Software and tools

Suggestions for design and development software and tools.

Last updated 2019, and not currently maintained.

Editors

• Atom (Mac)
• Brackets (Mac, Win)
• Espresso (Mac; unrestricted demo)
• Sublime (Mac, Win, Linux; unrestricted demo)
• TextWrangler (Mac; free)
• TextMate (Mac; open source)

General

• Google Chrome for highly usable web inspector
• Text-to-HTML converter
• HTML Tidy, like a spellchecker for HTML

Color pickers

• Mudcube
• Adobe Kuler

Content management systems and the like

• WordPress, the software that powers managed hosting on WordPress.com
• Joomla and Drupal, if you like messy, overcomplicated software
• Craft
• Statamic (static and dynamic, not a reference to the Devil)
• Perch
• Kirby
• Ghost, “just a blogging platform” – worth a look for philosophy
• Jekyll, a static site generator

Publishing

• Get Started with GitHub Pages
• GitHub Pages as a learning tool

Build tools, automation, and local servers

• Gulp can do just about anything, including preprocess SASS and run a local dev webserver
• CodeKit, an excellent SASS preprocessor, linter, and minifier (for Mac)
• How to run a tiny webserver on a Mac
• Other options for running local webservers, including a zippy Node.js server (Mac, Windows, Linux)

Drawing

• Sketch (student discount)
• Figma (new; free for students)

Prototyping

• Prototyping in Keynote
• Prototyping animations in Keynote
• Creating wireframes and prototypes in InDesign
• Creating a PDF prototype
• The state of design tools and user comments
• InVision (web prototypes)
• Origami with Avocado, a free solution built on Quartz Composer—great but complicated
• Pixate and Form, now free and owned by Google. See background on how they work together.
• Adobe XD (beta; free for the moment)
• Figma is a commerical (free for limited use) drawing and prototyping tool