Brian Wigginton

Here is a quick run down of the tools and applications I user pretty much everyday. As of this time I’m doing a lot of frontend work as well as some backend PHP development.

Programming

• Browsers
  • Safari – I use it for all my general development
  • Firefox – Mostly great for tuning CSS and pixel pushing
  • Google Chrome –  Great for debugging and performance testing
• Textmate – texteditor
  • open in Textmate – utility to put in your Finder that lets you quickly open files in Textmate
  • project plugin – better project handling for Textmate
• Versions – Very clean SVN client
• Fluid – great to take web pages you always access and make them their own app.
  • JIRA – This is just a great setup, this way JIRA is always a few keystrokes away
  • jQuery API – quick and easy access to the jQuery API
• iTerm – better replacement for the built in mac terminal
  • vim – best TE in the world (next to Textmate?)
• Sequel Pro – GUI for MySQL
• Charles Web Proxy – for intercepting and viewing http data, also great for testing slow connections to a certain domain
• Reggy – Regular expression sandbox, great for finding out what the hell is going on with a regular expression
• HTTP Client – Great app that let’s you play with HTTP, great for testing out backend services
• VMWare Fusion – X-browser testing
• Adobe Photoshop CS5

Utilities

• Caffeine – awesome little app to keep your computer from going to sleep or launch the screensaver. You don’t know how much you love caffeine until you actually use it a few times
• Divvy – awesome window management app that helps you resize windows on the fly using hotkeys or your mouse.
• Droplr – terrific app for taking screenshots and sharing them with others
• Spot Color – great little color picker
• VirtualHostX – app to manage all the virtualhosts installed on your system’s apache instance
• iStat Menus – bunch of monitors that sit in your menubar and report system status to you. Great for keeping an eye on memory and processor usage

Misc

• Evernote – Great for taking notes throughout the day and also syncs back up with your iphone or mobile device
• Mail.app
• Pandorajam – If you listen to pandora, do your self a favor and download this badass app right now. Simply amazing.
• Grooveshark – think of iTunes, but has any song you can think of. Completely web based.
• Adium – IM client
• Colloquy – IRC client
• Echofon – Twitter client
• Skim – PDF Reader, much better than preview or acrobat reader