5 Must Have Tools for Serious Web Designers

5 Must Have Tools for Serious Web Designers

• Color picker
• Firefox Webdeveloper Extension Toolbar
• Browser Shots
• Picnik
• Notepadd ++

Color Picker is for a serious web "designer". Color is very important. If you get heavily into actually designing, you'll quickly realize that people study color and its effect on people's emotions. As such, as a designer you will want a robust tool like color picker that is going to allow you to pick, analyze and formulate color on the fly at all times, while browsing. If you don't have a color tool, you're not a designer.

Webdeveloper extension toolbar is a godsend. You can literally write your website and see it render real time, right in the browser. How much time does this save? A lot. If you're a professional designer, saving time is the difference from starving and making big bucks. It is the fast designer that can charge $2,500 for 10 pages and take on 60 projects a month. Yes, I know people that do this. I'm not one, because i'm friggin anal retentive and I lose track of ... OOOH SHINY. There is an internet explorer version too.

Browser Shots. A HUGE TIME SAVER. Yeah, seriously, right click > open with > choose > i.e. > version ###. Yeah, that gets darn tiresome and time consuming. This will change your life.

http://www.picnik.com/ is a website you can literally take pics and edit them right in the browser and deliver them to where ever you want. It is integrated with all the major photo hosting sites - flikr, photobucket, picasa, facebook, so you can literally just attach and start working. There is a premium membership that allows you even more tools. I've made whole websites with the pics i edited with picnik.

Notepad ++ this baby has come a long way. It seriously makes coding: fun; easy; readily see mistakes; readily see contextual errors [sigh, if i had a nickel]. I literally sat in Dreamweaver for hours, looking for a "mistake". It was a missing semicolon. Yes, in Dreamweaver. And it wasn't the first time. Notepad ++ has upgraded so much that it is now the go to tool. I have it open right now as I'm typing.

 

Wow, thanks for posting this! Prior to you mentioning Browser Shots I was installing the major browsers, and checking individually by right clicking, etc. This IS a real time saver

 

Thanks for sharing such tools and know designers who are professional in their work use such tools.

 

The color picker addon really helps a lot. Also the web developer extension toolbar, I use Firebug also, For coding I use Dreamweaver.

 

Great list, thank you. By the way, I use Notepad++ for a really long time.

 

thanks good info................

 

Firebug for firefox is also more importent

 

I use the web developer tool bar all the time. It's a must when I am working on the style or layout of any of my sites. So much easier than changing resolution back and forth.

 

I've had a highly successful web dev business for eight years now and we don't use ANY of those but for color picker, CAN'T use two of those because they're Windows only (and we don't use Windows) and WON'T use one of them which goes to show how little the OP knows about web dev. NONE of those tools are "must have" though a couple are handy to have.

 

Thanks for sharing! Notepad++ is really useful~ especially when u are tired to look at the screen which full of codes

 

Needs pretty pictures---^. Doesn't like to code. Shouldn't be coding.

 

Amen to that... All systems here in my office are Linux variation based and for Dev we use htmlkit for color separation on language type. ( not a necessity but "handy" for the color factor and line counting )

 

I use all the tools you are saying, but I don't know about picnics, thank you for the information

 

Thanks for colorzilla. I also use np++ for coding, Firebug for in browser debug and filezilla for ftp.

 

thanks.....

 

Very nice and useful sharing for web designers.Color scheme also important for web designers.I have all tools which name you share.
Thanks for sharing.

 

I also find that ySlow (developer.yahoo.com/yslow/) is really helpful at finding those annoying bottlenecks. there a browser extension for FF and chrome

 

i would like to add adobe dreamweaver to that list of must have tools for serious web designing

 

We were given a copy many years ago. We don't use it. Some people say they like to use it in "code view" only but I don't know anyone who does. It is not at all necessary and we consider it a waste of good money.

 

Agreed, dreamweaver does nothing that other (usually free) programs can not do and is essentially the nike of web design software. you pay for the Adobe logo and that is all.