of Dreamweaver lately (I'd prefer to use Komodo IDE, but it doesn't have a put/get capability like dreamweaver/coda has) [ Komodo IDE is probably one of the better IDe's I've found, reminds me somewhat of primalscript when I was still on windows, just wish I could put right to the server from it without having to do a 'remote save' ]

Photoshop CS4 - ... I think you get the idea on this one.
 
Aequitas said:
I downloaded the zend studio eclipse plugin and was like ohh fuck I don't have eclipse this sucks I don't want eclipse and don't know how to use it.

Once the zend studio was downloaded I installed it and it seems to be the full suite, I have yet to see a single mention of eclipse anywhere in it, I don't know if I got a fucked up version or something but everything works perfect and at first I hated the environment they deal with for PHP but after coding with it for a few hours and getting used to there shortcuts and how things work a little bit then its fucking great I love it.
Click to expand...

There's two versions of Zend, ones a plugin for Eclipse (Zend for Eclipse or also called Zend Studio), the other (which you downloaded) is just called Zend Studio, which is their own development suite, which is better IMHO.

The Eclipse version is 6.1, latest stand alone is 5.5.1 I believe. I hope they continue with the stand alone, as it's pretty sweet.
 
Rage9 said:
There's two versions of Zend, ones a plugin for Eclipse (Zend for Eclipse or also called Zend Studio), the other (which you downloaded) is just called Zend Studio, which is their own development suite, which is better IMHO.

The Eclipse version is 6.1, latest stand alone is 5.5.1 I believe. I hope they continue with the stand alone, as it's pretty sweet.
Click to expand...

Yeah I'm about 99% sure I've got the actual zend studio stand alone IDE.
 
As far as I know Zend is discontinuing the stand-alone edition in favor of the Eclipse version.

Houdas, thanks for My DebugBar, thats one I hadnt seen before. Also, for debugging other browsers besides FF, you can use Firebug Lite - I reccomend the Bookmarklet for easy access, it will allow you to get basic Firebug functionality such as DOM highlighting, etc by simply select the Favorite/Bookmark on any page you like.

Also.. To expand on the AIR apps...

There are a number of AIR apps that have become extremely helpful, not only for web dev, but for everyday shit. Heres a few of my favorites:

RegExr Desktop - Allows you create/edit/check Regular Expressions
Snippely - Inevitably you will have some stupid hack or bit of code you use and want to remember down the line, enter Snippely.
Shrink O'Matic - Batch image resizer with a number of formatting options.
Icon Generator - Name says it all.. Create PS3/Web 2.0 style icons
Webcam DVR - Allows you to record and save videos from your webcam
 
Things I use regularly in development:

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional - For writing .NET and MFC apps
VisualSVN Client - Subversion client plugin for VS
Tortoise SVN Client - Subversion client for everything else
Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio - Manage, edit local SQL development databases
RedGate SQL Compare and SQL Data Compare - Synchronize new database structure changes to staging and production
Regexbuddy - For playing around with regular expressions
FlashFXP - Simple FTP client
Notepad2 - Replacement notepad for quick edits
Notepad++ - Used only when I want to edit something directly over FTP
Adobe Photoshop - Slicing PSDs
Adobe Dreamweaver - Mostly any non-.NET programming done in here. It's not the best but I'm used to it and none of the other IDEs do it for me
VMWare Workstation - Several virtual machines for testing other OSes and old browsers (like IE6)
Firebug/Web Developer toolbar - plugins for Firefox to debug Javascript and CSS layout issues
IE Developer toolbar - plugin for IE to debug CSS layouts
Putty - SSHing into linux boxes
 
I've been using Directory Opus (no aff link) as a file manager replacement. It's a fucking swiss army knife for many tasks so you don't have to open a full blown app to do a bunch of busy shit while tweaking your sites. It's ftp feature is pretty sweet and has SSH SCP/SFTP support. Highly customizable, many plugins available.

I use a lot of apps mentioned for major development sessions, but DOpus has been a huge productivity booster overall for me - well worth the money.
 
  • gVim - I've tried most of the editors mentioned above and I always come back to VIM. It's helpful to have the same shortcuts in an editor whether its on my desktop or on a server.
  • Chrome - I am much more productive with chrome than FF or Ie, the history search is better and its just much faster.
  • FileZilla - My ftp client of choice, I've used most of the others and keep coming back to this one, its reliable and easy to use.

Everything else I use is already listed in other posts.
 
I focus primarily on user interface design with web applications. I haven't made the jump to Apple yet and still use XP as my primary OS. The tools I generally use would be:

Image Manipulation
Adobe Photoshop (Of course))
SHUP Screen/Window Capture, Editor & Uploader

For the hardcore handcoders:
E-Text-Editor (TextMate for Windows)
Notepad++ Is probably the best free text editor.

Platform Testing:
Multi IE Installer
BrowserShots

Developer Plugins
Web Developer Toolbar
SEO for Firefox
And of course Firebug

I use FileZilla w/ SFTP (FTP over SSH) for file management.

This suite treats me pretty well for everything I need to do really. Although some of the tools listed in this thread could be very helpful in some situations.

Thanks guys.
 
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