Web Development Tools
There are so many areas to web development - design, programming, marketing and content creation, to name a few. So, I’ve decided to compile a list of the tools I use to do my day-to-day web development work. this list will change from time to time, so keep coming back to see the updates. 
Programming
I’ve been dabbling in Ruby for over 6 months now, and I like the language. However as a web developer, it’s Ruby on Rails which I’m really interested in. I’ve bought a few books, and watched a few screencasts and so far, I’ve found ROR to be quite complicated. Perhaps I’m going about it the wrong way, but I don’t think it has made creating web applications easier.
How could you get by as a web developer without knowing at least a little PHP? I know the basics, and am thinking about learning more. It’s simple, popular, and it’s very easy to deploy applications built with PHP.
I’ve talked about jQuery before in a previous post. This is a fantastic programming library, and makes working with AJAX really easy.
I use Notepad++ for quick editing jobs. My main editor is Dreamweaver, but it’s just too slow to load when you’ve only need to make a quick edit to some code.
It’s also free - the way I like things to be.
When you’re working on a large site, nothing beats Dreamweaver. It helps you organise your work, and so you’ll notice an increase in productivity. Dreamweaver makes web development that little bit easier, especially the server site part.
Design
The GIMP’s another free application (perhaps you’re starting to see that I’m a little cheap), but by no means devoid of features.
I’m not the best graphic designer in the world, so I really don’t need to buy Photoshop. The GIMP is surplus to my requirements and as it costs nothing, it’s a clear winner over Photoshop. If however, I got more serious about graphic design, I’d like to invest in Photoshop, but for the moment it would be a complete overkill.
There’s a massive learning curve involved with any graphics package, and the GIMP’s no different.
Although I predominantly use the GIMP for any image editing needs, Paint .NET is very quick, and so for cropping images, and simple effects it’s ideal.
Choosing the right colors for your website is important, and if you’re not a great designer (like me) a software tool to help you pick colors is a great help. Check out my series of posts on choosing the right colors for your website.
Miscellaneous
I’ve been using this program since 2002 and I really like it. Again it’s free (what more do you want?) and it does the job I need it to do.
Web-based tools and software
This is evidently one piece of software which I rely on. It powers this blog and in the past, has powered many of my websites.
In saying that, I’m starting to look into a few other options for other sites. My blog has been hacked into three times, and recovering from downtime takes time, so I don’t want to have to do it too often.
This little set of tools is great for helping you maintain your site. Once verified it provides you with crawl statistics, allowing you to see if your website has any broken links or things like that. Although not a must-have tool, it certainly is useful. There’s nothing worse than going to a site, and finding that it’s got tonnes of broken links.
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