Every web designer must have powerful tools (i.e. applications) in their arsenal. These tools are designed to make the developers’ and designers’ jobs easier and less-time consuming. The most preferred tools in the market are those which can be accessed almost anywhere and anytime they’re needed. At a loss at finding the right apps for you? Here is a collection of today’s 18 must-haves:
Google Docs
Google Docs is a great file-sharing app for your presentations, spreadsheets, text documents and other files. All your data is available online (via cloud storage) so you can always access them anywhere and anytime you want to. Plus, it’s free to use.
Dropbox
Dropbox and tools that can act as an asset bank are basically your online flash drive that can be shared (much like Google Docs) but it’s not restricted to spreadsheets and word processing. The Dropbox storage size begins at 2 GB, but for every successful referral, that is if another person installs the Dropbox software through your invite, another 250 MB is added to your storage size. This is a great tool for backing up all your projects and work.
Firebug
Firebug is one of the more popular free web development tools. If you’re browsing using Mozilla Firefox, you can install Firebug as an extension to allow you to make CSS changes live in your browser even before transferring them in your CSS sheet. Certainly a must-have!
Color Scheme Designer
Creating a color scheme made even easier: Color Scheme Designer allows web designers experiment with color palettes by plugging in an RGB or CMY color and choosing the systems you want to model. The application will do the job for you. Sweet.
Aviary’s Image Editor
Aviary’s Image Editor is a great online photo editing tool. This is a good alternative for Adobe Photoshop if you find that your computer has too many applications running in the background and can’t run another heavy program.
deviantArt muro
deviantArt muro is one of the awesome drawing application that uses the wonders of HTML5’s no-flash–required feature. It has a very wide canvas size, perfect for any drawing program. There are a lot of tools and filters you can experiment with and the application having layers is worth mentioning.
Favigen
Favigen is a great favicon generator for your website. The tool’s simple interface makes it very easy to use. Just upload your image, choose your favicon size and watch the wonders of Favigen.
Visual.ly
Visual.ly is an incredible community platform for data visualization. It’s pretty much a social network for infographics and visualization sharing. In here, you can create your own infographics and can easily share them with the rest of the world.
Trello
Trello is a project management app that gives it users a way to collaborate with their team or members anywhere in the world. The application provides the users with a single project board and from there they can post specific tasks in the form of “cards”. When a user clicks on the card, it shows detailed information on the task provided.
Draftest
Draftest is a great way to test out your designs and get feedback. In Draftest, you simply upload your graphic designs and send them to your customers and they can rate your work. It’s a neat app where people can review your ideas and get valuable feedback.
Browsershots
Browsershots can help you test how your website design runs on different browsers. You take a screenshot and the watch as the wonders of the application gives you screenshots of your web design running in different browsers. This is an incredible web application for checking the compatibility of your website on browsers.
CSS Drive
For web developers, a fast loading site is a good site. CSS Drive does that job by compressing your CSS for faster loading time. All you need to do is paste your CSS in their website and ticking a few check boxes, CSS Drive will do the job of compressing it for you.
Launchlist
Launchlist is a good campaign management and checker tool. It allows web designers and developers to make a detailed checklist of their project. Users can create a project and a set of tasks that can be checked off as you finish them. Great tool to keep people more organized before the actual “launch” of their project.
CSS3 Generator
As the name implies, CSS3 Generator is probably the best generator for any web developer. You just need to choose what feature you want and set the right parameters and the app generates the right CSS codes that you need.
Loads.in
Loads.in is another website checker tool that checks how fast your website loads. Just paste your website URL in the browser and it checks how fast your website runs. You can even choose different countries and browsers for testing.
Bounce
Bounce lets you share your ideas and feedback on any website. By typing the website you want to give feedback to, the application will grab a screenshot of the website and you can add notes to it. After you have written your feedback, you can post it on your Facebook or Twitter.
What The Font
Found a font that you want? WhatTheFont is an awesome font “matching” tool that allows you to know the font (or closest font match) of any font image in their database.
Invoice Bubble
Invoice Bubble is a free invoice generating app that allows users to create professional invoice for their customers in a matter of seconds. There’s a small advertisement in the invoice that can be removed for a fee ($5/month).