Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 30

Phill Horrocks is a web developer based in the north of England in a sunny little place called Lancashire. He is a web standards junkie, mountain biker, husband, father and profanity enthusiast – especially when dealing with Internet Explorer (aren’t we all).

I asked Phill if he would give us the lowdown on the applications he relies upon as a developer on a daily basis.

The Intro…

When at home I have a late ’08 Macbook Pro and at the office I have a 24in iMac and a MacPro (The Beast – mainly used for video).

The Dock…

• Finder – Erm, Finder still rocks for me. People knock it and use PathFinder but, for me, it works.
• Dashbaord – I actually use Dashboard in my daily routine. I check the weather, my eBay watch list and use the calculator here when my brain fails.
• VLC – I use Snow Leopard and it comes with QuicktimeX. For me it’s too limiting and besides, VLC plays pretty much everything you throw at it.
• Expose – When I’m working on the MacBook Pro sans external monitor, Expose really comes into it’s own with Spaces.
• Spaces – I actually use HyperSpaces and this got left in the dock becuase I got used to it being there!
• Mail – Mail.app is the best mail app there is. Simple. It works. It finds mail incredibly quickly and it never crashes for me. I tried Entourage but never really got on with it.
• Spamsieve – Thanks to SpamSieve I now get NO spam in my inbox at all. Right out of the box it gave me in excess of 98% accuracy. Excellent software.
• Safari – Safari. What can I say. This is the best browser out there. Fast. Solid. And great support for emerging technologies. My primary ‘browsing’ browser.
• Firefox – Firefox is my primary development broweser due to it’s excellent add-ons. Web Developer Toolbar and Firebug are both excellent time-savers and when it comes to debugging CSS they’re second to none.
• Chrome – I’ve been using Chrome since it’s early wobbly pre-alpha days in the dev channels. It’s great. It’s fast and it can only get better in the future.
• Preview – Still handy for looking (quickly) at PDF’s when you can’t be bothered waiting for Acrobat to load.
• Fireworks – I do 99% of my web graphics work in Fireworks. It’s MUCH easier to use for web stuff than Photoshop is and gets the job done fast. Its a great tool for wireframing too when Balsamiq isn’t quite enough.
• LittleSnapper – LittleSnapper is one of those apps that comes along and you wondered how to ever lived without it. I used to use Skitch a lot for simple snaps but LittleSnapper takes it to a whole new level, especially if you store your library in your Dropbox folder so you can share it. Awesome stuff.
• Tweetie – My personal favourite Twitter app. Simple, quick and elegant.
• SpeedDownload – Does what it says on the tin. And very well.
• Omnifocus – Omnifocus keeps me sane. I use this along with the iPhone version.
• On The Job – Where Omnifocus keeps me sane, OnTheJob keeps money in my pocket!
• MindNode Pro – I never used to ‘get’ why people banged on about mind-mapping until I tried it. MindNode Pro is such a nice tool. It’s small and has just enough features to get the job done. I find it a great tool for mapping out sites too.
• Espresso – Just today I got rid of Coda from my dock and replaced it with Espresso v1.1 which (for me) has just surpassed Coda in functionality and speed. Such a nice editor.
• WaveBoard – I was lucky enough to recieve a Google Wave invite a short while ago and while it’s a browser-based tool, WaveBoard is, essentially, just a ‘wrapper’ or Fluid-like app for it. Keeps it neat and tidy should I not have a browser window open though.
• VMWare Fusion – For all those times when I must use Windows, this makes is bearable. Unfortunately IE and Actinic mean I spend a bit of time here.
• Stack – Desktop – Quick access to my Desktop is essential.
• Stack – User folder – I often need to just peek into my root User folder and this is where I go
• Stack – Applications – For the most part I’m a keyboard junkie and I use the excellent Quicksilver as a launcher to get me around but there are times when the Dock Stack for my Applications folder is useful.
• Stack – Dropbox – Stack access to my Dropbox folder – essential.
• Stack – Documents – Quick document folder browsing.
• Stack – Downloads – I usually keep my Downloads folder quite trim so this stack is very handy.

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

If you would like to be featured in the Dock Series simply:

• Download the Dock Series Template.
• Email it along with the necessary images to: hi [at] gracesmith.co.uk.

Check out the other creatives in the series.

With more amazing creatives lined up, make sure to check back every Tuesday for the latest Dock Series installment.

Related posts:

1. Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 20
2. Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 24
3. Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 32