Development applications & utilities surface with announcements and updates on a regular basis promising increased productivity, time-saving innovative features, and my all-time favorite - the ability to “deliver awesome standards-based sites in no time!” If only achieving the end results were so simple…
I have fielded a handful questions from contacts inquiring about applications used in my daily routine. The following are the applications & utilities which have proven their merit through the past few months of work. Applications which I have personally trusted / relied on and would happily endorse. I urge potential users to ignore claims promised in the first few introductory lines on a developers page opting instead to try each one out for them self.
Setting the local stage - MySQL, Apache, RoR
If you enjoy the idea of using valuable time setting up the necessary environments correctly in order to begin your personal web development projects, Google is littered with tutorials & How-to’s (e.g. install MySQL) on diving straight in downloading the necessary packages and spending a little time within the Terminal.
Personally, I grew tiresome of the tediousness of the entire process. Especially after having to move from various machines on multiple occasions within very short time spans. There is a much easier method of achieving the appropriate development environments, and they come in very simple drag ‘n drop installations. All-in-one solutions meaning everything needed is contained with a single directory which you can drop into your ‘Applications’ folder. Backups? Moving to a new machine? No messy exports needed. Simply drag your all-in-one environments to your new hardrive and continue where you left off.
MAMP - Macintosh, Apache, Mysql and PHP - The essentials conveniently packed into a single 214MB directory which can reside anywhere on your Mac. MAMP is completely self-contained meaning that the installation does not make any changes to any existing Apache installations that you may have installed on your machine. Furthermore, if and when the times comes that you decide to move your work, simply copy the entire directory to an external drive or thumbdrive and trash the local copy (leaving no trace of your previous work). All web documents to be served as web pages are stored in an ‘htdocs’ within the MAMP directory while both the Apache & MySQL server are controlled via a simple GUI interface or convenient Dashboard widget. Loathed the idea of manipulating your MySQL tables from within the Terminal? MAMP comes with phpMyAdmin making managing your MySQL tables.
Ruby on Rails development? Go Locomotive - Similar to MAMP, Locomotive is the complete solution for beginning and veteran RoR (Ruby on Rails) developers to make the best of their time. Gone are the days of hunting for necessary libraries or resolving incompatibilities. Like all things simple on OS X, Locomotive is a single utility to get up and running developing on rails.
TextMate - A single tool for all development needs
Previously mentioned in the Top 10 apps to supplement blogging post, TextMate continues its reign as the single most used tool in my ‘Applications’ folder behind the default browser. The reason? The application comes stuffed to the brim with features and functionality rivaled by little else. Web development specific features include a slew of customizable auto-completion shortcuts & snippets, bundles [blogging anyone?], code preview, and my favorite inline W3C Validation. Additionally, TextMate allows users to create “projects” which may contain any number of directories or files (aliases). My Desktop is littered with these little projects - which when clicked - open all pertinent files required for editing a page / site.
ColourMod Dashboard - Simplify color selection
Previously, my hunt for colors was remedied with with the help of Photoshop. Extremely resource heavy, CS2 was replaced with a convenient Dashboard widget known as ColourMod Dashboard [previously: Recommended Dashboard Widgets]. Quite simply one of the most valuable color tools any OS X user can get their hands on without the extra weight of extraneous features.
Parallels & CrossOver - Who needs a Windows box?
Developing on OS X does not necessarily mean that Internet Explorer users must be ignored. One of the greatest values of Intel powered Apple hardware is the ability to run everyones favorite browser natively (incredible sarcasm). Although PPC variants are very much capable of emulating the Windows operating system [Virtual PC for Mac] in order to achieve the same testing environment, the results are sluggishly slow.
Parallels Desktop for Mac - A popular method of getting Windows running on OS X. Run the entire operating system at near native speed. I prefer the convenience of starting any Windows application without needing to reboot. I currently use Parallels for nothing else but to run multiple versions of Internet Explorer.
CodeWeavers CrossOver - Despite being in an active beta state, CrossOver shows incredible promise. Coupled with CrossOver, Intel powered Mac users can run Windows applications without the need to boot into the Windows OS using Boot Camp or Parallels. Although I have yet to experiment with any other applications aside from Internet Explorer 6 (no working method for getting Internet Explorer 7 working), I look forward to the progress made by the CodeWeavers team. Noticeable rendering bug is inaccurate font handling due to the fact that IE6 is unable to access correct fonts.
Transmit - Seamless file upload & download
Tried and true, Panic’s Transmit FTP client is among the best that I have ever toyed with. As with an OS X application, there are always alternative that users will offer up in defense. Personally, the simplicity of the interface, connection options - FTP/SFTP, Bonjour, Favorites, iDisk support are all convincing enough to retain Transmit the FTP client of choice.
