Workflow Round-up January 2010
Posted Saturday, January 2nd, 2010My workflow is constantly evolving as new technologies become available. I think it’s common for heavy computer users to change it up regularly, but the willingness to always try out and be curious about new tools is essential to anyone who is passionate about interaction design and usability.
First off: my requirements. On a daily basis I’m editing/creating/writing graphics, php, css, html, working on multiple local machines as well as different servers running all kinds of web apps. I swore off windows years ago (although I do agree that windows 7 is looking more human-like) so my preferred platform is a mac running os x. I also edit a lot of text and images, use ftp, create pdf’s and other documents.
Dropbox [storage]
Dropbox syncing is just too good to be true. Flawless and effortless sharing and syncing between up between computers, 30 days of backup and restore.. blah, blah, blah it’s awesome. And the first 2gb are free. Get it.
Related: I also use dropbox to sync Things (task management), Snippet (snippet library), Sidenote (note taking app, free)
Photoshop/Illustrator [graphics]
I wish it weren’t so. It seems awful and wrong that it’s the beginning of a new decade and I’m still using a sledgehammer to pound in finishing nails… the metaphor won’t be lost on anyone that has to deal with the behemoth adobe suite for creating and editing graphics for the web. A few things are on the horizon though — Pixemator and Inkscape have been gaining ground. Here’s hoping the Adobe cartel won’t be with us when the next decade comes around.
Coda [text editor]
Coda is an integrated text editor, ftp, subversion, terminal app with extensions and even with all that it seemed a bit pricey for me at first. A year later all I have to say is that Coda is a hell of a bargain at $99.
Related: Coda is definitely a swiss army knife but even swiss army knives need help from time to time. I backup coda with Smultron (basic text editor, free), CSS Edit (CSS editor by MacRabbit) and Cyberduck
Firefox [browser/development]
Ask me in a few months when xmarks is compatible with Chrome and I might have changed my mind — but for development work I don’t see anyone bypassing firefox any time soon. The built-in inspector in Chrome and Safari is pretty slick, however at the end of the day firebug still has my vote. Syncing across multiple machines is a snap with xmarks, which also supports pretty much every browser these days.
Google Docs [word processing]
It’s simple, it’s fast and it’s everywhere that I need it. Google Docs could easily be overtaken if they don’t keep up with the feature sets of new and upcoming office apps, but as a hardcore gmail user I don’t know how much anything would affect my usage of Docs.
Related: Spreadsheets are still totally useless in Google Docs. And although it is shameful, I still have to use one Microsoft product — Excel. It’s functions are very useful for manipulating tabular data especially for those massive Drupal imports! I haven’t had the chance to try out Numbers but I’ve heard it’s mostly just good for the graphs.
Tags: interaction bestof
