The Interactive Designer's Toolbox

September 20, 2007

I've gotten a few requests to post what exactly I use on a day-to-day basis for all of my design and development work, so here it is, my toolbox:

note: yes, I use Macs almost exclusively for work so everything in this list will be OSX based. This isn't because I'm some Apple zealot, and I'm not looking to stir up controversy, it's just a personal preference

Coda $80 - my multipurpose tool. I do all of my simple and general development work inside Coda. It's a great app for having an editor, terminal, file transfer, projects and preview browser all in one spot. Unless I specifically need a feature of another program, this is my go-to app.

TextMate ~$50 - if Coda is a swiss army knife, TextMate is a scalpel. I use this for all heavy or intense coding sessions, especially for Rails. Bundles alone make this app worth the entry fee.

CSSEdit $30 - another extremely specialized tool. I desperately wish CSSEdit's preview and XRay features were included in Coda. I use this less when writing CSS from scratch (which I do by hand in Coda) and more when I need to debug someone else's style.

Transmit $30 - another one from the boys and girls at Panic. In my opinion, the must-have file-transfer client for OSX

ColorSchemer $50 - a great app for web designers. Give it a color, it gives you options for matching color schemes. High specific, but extremely useful

XScope $17 - web development productivity tool from IconFactory. Includes onscreen rulers, universal screen color grabber, window frames and positioning crosshairs. Great part is, it can sit up in the menu bar and is always right there when you need it.

Adobe CS3 Design Premium $600 (upgrade)- the grand daddy of all imaging suites. Sure there are other apps out there that are a hell of a lot cheaper, and sure, Adobe might be doing some head-scratching things in the CS product line, but no matter what the picture, web design or illustration, Photoshop and Illustrator can handle it at the finesse of a skilled user. Not the most user friendly, and coming in with steep learning curves, but you'd be hard pressed to find a serious designer that doesn't own at least one copy.

So there you have it. I understand that none of my apps are free apps, and there's a reason for that. It's not that I don't support open source, or that I have some burning desire to spend my hard-earned cash on Mac software (quite the contrary), I use the tools that do the job the way I want them to, plain and simple. If a free app comes along that will completely replace Photoshop for me, great! That means I don't have to drop another $300 on an upgrade copy.

Grand Total - $857 (ouch)