Open source alternatives?
Although some may balk at the fact that most of the aforementioned applications and tools require registration fees, those interested in open source alternative list may enjoy the version listed below:
- Development environments: MAMP & Locomotive
- Editor: Smultron + replacement icons
- Color selection: ColourMod
- Internet Explorer testing: IE6 with Wine (long-winded tutorial)
- FTP Client: Cyberduck
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60 Comments
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I use Transmit, TextMate, ColourMod and sometimes MAMP on the MacBook. TextMate is great but I have to say that sometimes the autocomplete where it automatically closes your apostrophes or parentheses gets annoying.. although, knowing TextMate there is likely a way to turn it off.
I’ve used Locomotive a few times and it was a bit too restrictive or I didn’t know how to use it to get what I wanted done, so I ended up taking all the steps to install everything I needed locally.
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Good summary.
I used to hate MAMP b/c it just got in the way of things. There was no way of closing the main window other than hiding it (cmd+H) or Minimizing it, but even then, it still took up space in the dock. I then discovered the MAMP widget which will let you start and stop the servers from the Dashboard! (It’s in the MAMP directory).
I guess it’s a fairly minor issue, but when I develop, I don’t like distractions. This is why I can’t wait for the Spaces feature in the upcoming Mac OS update.
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I think that CSSEdit should get an honorable mention. I used to use the WebDeveloper plug in for Firefox to find annoying CSS bugs and abnormalities, but CSSEdit has been much easier to use.
However, those are some great tools you listed.
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MAMP actually has a preference that allows you to quit the GUI utility while allowing the servers to continue running. No need to keep an extra widget running in the dock.
I gave CSSEdit a thorough run but had a difficult time justifying the $30 price tag for an application which dealt with nothing else but CSS. Although the browser bookmarklet integration and X-Ray features were catchy, I wasn’t able to notice any advantages to editing stylesheets within Projects in TextMate. The CSS rules auto-completion can definitely come in handy in a pinch though.
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if you don’t like distractions, get yourself a copy of quicksilver http://quicksilver.blacktree.com which should probably be included in this list. With it you can enjoy the zen of a spartan dock safe in the knowledge that all your applications are a few keystrokes away.
It should probably be included in this list anyway as I find myself using quicksilver constantly to switch between dreamweaver, photoshop and terminal, aswell as the calculator function to quickly do any sums.
Paulo
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I wouldn’t necessarily call Quicksilver developer related. I do use Quicksilver for everything but not having it would not actually hamper productivity. Switching between apps is simple enough with CMD+Tab.
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Also, if you want to do serious, non-graphical dev work on a Mac, you’ll need a copy of Windows and some virtualisation software. Otherwise, you won’t be able to do anything worthwhile. What with Macs being limited to playing Quake and making pretty pictures and all.
I hear that Macs do have something akin to notepad though, so not all is lost.
Oh, how crappy that all sounds! I still love Macs! I really do. But they’re just not taken seriously as dev machines.
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^ Someone obviously didn’t read through the article. Virtualization was mentioned as well as worthy text editors.
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Thanks for the nice round-up. I have recently used XAMPP for MacOSX and I’m quite happy with it, could anyone point out how one of the packages is better than the other ? Is there any added value to switch using MAMP (like for example the possibility to use MAMP from a USB stick just like it’s possible with the Win version of XAMPP) ?
Regards,
G.
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Derek: all I have to says is “balls.” I was just about to write a piece on this very same topic, with mamp as the star.
am I the only old schooler that still uses bare bones textwrangler for my coding needs? whats with all this new fangled “assistance” and validation checking. pssh. I scoff at thee, text mate.
and while we are on the archaic but reliable subject, how about good ol’ digital color meter, which can be found in your utilities folder. since i’m not familiar with colour mod’s features, I won’t knock too hard, but have a little eye dropper that feeds 8bit hex rgb values with a tiny footprint has been very helpful for me.
no complaints about panic. best ftp client I’ve had the pleasure of using in a long time.
carry on.
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I am in 100% agreement with your choices! This pretty much mirrors my dev environment exactly, although I second the mention of CSSEdit 2. I would have agreed with your response on the first version, but the second release has been a huge timesaver with its ability to override stylesheets on dynamic sites and let me make “live” changes. Incorporated with Transmit, it means I can download a stylesheet, preview the changes in realtime, and have it auto-upload on save.
I’m a huge TextMate fan. I had gotten to a point where I was using Dreamweaver for nothing but code highlighting and integrated SFTP and got sick of the bloat, and that’s when I built the environment that you describe.
Cheers.
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CSSEDIT!!!!!!!!
