Hi, I’m Grace Smith

Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 19

Tom Kenny is a web designer, developer, gamer, fan of all things WebKit and blogger based in London, UK.

I recently connected with Tom after I found his fantastic blog – Inspect Element which focuses on design, usability and web development with a brilliant range of in-depth articles, tutorials and roundups.

I asked Tom if he would give us the lowdown on the applications he relies upon as a designer and blogger on a daily basis.

The Intro…

I’ve been a Mac user ever since the Mac mini came out. I’m now using an iMac due to its gorgeous screen. The design of Mac and OS X in particular is what in inspired me to become a web designer.

As for my dock, I’m a bit of an icon snob. In all honesty, that’s probably an understement! Luckily Mac’s attract the best designers so my favourite apps have great icons. I try to keep my dock organised by app type, so I keep browsers, music apps, communication apps and web work apps together.

The Dock…

• Finder – Because you can’t remove it… Not that I would though.
• Dashboard – I don’t use dashboard as much as I used to but it comes in handy for quickly bringing up a calculator or checking dates.
• Safari – By far my favourite browser. Killer feature? View .psd files in the browser. Oh yeah.
• Webkit – I’m a big fan of Webkit as the rendering engine and this lovely piece of software brings the latest version to my desktop.
• Firefox – I’ve never really used Firefox as a main browser because I don’t like relying on plugins and keeping them up to date. Also, 3.5 takes a little too long to open up even on my iMac. Very glad that it supports @font-face however! I keep it in my dock for testing.
• Google Chrome – Again, in my dock for testing purposes. Big fan as it is extremely fast and runs on webkit.
• Mail – This and the Gmail web interface are a perfect combination.
• iTunes – The best media app out there.
• Spotify – I’ve bought more music in the first month of becoming a premium subscriber on Spotify than I have in the last 2 years. Fantastic service.
• Evernote – Everything good idea I think of, especially for my blog, gets entered straight into Evernote. Also use it as way of collecting inspirational websites with a Safari plugin.
• LittleSnapper – I use this to collect my absolute top favourite web designs for inspiration.
• Adium – For chatting with friends and work colleagues.
• Tweetie – Twitter client of choice. Slick interface.
• Fever – The first RSS reader (that isn’t Safari) I’ve felt comfortable using.
• Azureus – Bit torrent client with a great icon.
• System Preferences – I’m always changing something so this has to be in my dock at all times.
• Photoshop CS4 – I have a love/hate relationship with Photoshop but then again what web designer doesn’t?
• Pixelmator – Otherwise known as ‘Photoshop Lite’. Great little app that can do some interesting things Photoshop can’t.
• Coda – Coda is the reason I don’t Dreamweaver anymore. Dreamweaver has become so bloated that I needed a simple text editor and Coda fits the bill perfectly.
• MAMP – For local installs of Wordpress for testing and development.
• Twit Live – Running Leo Laporte’s podcast network in Fluid.
• VisualHub – Used for video converting. Support has been dropped by the developer so I need to find a decent alternative.
• VLC – Plays any video format.

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A huge thanks to Tom 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:

• Part 1 – Grace Smith
• Part 2 – Khoi Vinh
• Part 3 – Matt Brett
• Part 4 – Veerle Pieters
• Part 5 – Tim Van Damme
• Part 6 – Ian Stewart
• Part 7 – John Boardley
• Part 8 – Adii Pienaar
• Part 9 – Ben Bleikamp
• Part 10 – David Airey
• Part 11 – Jonathan Snook
• Part 12 – Antonio Lupetti
• Part 13 – Niki Brown
• Part 14 – Jon Phillips
• Part 15 – Sarah Parmenter
• Part 16 – Tony Chester
• Part 17 – David Cleland
• Part 18 – Chad Engle

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.

Related posts:

1. Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 29
2. Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 11
3. Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 8

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.