Tools for better development
While I’m definitely a proponent of the open and the free, sometimes you just need certain tools to get the job done, and I’ve never been against paying some cash for really good applications. Adobe software’s costs are nearly as bloated as their programming. While PhotoShop may still be indispensable, DreamWeaver is more or less really convenient should you have the budget for it.
Thankfully, there are a number of “third party” applications out there made by really talented people that can speed up development, help creativity and otherwise just offer a fantastic user experience without costing heaps of cash that might be better spent on coffee, beer and comics. Here I submit my top 5 tools for developing better websites and the content for them that I either have or would pay for.
Balsamiq
For Google search purposes, this is a horrible name for a product if you spell the word with a ‘c’ as the dictionary calls for. But Balsamic mockups is far more sweet than its vinegary namesake implies. I’ve been using it now for about a month for work and home projects and it’s a great pre-visualisation tool, and also just fun to use.
With 75 hand-drawn UI elements, using it sort of reminds me of the old Colorforms toys I had as a kid, where you’d stick little plastic characters on a cardboard backdrop. One thing I really appreciate is the license agreement. After you spend your $79 you can install Balsamiq on as many computers as you’re likely to use it on. The elements also serve as nice, gentle reminders of the sorts of elements you’re likely to need to include in a website or application design and sending these out to vendors gives a much better idea of what is needed for a site build than any descriptive prose could.
Balsamiq works across the platforms so you can install is on a Windows, Linux or OSX. There is also a lot you can do from the get-go with the free demo version, about six different ways you can qualify for a full free copy of the software and if you’re a student or university professor, you can get it for half price, but with it’s features and potential time saving, it would be cheap at twice the price (this is not an endorsement for the company to raise the price).
CSSedit2
CSS, no matter how much you work with it, still seems to incorporate some amount of voodoo. I like using MAMP for the building stage of websites, which allows you to check how a website will look as you edit the CSS, but MAMP also is a memory hog and for editing or changing sites I still prefer using the live server, which has the current incarnation of the site with its most up-to-date content.
But then you end up with this cycle: making minuscule changes, ftping the file to the server, refreshing a browser, seeing the horrible result which isn’t what you wanted at all and then repeating this process five or ten times. With CSSedit2 you can change and undo as much as you want and then upload the file only when you’ve achieved the desired change to the design.
SCCedit2 (OSX) is a great tool for editing a site’s CSS and seeing how it will look as you change it. There are fantastically easy forms for adding css elements on the fly and a great click-through preview screen to show you what styles are applied where on the site.
You can also use it to quickly find the css of a site design you like and see what makes it go, or for fun, use the preview screen to change the css of nearly any website you want to to make it look (in the preview screen at any rate) like you think it should, thus, rendering the online world’s css in your own image, if not for public view, at least for your own amusement. It also does some great validation for Web Standards. I’ve been using the Demo for about a week now and am planning to buy it for work and for freelance.
Artisteer
I was a little dubious about this one until I loaded the demo. Artisteer (Windows) automatically generates web design templates for xhtml pages as well as for WordPress themes as well as for designs in Drupal and Joomla. When I visited the company’s site, it didn’t really sell me either. It was as generic and cookie-cutter as this whole idea implies. I also found one of it’s promises a little misleading: “No need to learn Photoshop, CSS, HTML or other technologies.”
On the face of it this is true, but only if you want to take all the creative process out of website design and create one bland looking website after another that all have corporate stock imagery. For spammers interested in creating a thousand websites selling viagra in a single evening, this may do the trick, but for the rest of us who live among the humans, it doesn’t sound like very much fun, and if a system isn’t fun, it’s not useful because you’ll generally find ways around using it, or at least I will.
I read enough good reviews of Artisteer to press on and actually try the demo, though, and I’m glad I didn’t let the company’s own propaganda turn me away. Still, they need to seriously rethink their sales copy.
If you go into using Artisteer with a different idea in mind, it’s an incredibly useful tool. It generates valid xhtml and css templates, allows you to quickly set sizes, select colors and web friendly fonts and general layouts in a highly intuitive and enjoyable visual editor. You can then export the design and then, really the real work starts in which you can spend more of your time adding the custom features and creating an original design, yes, using PhotoShop, CSS, HTML and/or many, many other technologies. If anything, Artisteer is another really solid, easy and fun to use pre-visualisation tool and also something that can do a lot of the grunt work for you and get you on your way.
