Out with the old, in with the new. 2008 was, by far, the hardest working, yet most productive year of my life. I have been fortunate to discover an incredible useful array of different tools that have made my life as a web developer MUCH easier. Now, I want to share them with you!
Here they are:
Rescue Time
Over the past two months, I have been using an online tracking program called RescueTime which has allowed me to track how long I am working and how productive my work has been. Rescue Time allows you to assign numerical productivity values to different tasks, so it has ben useful to see how efficient my time spent on the computer has been.
You can use this to keep track of how often you are slacking off, or how long you are spending on a particular project.
Coda
Coda is a text editor + file transfer + svn + css editor + terminal + resource center. It is by a software company called Panic and it is only for Mac. Why do I use Coda?
It is extremely easy to manage and work on multiple projects with its visual CSS editor and built in file transfer. Combined with Apple Mail and Photoshop, Coda is my MOST used application. You can check it out how awesome Coda is here.
Twitter is great for getting new ideas. I follow a wide variety of other talented web developers, so it is always interesting when they tweet what tools they are using to make their jobs easier. Many of the tools on this list I found only through following people on Twitter. You will see Twitter go mainstream in 2009, meaning it will receive significant press coverage and more non-tech savvy people will start using it. Don’t forget to follow me and UBD on Twitter!
1Password
If you are a developer that works with clients, you know the pain of having to keep track of hundreds if not thousands of passwords. 1Password is the solution for managing A LOT of passwords. Again, if you are not a Mac user, you are out of luck.
1Password is also universal across all the browsers on your system, so if you use FireFox and Safari, you have will have access to the same passwords in both browsers.
MAMP
The abbreviation MAMP stands for: Macintosh, Apache, Mysql and PHP. With just a few mouse-clicks, you can install Apache, PHP and MySQL for Mac OS X! If you setup lots of client sites, you will appreciate the speed of being able to test files on your own system.
Since installing MAMP, I have saved a lot of time from having to upload to various test servers.
Those are my top 5 web development tools from 2008. What tools do you use that makes your job as a web developer easier?
Some additional top tools — a sketchpad, pencil, and your brain. 😉
All the very best for 2009, Nate!
Actually, of all these tools, I have only heard of Twitter. Thanks for sharing these with us Nate.
They might be really helpful.
Great to hear 2008 was so productive and all the best for 2009! It’ll be my most productive too.
I’ll have to get myself onto Twitter ASAP.
All MAC Web Developers you mean…my name is Josh and I’m a PC!
Thanks for sharing those tips of yours. I agree that following twitter would be a way to get some new ideas.
Twitter, great way of getting new ideas.I know that because I learned a lot from it.So @Metaspring I agree with you.
Till
Awesome tools Nate, but it’s a pitty that most of the ones that would really come in handy for me are for Mac, I’m a pc user. Dammit!
Nate thanks for sharing with us such useful tools for web developers. I got in your post a lot of new for me. In 2009 I am going to master all these tools and make my life much easier.
I am checking right now this 1password.It seems like very good idea.
Till
I’ll join the crowd that held out hope for some non-mac specific recommendations. Maybe a followup post is in order?
Dang Mac users! 🙁
-Mike
This is a pretty interesting list. I’ve never heard of any of these except Twitter, so I’m looking forward to testing them.
Andy
I don’t go any where else, i just read blogs and they do the research on behalf of me. excluding twitter i got another 4 tools at your blog very first time, if i will be finding those tools on any other social media than it will consume more time.
There was a cool little FireFox plugin which is no longer supported by FF3 however it did a great job of analyzing how much time you spend browsing various website and it would show you a chart at the end of the day. This is when I stopped going on YouTube 😀
Hum nice resource, i would like to share a great resource which could be helpful to SEO people as well web developers too. get the list at http://chaitanyapatel.wordpress.com/2009/01/28/list-of-firefox-addons-for-seo-best-firefox-plugins/
All really cool, but I wish I had a Mac now….
Nate,As I am new to SEO I have just heard about Twitter,buy going through some SEO article.
Rescue Time is really what everyone should know and analyze their work with this.
Thanks for sharing such useful knowledge.
Thanks for this post…very useful list of links. I really like that post and I will use all the methods given in here to find out the mistakes I have made in my HTML.
Affirmations can help you feel great about yourself. If you have preivously been dependant on others to make you feel significant you will have to no longer.
It is popular for web application, for open-source bug tracking tools and acts as the database component of WAMP, MAMP and LAMP. MySQL is closely related to PHP and Ruby on Rails. Most of the well known sites like WordPress run on a combination of PHP and MySQL.
Affirmations are statements of acceptance that one uses to allow the manifestation of your destiny.
it looks important tools but i just use twitter and i didn’t hear before about the others , i think if you say it is important so i should have a look on them .
Good selection of tools, but mostly for the Mac. I would like the single password tool because it can be challenging to remember all the passwords.
Twitter has long been known to me, I love him. But about the rest had never heard it, I will try to test ..
This is a pretty interesting list. I’ve never heard of any of these except Twitter, so I’m looking forward to testing them.