It’s my first time working together with a group in an office, as opposed to the usual freelancing routine of one man alone in his sitting room. This aspect alone – despite some initial reservation – is definitely something I’ve appreciated over the course of the year. It’s good to get out there, it’s great to share and bounce ideas around with smart people who, between them, know much more about visual design and the business side of business than I’d ever want to ;-), and it’s invaluable knowing that those other aspects are in such capable hands – while I get all excited over my codes.

Over the course of the past six months or so, I’ve expanded upon my knowledge of Codeigniter to build a powerful multi-site CMS system for our clients, launched websites for clients such as McGovern Surveyors, DBASS Accountants, ETAG Signs and the classifieds ads website, Fetch.ie. And at the back of it all has been the project which arguably brought us together, Octopied.

And Then?

For the new year I’m hoping to enjoy a good deal of the same, while shifting more of my time and attention over to Octopied. Over the Christmas break (my first real “time off work” all year) I’ve been reading extensively on the Symfony PHP framework, and I like what I see. Compared to CodeIgniter, it feels a bit like getting the kid-gloves off, and 2010 might just be the year for that. Here’s to it!

Happy new year!

• Cross-Platform

  

  • GIMP

    Often cited as the best free alternative to Photoshop, this is at least a highly capable image editor. Although unfortunately for a design tool, the interface can all seem a bit clunky and it gets in the way at times.

  • Inkscape

    A very decent vector image editor. Similar to Adobe Illustrator, and a much nicer interface than the GIMP. Recommended.

  • Synergy

    This nifty little application allows you to share one mouse and keyboard with other machines on your home or office network. So when I’ve got my Windows laptop propped up beside my desktop iMac, I can move control from one machine to the next by simply ‘moving the mouse’ from one screen to the next. Really good.

• Windows

  

  • Crimson Editor

    I’ve tried many a text/code editor for Windows (such as the amicable Notepad++ and HtmlKit) but I keep coming back to Crimson Editor. It’s simple, no fuss, highlights my code and works well with my FTP Client and has distinguishable tabs (looks at you, HtmlKit!).

    One thing it doesn’t do is code auto-compleation – and that is missed at times. Still recommended.

  • SmartFTP

    I still haven’t really found a decent free/open-source FTP client for Windows, so I use this one. It’s free for non-commercial uses and costs $50 for a professional licence.

  • Putty

    A small, free, telnet/SSH client for Windows. Does the job well.

• Apple OS-X

  

  • I’ve found it extremely difficult to find decent free software for OS-X, but there certainly is a number of reasonably priced and very good software options out there. I use Coda for text editing and FTP access. It costs $79 for a licence and is, in all honesty, totally worth it.

• Linux (KDE)

  

  • Quanta+

    A really decent, though quite bulky, code editor for KDE. Includes every feature you could want, and then some. If you use KDE, get Quanta+.

See also : Firefox Plugins for the Web Professional

It’s the browser that kick-started a whole new and much needed era of ‘Browser Wars‘ and arguably still one of the best all round browsing experiences out there, but it’s also the large amount of often outstanding plug-ins available for the browser which have, in my mind, got much to do with it’s continued success.

Here’s a top selection of plugins for Firefox to aid and assist the lowly web professional. If you know of any others, shout it out in the comments :

Firebug

I recently asked my Twitter followers to shout-out any Firefox plugins which they deemed essential and many were quick to respond : Firebug. Since installing it I think I’ve used it more than any other web design/development plugin I own.

Firebug sits in the lower section of your browser window and allows you to easily inspect, view and edit many aspects of a page ‘on the fly’, to name only it’s primary functions. It’s an outstanding plugin and I’m really not too sure how I survived so long without it.

Download Firebug.

Web Developers Toolbar

While some features overlap with (and are outdone by) the nicer, shinier Firebug, I still think it’s a good idea to have Web Developers Toolbar installed.

Among many other things the Web Developers Toolbar offers quick access to information on images, forms, mark-up and stylesheets, cookies and the W3C validators either via the titular toolbar or (my preferred method) a handy context-menu.

Download Web Developers Toolbar.

Colorzilla

Colorzilla is a beautifully simple yet utterly indispensable little plugin. All it does is place a little eye-dropper icon at the bottom of your browser window which, once clicked, allows you to point and pick colours from within the current webpage. It’s brilliant.

Download Colorzilla.

MeasureIt

Another simple one that I use a lot. MeasureIt also manifests itself as a small icon in the status bar which this time allows you to click-and-drag to measure rectangular spaces on the page. Very useful.

Download MeasureIt

Honourable Mentions

A couple of other excellent plugins and extensions which aren’t strictly for the web-pro, but come in handy all the same :

Delecious Bookmarks

This one plugs your Firefox bookmarks directly into your del.icio.us social bookmarking account, which means a much more useful bookmarking experience and the accessing the same bookmarks across multiple machines, either by connecting with the same account via the plug-in or on your webpage at del.icio.us. Indispensable.

PicLens

PicLens, by CoolIris, takes web based photo galleries to the next level by stitching them altogether in a beautiful full-screen swooshing 3D display. It supports many existing picture and photo websites right out of the box, including Flickr, Pixie and even a normal Google Image search, and as David Behan points out on his blog can also be very useful to the web designer in search of the perfect stock image.