I’ve been working professionally as a web developer for about 7 years. I exclusively used Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe Photoshop in my baby web developer days. Why? Mainly because it’s what my employeer provided.
It’s been seven years, and I stopped using Dreamweaver years ago.
Here is a quick list of cheap apps that make my development process easier and, honestly, more entertaining. They are all for Mac OS X. They might Windows or Linux counterparts, but I wouldn’t know:
- Coda 2 – You might not consider $100 dollars cheap. However, this app is worth every cent x 1000. I have never looked back since I started using Coda rather than Dreamweaver.
- Resolution Tab – This app allows you to test HiDPI images during the development phase. It’s much nicer spending a few bucks rather than buying a Retina MacBook, Google Pixel or iPad 3rd Gen or higher. However, this app works best if you have a nice big monitor. For example, my 27inch iMac in 2x mode will emulate a HiDPI screening running at 1280 x 720 perfectly.
- ColorSnapper – This app saves me so much time it’s insane. Apply a hotkey to the app, click on the color you want, it automatically copies the hex to your clipboard. I seriously use this app about 100 times every time I develop a site.
- ProCSSor – Takes your unformatted CSS files and beautifies it for you. I really liked this app and I still like it to a point. However, it does choke on media queries. Not a deal breaker for me, but it needs an update.
- Clipboard History – Once installed you get a menu icon with a complete history of everything you have pasted to your clipboard. Time saver and life saver.
- Rulers – I use this app all the time. It allows you measure anything on your desktop quickly. Fantastic if you are taking a PSD and converting it to HTML and CSS.
- CodeBox – I saved the best for last. This app, once installed, gives you a menu icon to a your code snippet library. Adding snippets is a breeze and retrieving snippets during development is insanely efficient. You can also share your snippet library across multiple computers using a syncing service such as Dropbox. The BEST cheap app I use on a daily basis.