Hi, I’m Grace Smith

Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 15

Sarah Parmenter is a designer and blogger based in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. Sarah founded her successful web design studio You Know Who Design in 2003. She is a regular contributor to online web design related websites such as Please Critique Me and .net magazine as well as speaking at web design conferences.

Sarah also recently co-hosted the much loved Boagworld Podcast and was listed as one of the top 50 Female Designers in the World.

I asked Sarah if she would give us the lowdown on the applications she relies upon as a designer on a daily basis.

The Intro…

I’ve been using iMacs for the last 4 years, I’m a total convert now however at the start I remember not being able to do things as fast on my mac as I did on the pc. It was a real changeover for me but now, I wouldn’t touch a pc unless I had to.

My dock tends to be the home of all my day to day apps, I tend to actually use everything that is in my dock everyday in some form or another. I have recently started using Quicksilver so a few other apps that I use don’t need to be sat in the dock taking up space.

I also tend to have a lot of apps that do the same or similar things, this is just Sarah-evolution where I’ve found something I’m comfortable with and then try something new, I tend to have a long transition period between the two where I’ll decide which I like best and swap and change about. Crazy, I know.

The Dock…

Sarah Parmenter Dock

Finder & Dashboard – The standard.
Safari - I love the speed of the browser and “Top Sites”.
Firefox - I love the tabs and bookmarks, I tend to flip between Firefox and Safari dependent on my mood, also a must for browser testing on a mac.
iCal – I keep track of all my client work by using coloured tags for work, meeting and home appointments, it makes it an easy “at a glance” scheduler.
Things – To keep track of what I should be doing day to day and what’s coming up.
LittleSnapper – For quick snaps of inspirational bits I find everyday. Simply a brilliant little app.
Mail – The native osx mail client, for checking all my emails.
iTunes – For syncing all my tv shows, tunes and apps to my iPhone 3Gs.
Photoshop CS3 – Using an old one because some of my extensions that I use everyday aren’t compatible with CS4 – although CS4 is far superior in my eyes.
Illustrator CS4 – I like to make graphics by hand for lots of my sites, these two are like a double act for me.
Espresso – For all my html/css needs, I love how this app is evolving.
CSSEdit – Dan Rubin introduced me to this app and I don’t know how I lived without it now.
Transmit – For FTP’ing clients files to servers
Skype – I tend to keep fellow designers on Skype and leave Adium for clients…
Adium - My preferred choice for chatting to clients online.
Facebook – Through Fluid.
Mint – For tracking my websites stats, through Fluid.
Fever - Although I haven’t got it working 100%, I’ve heard when it is working it’s fab for RSS Feeds.
Mobile Me - For quick connection to everything in MobileMe. I actually prefer the “Contacts” interface in MobileMe to the native OS X address book, so I tend to use it all from here.
Eventbox – For all my twitter goodness
iPhoto – You know what this does!
Calculator – I’m dreadful at maths so need this to tot up invoices.
System Preferences – Settings
Digital Colour Meter - Comes with every mac, a great tool for digitally picking up any colour you see on the screen
TextEdit – For quick bits that need writing down, I normally use this to write notes while I’m on the phone to clients.
FontCase – Beautiful font management.
Spotify – Music
1Password - A secure app that remembers all your passwords and identities so that you don’t have to keep typing them in day after day.
VMWare Fusion – For testing sites on ie6,7,8 + other pc based browsers.

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A huge thanks to Sarah for taking time out to take part in the Dock Series.

As usual if you would like to share your dock, just leave a comment with a brief description of your dock apps and a link to a screenshot of it. Or take to your blog and write up a description of your dock as several others have done.

Other Creatives in the Series:

With more amazing creatives lined up, make sure to check back every Tuesday for the latest Dock Series installment. If you would like to be featured please leave a comment below.

Grace Smith is owner of the small but perfectly formed web design studio Postscript5, in Northern Ireland. To keep up to date with the latest designalicious content, then please consider subscribing.