Programs for a Web Developer’s New Computer

Does your job require you to make “the internets”? Do you often find yourself working on things “online”? I do. And if I got a new computer, here are some programs that I would want to install right away, so that I could continue to do the do. Let me know if I missed anything?

• Your computer probably comes with the latest in Internet Explorer, but if you are developing websites for anyone other than Microsoft themselves, you should at least pretend to check that your work works in other browsers:
  • https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/ Google Chrome
  • http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/ Mozilla Firefox
  • http://www.apple.com/safari/ Apple Safari

  * I’d recommend downloading at least these 3, as each has a tool or two unique to that browser, which can help you out. But that’d be a separate blog post…

• http://tortoisesvn.net/downloads.html TortoiseSVN , our go-to for working with SVN subversion version control, keeping track of all our clients’ projects code goodies
• http://filezilla-project.org/download.php FileZilla, our go-to open source FTP program of choice
• http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html XAMPP , a handy 1-click install to get the Apache + MySQL + PHP setup running on your localhost
• http://notepad-plus-plus.org/download/v6.3.html really this link, for Notepad++ , is I suppose just a placeholder for your editor of choice. Notepad++ is easy
• http://www.openoffice.org/download/ sometimes you have to reference Microsoft Office documents. If your new machine didn’t come with Office already, and you don’t want to buy it, and you don’t want to just use Google Docs, then OpenOffice is for you. It’s for me too.
• http://www.syntevo.com/smartgithg/download.html SmartGIT – because sometimes projects’ version control is in GIT, instead of SVN?
• http://messenger.yahoo.com/download/ Yahoo Messenger, so we can IM each other
• http://www.skype.com/en/download-skype/ Skype, so we can IM and video conference?
• https://www.spotify.com/us/download/ Spotify, so if we aren’t video conferencing, you can listen to something?
• http://www.putty.org/ to cover any SSH or other such needs

Of course if you are doing any real heavy lifting work doing your own Designing as well, or if you are expected to work with designs from designers to do theming or whatever else, you may find yourself in need of the beast that is http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite.html Adove Creative Suite

And that’s what I got. Let me know if I missed anything? I know I neglected mentioning specific browser add-ons, but that’s probably another other blog post too.