22 Extremely Useful Tools for Web Designers and Developers

Introduction

As a web designers or/and developers, I believe we all have our own favourite tools. For me, I have heaps of them and some of them are extremely useful. Because of these plugins, air apps and editors, I able to finish my projects on time, going back home on the dot. :)

To all the fellow developers who have make all these wonderful plugins/applications.

A HUGE THANK YOU!

Firefox Plugins

A lot of Firefox plugins have changed web designers and developers' life. :) For myself, I'd be least efficient if I work without firebug and web developer. Debugging html, css layout is so much easier with all those plugins. The following is my favourite plugins:

• Web Developer Tools
  
  The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools. It is designed for Firefox, Flock and Seamonkey, and will run on any platform that these browsers support including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
• ColorZilla
  
  Advanced Eyedropper, Color Picker, Palette Viewer and other colorful goodies for your Firefox
• Screengrab!
  
  Screengrab! Firefox Extension is a handy web development tool with 6 excellent options. Screengrab! saves or copies to clipboard web pages as images.
• HTML Validator
  
  HTML Validator is a Mozilla extension that adds HTML validation inside Firefox and Mozilla. The number of errors of a HTML page is seen on the form of an icon in the status bar when browsing. The details of the errors are seen when looking the HTML source of the page.
• Firebug
  
  Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.
• FireRainbow
  
  FireRainbow brings javascript syntax highlighting to Firebug.
• Live Header
  
  View HTTP headers of a page and while browsing.
• Dust-Me Selectors
  
  Dust-Me Selectors is a Firefox extension (for v1.5 or later) that finds unused CSS selectors.
• CSS Validator
  
  CSS Validator is a Mozilla Firefox extension which Validates a page using the W3C CSS Validator.
• IETab - windows only
  
  IE Tab, an extension from Taiwan, embeds Internet Explorer in a Mozilla/Firefox tab.

Adobe Air Applications

Adobe Air application is like mac widgets. They are small but extremely useful. The following are the apps that I think can be very inspiring for designers and helpful to developers.

• colorPicker
  
  colorPicker is a widget-like AIR application that lets you either choose a "web-safe" color from a color grid or design a color using sliders to adjust the red, green, and blue values of the color.
• Color Browser
  
  This application is a simple way to create and organize your favorite color palettes. Sets of colors are easily viewable in a clean interface. Edit them, rearrange them, create new sets, make them your own.
• Kuler Desktop
  
  Browse, search, and save themes directly from your desktop with this Adobe AIR™ application. Drag individual themes to your desktop, where they can be scaled to any size
• Em based layout
  
  A calculate to save the hassle in calculating the em of any give px.
• Polaris Google Analytic Reporting
  
  Polaris is a cross-platform desktop widget for Google Analytics. With 8 standard reports it's the easiest way keep your data always instantly available. The rich interface and swift navigation make it a pleasure to use.
• Pixus
  
  Pixus is a tool to measure the screen objects in pixels using both mouse and keyboard control and preview your design with skins and presets.
• JustResizeIt!
  
  JustResizeIt! introduces a brand new way of resizing images – just drag and drop them!

My favourite Mac & Windows Tools

For me, I have two different working environments - windows and mac. Therefore, I have the chance to try out different kind of softwares. In my opinion, I think notepad++ is the best editor I ever used. I have been trying out all kinds of solution out there, forexample, coda and textmate, none of them can give me the robustness that notepad++ offered. The rest of the software I find myself has been using it, and I'd like to share it with all of you.

• Notepad++ - win
  
  I have to admit, this is the BEST web development editor! Unfortunately it's only available on windows! It comes with tabbed interface, configurable syntax highlighting, syntax folding, line numbering, multi-view, bookmarks and regular expression search and heaps of useful features.
• Putty - win
  
  PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator.
• Filezilla - mac, win
  
  FileZilla is free and powerful cross platform FTP solution.
• Clyppan - mac
  
  Clyppan is a free and Open Source clipboard history application for Mac OS X that’s always at your fingertips.
• TextWrangler - mac
  
  TextWrangler is the powerful general purpose text editor, and Unix and server administrator’s tool.

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