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I’ve gotta say that I read the article fully. But by pointing out a virtualization tool, you’r effectively saying “I can’t think of a fifth, and Windows and Linux have better tools that aren’t available on the Mac (yet)”.
Still, judging by the comments on both Digg AND here, there’s plenty of tools that you missed out!
Oh… And I actually use a Mac. Just not for anything web dev related.
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Are you joking? How is naming Parallels and CrossOver essentially stating that “Windows and Linux have better tools that aren’t available on the Mac”? How else would web developers have access to Internet Explorer - which accounts for well over 50% of traffic - without having to boot into Windows on a beige box? The only reason those utilities were named was because there are no methods for troubleshooting IE without.
Judging by the comments on here and Digg, I don’t think I missed out on anything that can’t be covered by the aforementioned apps above. There seems to be a strong following for CSSEdit, yet I fail to see any point in owning an application dedicated to CSS when TextMate works just as well.
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These days I don’t use ftp at all for file transfer - it’s all scp and - something that you completely failed to mention as a vital development tool - subversion.
For CSS, Xyle Scope is unparalleled: http://culturedcode.com/xyle/
Why use a dashboard widget for colour selection when the standard Apple colour picker is so vastly superior? I’ve set up a 1-line applescript that lets me keep a colour picker open in all apps. It has important features like definable palettes of named colours (which you can give to others so you can share the same colour sets), and there are plugins to provide the features that that widget does (like copyable HTML values), and far more (e.g. Painter’s picker).
Other than that, BBEdit and iTerm FTW.
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SVN is not necessarily vital for all work environments. For large scale situations where version control is a necessity, sure.
I’d be interested in seeing the AppleScript solution that you’ve created for the color picker (if you don’t mind that is).
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> I fail to see any point in owning an application dedicated to CSS when TextMate works just as well.
Just to add: Xyle scope isn’t an editor, it’s a CSS reverse engineering tool. Instead of writing styles and seeing them applied, you look at an element and see what has been applied to it and from where. This is vital for debugging, and is not something I’ve seen implemented anywhere else. For the actual writing of CSS, I’m quite happy with BBEdit.
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All you need for the colour picker: open script editor and enter this line:
choose color
Save it as an application. The only oddity about it is that you need to click OK or cancel to close it - quit won’t work. For plugins: http://www.luckysoftware.dk/hexcolorpicker.php and http://www.oldjewelsoftware.com/products/ppicker/
I think that subversion should have far wider use - even for small, one-user projects I wouldn’t consider not using it now. It’s a very good habit to get into, and means that I mostly don’t have to even think about file transfer.
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you forgot one of the most important
http://www.pascal.com/software/freeruler/
best wishes
andi
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I’ve been recently enthused by Aptana (a plugin/side project of Eclipse). Free, Java (read: crossplatform - I use it at work on PC and at home on Mac, same interface) and opensource. Code hinting is constantly being improved, FTP sync, browser compatibility charts within the code, its a solid product. When this hits 1.0 I don’t think you’d be able to have a developers list without this on it.
http://www.aptana.com/
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Very nice. MAMP is a lifesaver - it’s the easiest way to have a local installation of WordPress.
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I use TextMate for just about everything. Colourmod was sweet till I found out that when you’re writing CSS with TextMate you can do: Command + Shift + C and the Apple color picker will come up and put in the color you selected one you click OK. It’s nice being able to stick with one application for all that stuff for me.
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I agree with your choices…..they mirror mine very closely. I love Textmate for sure, but it is a bit overwhelming for the novice. I decided one day to sit down and figure out the dang thing and am glad I did…but it might scare off the novice who does not invest that time up front.
I too like CSSEdit….and versiqon 2 has gotten mostly good reviews over at my host (TextDrive). I also like to use the tool XScope from over at iconfactory. I have a 30 inch Cinema Display and find the screen tool a lifesaver when designing for the rest of the world.
As far as using Macs for Dev work……if you are developing for Windows…it might not be the best choice (though with the virtualization software, I am not sure), but for web development, I don’t see how that can be said. Most of the pro developers I know do all their work on the Mac….heck, I switched over because I could not be productive on the PC while I spent half of my time just keeping the things running.
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Oh, and for a great roundup of a bunch of neat tools and cheatsheets for all kinds of development - but especially web development…check out http://www.ilovejackdaniels.com (I am not affiliated). They have this “View Page Structure” Tool in their resources section that helps sort out inheritance issues and lets you see how the CSS is applied to your page. Best of all its free!
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For you old schoolers: http://aquamacs.org/ is a great OSX’d version of Emacs.
I’d be interested to know what SVN and CVS clients you are all using. I generally use cvs from the CLI on OSX, yet on Win32 TortoiseCVS. I recently tried MacCvsX on OSX, and I found the interface clunky and confusing. I haven’t went looking for graphical SVN clients yet, since we are only experimenting with porting our CVS repositories to SVN at the moment.
