Hi, I’m Grace Smith

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 24
2. Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 20
3. Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 11

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.