It’s not quite as robust as some serious WordPress designers might want, and it generally generates a blog-looking site, so if you wanted a content loop that had more of a magazine or news feel, you’ll still have some work cut out for you in the css and other files. It does, however, get you off in the right direction and the series of tools it offers for the time it can save is well worth either the $49.95 home version or $129.95 standard edition, especially if you’re doing freelance work in the charity/NGO sector where budgets are tighter and you want to reduce the hours your spending on the rudimentary.
I’m planning on buying this for work and to install on my PC there. My only other gripe is that there’s no OSX version, so I’ll be working on these themes on one computer and then exporting them and sending them to my Mac for further work. Yes, I could partition part of the Mac to run Windows, I like having the capability to do that so that I can voluntarily refuse to on the grounds that it seems like ceding territory.
Ulysses
Another product with a horrible Google name. You’re likely to find out a lot more about the nearly unreadable James Joyce classic than you are about this incredibly accessible word processor. Ulysses was originally created with the fiction writer in mind, but it’s uses can really be extended much further.
An aside
Before continuing, let me include a little bit of blasphemy: Word is by far the most bloated, least useful word processing tool available on the market. This is an objective analysis based on watching people use Word horribly for the last decade or so. For most your writing needs, Word does too much and by default encodes too much garbage with its text should you want to copy and paste it elsewhere. Most people just save Word documents as Word documents instead of looking at the options and saving them as easily used text files, so I don’t want to hear about that at all.
From a design perspective, the majority of people who try to make a Word document look interesting fail as it’s not a design program and the tools in Word to design a document are limited. And because most people save their Word files as bloated pre-styled documents, importing them into actual design software is akin to torture. And try pasting Word text straight into a CMS or html file for online publishing, and you end up with a series of strange line breaks and horrible typeface mutations.
There is no reason to use Word. Various other word processing applications on the market that are either free, cheap, or more useful open Word documents and you can always save a file from one of your better pieces of writing software to still open in Word should you still have to send it to someone who is still under the thrall that they need it at all.
So, to recap: Microsoft Word is rubbish. Even your default text editor is a better option. Most people don’t use it correctly and don’t really need it for what they do. Uninstall it now.
If you want an intuitive, enjoyable writing experience that renders text as it should, check out Ulyesses (OSX). It’s interface is geared around making the writer focus on the content at hand and not the typeface. There are really no style options. You don’t get to make things bold or put this paragraph in Courier and that one in Times New Roman. You can create “chapters” in a single file and click between them. Create a notes section or a bibliography section. You can enter full-screen write mode which give you just a black screen and the text to look at, obscuring your vision from your Facebook profile and incoming email.
You can also export Ulysses files to open correctly in just about anything. You can cut and paste the content anywhere without it taking with it a bunch of useless code. It’s incredibly easy to organize your ideas, develop sections of your writing and using the split-screen option, quickly jump back and forth to make changes to your text with a minimum of scrolling or searching.
Whenever I write anything of any length, from long blog posts to freelance articles, Ulysses is my writing tool of choice. Easy to compose and edit with, devoid of distractions. No preferences to disable or reset. No stupid little animated talking paper clips popping up saying, “hey, it looks like you’re writing something. Can I possibly be more distracting from that? Look at me, look at me!”
Just pure, simple authoring joy.
Transmit
I should preface this by saying there’s really no need for anyone to purchase an FTP tool in this day and age. There are any number of open source and free tools out there that do the job. A Firefox browser can FTP for you in an entirely suitable, safe and secure fashion. My work computer has free FTP tools. I don’t really see a need to buy one for work.
FTP: moving files around. It’s just sort of something you don’t want to have to think about, you just want it done. But if I would have to recommend my favorite way of carrying out this task, it would be with Transmit (OSX) by Panic Inc. Much more feature-rich than when I bought it six or seven years ago, it’s still at the low price of $29.95. It works quick, allows you to open and close things to edit from within Transmit, lets you upload files without even logging in if you want and works just like a Mac, incorporating a lot of what OSX can offer for widget use, droplets and so forth; many easy ways to quickly move stuff.
On my home computer I can upload files to my server just by dragging them into a box. When I actually launch Transmit, the tabbed sidebar allows for quick work.
If anything characterizes the 21st century, it’s our inability to restrain ourselves for the benefit of other people.
Nice writing style. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Chris Moran
I must say this is a great article i enjoyed reading it keep the good work :)