Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 31

Scott Glasser is a freelance web designer and developer out of Schenectady, NY. He manages and owns sum(design), and also handles all of the web development duties for a local web and graphic design shop. He loves PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript and jQuery, MySQL and MS SQL, User Interface design, SEO, Macs, the Chicago Bears, and things that transform.

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

The Intro…

I carry my trusty 2008/2009 15″ Macbook Pro with me everywhere I go. I have a 24″ monitor, and external keyboard and mouse at home and at the office. They aren’t Cinema displays (yet) but they do the job.

The Dock…

  • Finder – I find myself favoring Pathfinder, but rely heavily on Finder. The truth is, I strongly dislike Pathfinder’s icon, so I can’t bring myself to keeping it in my dock.
  • Firefox – I’m sort of addicted to Firefox. There, I admitted it. The extensions make it absolutely essential for me on a day to day basis. I could not live without the Firebug, Web Developer, Read-it-later, Colorzilla, and Measureit extensions.
  • Safari – Firefox is my go to browser, but I find myself in Safari quite often. It’s not a memory hog, like Firefox, and launches much, much faster.
  • Google Chrome – I’m not a huge fan of Chrome, but I keep it around for testing, and in hopes that it continues to improve. Now that extensions are supported, it could become useful. We will see.
  • Postbox – Postbox recently became my default email client. If you haven’t tried it, I strongly recommend it. As much as I loved Mail.app, I’ll never go back!
  • iCal – Well, it’s a calendar. What more can I say? I actually use Google Calendar as my primary scheduling tool, but sync to Mac and iPhone.
  • Things – Things is my task manager of choice. I’ve tried Basecamp, Remember the Milk, The Hit List, but always find myself coming back to Things. I love it for it’s simplicity and aesthetics, as well as the companion iPhone app and wi-fi sync. My only complaint is that it doesn’t support nested tasks. *grumble*
  • Photoshop – Photoshop does most of the heavy graphic design lifting for me, but I’d like to start using Pixelmator more regularly. Mainly because of it’s speed.
  • Color Schemer Studio – Color Schemer is extremely handy to have around. The $50 price tag might be a bit much, but was lucky enough to grab it when it was on sale at either MacUpdate or MacZot.
  • Littlesnapper – Littlesnapper is one of those apps that you don’t realize how useful it is until you really start using it. I find myself accessing it constantly to quickly capture design elements on sites and in apps (much easier than digging through bookmarks for inspiration), screen captures of complete web pages, creating quick instruction sheets for clients, highlighting browser bugs/design flaws, etc. I don’t know how I lived without it.
  • TextMate – I’ve used, and loved, both Coda and Espresso, but just cannot move away from TextMate. For me, it’s pretty close to being the perfect development tool.
  • Transmit – Combined with the power and flexibility of TextMate, via bundle, Transmit is a near perfect fit for my workflow. It’s fast, compatible, easy to use, and powerful.
  • Sequel Pro – As a web developer, and a PHP guy, I find myself dealing with MySQL databases constantly. It’s donation ware, so if you’re looking for a great MySQL development tool you really have to give Sequel Pro a shot.
  • Adium – There isn’t much of a selection of messaging apps out there for Mac, so Adium it is. I was a fan of Digsby on PC, but no Mac support yet. It’s been “coming soon” for quite a while. I stopped holding my breath about a year ago.
  • Tweetie – I’m really looking forward to Tweetie 2, especially since Twitter purchase atebits! For now, there really isn’t a better Twitter client for Mac than Tweetie. I’ve tried a TON, and always find myself coming back.
  • Projects – I keep a smart folder on my dock so I can quickly locate and jump in to a specific project in TextMate.
  • Client files – Another smart folder, which brings me directly to the client directories on my system. Saves me a couple of clicks while navigating through Finder.
  • Applications – Yeah.
  • Parallels – Parallels installs a handy “Start menu” on your dock by default. It has actually become pretty useful, and has found its way in to my daily workflow. Obviously, as a web developer, I have to be able to hop in to Windows and deal with Internet Explorer. IETester, for Windows, makes life a little bit easier in that department.

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A huge thanks to Scott 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.

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Related posts:

  1. Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 9
  2. Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 25
  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.