Recommended Tools: update
I’ve been expanding my toolset lately, looking for better ways to increase my efficiency. I first wrote about some of my tool preferences during my Better Web Development series, but with some more tips I wanted to come back to this.
Programming editors:
Flash Actionscript Editor: SEPY — now that I use SEPY, I don’t know how I got along without it. Best feature: it can open Flash Project files, so you can easily organize your SEPY scripts through the familiar Flash interface. Since using SEPY, I’ve taken to writing all of my actionscript in external files. It’s not just a good external editor, either, but offers plenty of integration with the Flash application — for instance, you can still Ctrl-Enter to test your flash movie. One caveat: it requires Python (which I recommend anyway).
PHP Editor: PHP Designer — I still use Dreamweaver for most of my PHP development, but that might be changing. PHP Designer is a quality tool, and has a beautiful interface with lots of skin options. They also seem serious about keeping it updated, which is a big plus. It can handle various languages and markups, and it’s free. Dream…what was that old app again?
Python Editor: SPE — Python might be my favorite language right now, even though I’m currently only using it for desktop applications (no web pages based on Python yet — emphasis on ‘yet’) This is another really solid IDE. Best feature: the built-in shell interface. Most of the in-house tools I’ve developed have been built with SPE. It also requires Python, but if you’re interested enough in Python development to get SPE, that’s probably not a problem!
Browsers
Opera — I fell in love with Opera as soon as they removed that pesky price tag. It’s the fastest, most polished browser of the lot.
Firefox 2.0 Beta2 — If you want to experiment a bit, check out the new beta for Firefox 2.0, aka BonEcho.
IE 7 RC1 — IE 6 is, face it, ancient. The 7.0 update looks like it will be a breath of fresh air for developers that spend most of their time solving problems with getting their standards-based websites to work in IE. What’s really interesting is that Microsoft will push IE 7 to users as a high-priority security update. This will seriously reshape the face of website demographics in just a few weeks. If you’re a web developer, get IE 7 RC1 now and make sure your sites will work in IE7. Take this very site as an example — there are serious rendering bugs at the moment when viewed in IE7. Don’t let it happen to you.
Safari — Uhoh, I’m on a windows machine! How can I test with Safari? No problem, I’ll just get BrowsrCamp to render a screenshot. It’s not the same as an interactive webpage — but it’s sure better than nothing.
Utilities
Download Manager: Free Download Manager — Sometimes you just need a better download interface. Maybe you need to queue up a long list of files, or maybe you’re trying to download something on a heavily taxed connection, and you want to be able to resume a download if the connection is dropped, but sometimes the browser just isn’t the right utility to handle your download. I’ve tried various tools and none of them satisfied the way that FDM did. It’s easy, has a great interface, and doesn’t insist on taking over your system (some download managers assume you want them to manager *every* download….). I especially like the drop-box that you can drag links to!
Password Management: KeePass — These days, everybody wants you to log in before you can use their services. Which for the most part, unless you have a prodigous memory, leaves you with two options: use the same password for every site, or store your passwords. I used to use the first method, but after a while it was painfully obvious that I was stretching my passwords to far. So it was time for method #2 — and I’m not talking about post-it notes. KeePass is a small utility that stores passwords and related information in a secure, encrypted, password-protected file. You just have to know that password, and you’re good to go. The best parts about KeePass are the secure password generator and the ability to double-click on the asterisked-out password field to copy the normal-text password to the clipboard — for only 10 seconds.
FTP: FileZilla — The only choice for me for FTP for a long time.
Regular Expressions: The Regulator — Microsoft is not famous for having Regular Expressions built right into their programming languages, which makes the fact that their .NET framework has one of the most complete Regular Expression systems available today a little surprising. The Regulator is a .NET application that allows you lots of room to experiment with regex, including color coded syntax and lots of menu based insertion options. If I’m not sure how to do something with regex (and who really is, all of the time?), this is the first app I open.
Virtual Machine: Virtual PC — Since Microsoft started releasing their Virtual PC software for free earlier this year, the ability to test on multiple platforms has become much easier. Now I can install IE 7 on my XP computer, and still run IE 6 in a virtual Windows 2000 computer, and can test easily on both platforms. True, VMWare also has a free VMWare Player, but currently VMWare’s free software only allows for playback of pre-created virtual machines, while VPC allows users to create their own virtual machines, so VPC has a leg up in my opinion — although there are a slew of pre-created virtual machines available here that would be plenty to get you started if you’re mostly worried about Linux or application-based systems (some look very cool). But Microsoft is getting ready to release VPC 2007, and impending updates are always nice. Microsoft and VMWare both also have Virtual Server software, which is another good choice if your looking for fast server emulation.
Process Management: Process Explorer — Think Task Manager on steroids. The best thing about this tool is that it doesn’t just show you what processes are running at any given time, or the ability to kill them off one by one — but you can search for processes…or handles. That’s right — the next time you get a “file cannot be deleted, it is opened by another process” or some such, when you’ve done everything you can normally do to close it, just go into procexp and search for that file. You’ll be able to kill the handle and get back to work!
There are a ton of free applications out there that can really make your life easier if you take the time to familiarize yourself with them. Remember, efficiency isn’t always about a single piece of software that can do it all. Sometimes it helps to have a few really specialized tools in your corner that can really do a job well.