CodeDoc

A web developer’s life is never an easy one. I know and understand this, and so I thought I would share my top five, must have, tools that I use from day to day. They are in no particular order and are great tools. They have saved me countless hours of additional work and have made my work so much more tolerable.

ColorPic

ColorPic is a great colour picker application that allows for the creation of colour palletes which comes in handy when your designing a website template from scratch. The templates can be saved and retrieved as is necessary. ColorPic provides all the standard ways of grabbing colours, including; a Hue picker, a Hex picker, a Rainbow picker and a Sliders picker. One of ColorPic’s signature feature is the provision of magnification on the cursor when grabbing colors from other areas of the desktop. This is very useful if you have a high resolution monitor.

All in all, it’s a great, no-fluff, application that makes web design easier and fun. Did I mention that ColorPic is free? You can get your own copy via download at Iconico.

IE Tester

One of the greatest headaches in web design is tweaking the design to get a consistent layout across the major web browsers. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is the dominant browser and so assuring a constant layout across the different versions of Internet Explorer is key. This is where IE Tester comes in. IE Tester allows you to view your web design as it would be rendered in al the major Internet Explorer versions, including from version 5.5 to the latest version of 8. It is solid and not as buggy as in earlier builds.

IE Tester is a must have, as all Internet Explorer versions cannot be installed on the same computer. Also, Internet Explorer 6 and earlier versions are incompatible with Windows Vista and Windows 7. It’s a tool you must have in your tool box. You can download IE Tester at  DebugBar.

IE Tester

This next tool needs no introduction. It has become a staple of web developers and application developers alike. Notepad++ is like the offspring of good ole Notepad and your IDE, only it’s not and IDE and so much more than just an editor. It boasts advance features like syntax highlighting for dozens of languages, Intellisense for many languages, and allows for extending via a plugin system. Dont take my word for it. Download it today!

VirtualBox

Although we sometimes take it for granted, cross-platform compatibility is just as important as cross-browser compatibility. VirtualBox allows you to test your websites under various operating systems, without having separate physical computers. So you can run Linux, Open Solaris, etc in VirtualBox and see how your website performs under different environments. This is truly a must have tool. You should get it now.

FileZilla

After you have created your masterpiece, it shouldn't be a pain to publish your work to the web. While there are many FTP clients out there to help you with that, I have found FileZilla to be the best by far. It’s free and it just works. It supports many advanced features like remote file search, tabbed user interface, directory comparison, filename filters and configurable transfer speed limits – to name few. It is a must have.