A web designer’s set of tools is what helps bring a mock-up into reality. There are many tools available to our disposal, but there are some that just stand out from the crowd. Below are the 5 tools we know we couldn’t live without. What do you think?
5. Fireworks – Adobe Fireworks is a commercial raster and vector graphics editor hybrid from Adobe that’s available for the Mac and Windows operating systems. Designed specifically for web designers (unlike Photoshop), Fireworks brings you a plethora of tools and options that make full web layout prototyping a breeze.
4. Dreamweaver – Adobe Dreamweaver is a commercial application for web development that’s available for the Mac and Windows operating systems. Its featured-packed suite of tools and options include: syntax highlighting and very smart Code Hinting, a built-in FTP client, project management and workflow options that make team work effortless, and Live View – which shows you a preview of your source code.
3. Panic Coda – Panic Coda is a shareware web development application for the Mac OS X operating system. It seeks to reduce the amount of applications (such as an FTP client, CSS editor, a version control system, etc.) you need to develop websites and to improve your team’s workflow.
2. Photoshop – Adobe Photoshop is a very popular commercial graphics editor available for the Mac and Windows operating system. Created for professional photographers and designers, it is the ideal application for manipulating images and creating web graphics.
1. Firebug – Firebug is a free, open source in-browser web development tool for the Firefox web browser. It’s many features include: on-the-fly HTML and CSS editing for tweaking or debugging, a Console for logging, analyzing and debugging JavaScript, and an intuitive Document Object Model (DOM) inspection tool to help you quickly see how the elements of a web page relates to one another.