For whomever said “SVN is for large projects” I call BS. Any developer should always be using source code management systems. It’s a great way to backup, it’s a great way to show the customer progress, and what’s been done. It’s a great way to record the materials which the customer did (or did not) give you. And if you’ve got a customer who consistently pays (and pays ontime) you can give them the command line or graphical app for them to obtain their product from you without your interaction.
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I tried CyberDuck but have had nothing but problems. It continually crashes on my MBP when trying to connect or when reconnecting. I need to try Transmit.
Great post!
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Great list, Derek.
One small note, though. There actually is a way to use IE7 with Parallels. Just install the latest version of Microsoft Vista with it. It works flawlessly on my machine.
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I haven’t used MAMP, but if you are really a web developer, you should know the command line and how to manage services like Apache and MySQL etc. But yeah, if you are well versed, it might be a good time-saver.
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Fugu is a great open-source S/FTP application. I’m surprised it’s hardly ever mentioned anywhere.
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Apples just dont see to be that much better than pcs for the amount of money you are spending
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What about WebObjects?!
I know it has a steep learning curve, however, it is the most complete and robust framework out there in the wilds. Vastly superior to any other I have seen and used. It is also free with OSX Server!
- j -
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Derek, there is a little error in the article. You said in your article “100 blogging apps….”. I think it should be 10
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Everyone has their own method for managing code. I woudl definitely recommend that developers at least familiarize themselves with SNV and versioning as larger web projects with multiple users often rely on SVN for managing progress.
As far as a recommended GUI, check out SVNX. Something I use whenever I start projects that have multipe parties involved.
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This is a great summary. I agree 100% with all the tools discussed
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Headdress should also get a mention. It allows you to host multiple sites on your box at various ports in any directory. Works by editing httpd.conf. I have used it for a long time because I have a system for keeping my project files that does not use the Sites directory. It has come in extremely handy.
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I still prefer Macromedia Dreamweaver and FireWorks…
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Great article! I think I really ought to change my text editor, I’ve been using TextWrangler for so long now and all it does is color code and tab nicely. I’ll give Smultron and TextMate a try.
I also never knew of the ColourMod Dashboard, this should save me from opening Photoshop lots
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I am quite surprised that Dreamweaver didn’t get a mention like others have said, seeing that a lot of circles say it’s one of the most powerful and professional editors out there. Of course, you pay for it.
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I’m a .NET developer, and I’m going to buy a new MacBook since it can run Windows OS, too…
So, I would like to include also the Apple BootCamp, and Parallel for Mac, in order to run Windopws on Mac
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I see no need to run a full
feature bloatedapplication like Dreamweaver. There are more affordable and resource-light utilities out there. If you prefer the WYSIWYG route, definitely add that app to your list.Quote
Or if you want to enable PHP outside of the MAMP environment try this:
http://jose.cardoso.googlepages.com/phponmacosx
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I would be much in favor disbanding the wysiwyg portion of it, I would kind of hope that the people that are professional web designers/developers don’t even touch it. I only do when something is annoying me, and something like a space was throwing everything off…
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Great article, I found it very useful!
Thank you for putting the time into creating such an amazing website!
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you might want to check out firebug, a fantanstic debuging plugin for fx…
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Good read, well put. One more shout out though for CSSedit 2.0. I can’t imagine not using it - blows my mind. Sliders, arrow key margin/padding adjustment - instant visual feedback, sweet validation. You just can’t compare it to hand coding: save, update, preview - its really no contest. Has made CSS a whole hell of a lot more enjoyable. Simply put with CSSedit you’re not just writing CSS you’re designing it. $30 - no sweat - would pay more easily.
Now stepping down from soap box
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I also find CSS Edit 2.0 to be utterly amazing.
I’ve played with the demo and finally bought it up this morning; and I would have easily paid more than the $30 for it… quite the steal.
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I guess the only real drawback which prevents me from using a separate application for CSS files is just that, using (opening) another application for handling a task which is no more difficult than hand-coding HTML or PHP. With the tabbed projects offered in TextMate, I find it hard to enjoy bouncing between different applications to complete one unified task.
Now, if CSSedit decided to support syntax highlighting or the like for general web development, I’m all over that one.
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I am using Eclipse for HTML/PHP developments. Eclipse does a good job in formating php only codes, however, for html/php code it gets confused and it makes a mess where one can’t follow the code anymore. I am open for suggestion for editors that can understand and format mixed HTML/PHP.
Also, are you guys aware of an editor where you can drag and move text and not worry about what happens with the CSS?
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Great article! I think I really ought to change my text editor.
Thnx for share…
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