5 Web Developement and Freelance Tools You Will Use Every Day

The tools you use to do web development can really make the difference between success and failure – the better your tools, the more efficient your development, which means quicker time to market, which means more time to spend on making tweaks and bugfixes to the apps/sites you release out into the wild.

1. The Internet: OK, it seems a little silly to list this as the number 1 tool to use every day, but it’s true – using the Internet is the most important part of successful web dev. Knowing where to search, how to search, and how to use what you find – these are all vitally important to success in developing web sites, web applications, or really any kind of software development.
2. Development Server: I myself use WAMP, which is a super simple easy toi install and use ‘full stack’ (server, database, web dev language (PHP)) solution. It’s free, stable, and after using it for a couple weeks it will feel like home. If you’re coming from the Windows world, it’s invaluable – if your a Linux user, you most likely have a LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, perl/PHP) baked into your Linux distribution, or you can get it easily via apt-get, rpms, or other ways, like the Ubuntu SoftwareCenter. You can download WAMP from here
3. Graphics Software – I use Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended, which is very expensive, but totally worth it – I used Macromedia Fireworks before they were bought out by Adobe, and found it to be almost as good, at least for rapid visual prototyping, with the use of layered PNG images.
4. Free Web Resources: SmashingMagazine regularly has freebies they offer for download that are most likely as nice or nicer that anything you can design yourself, at least for WordPress themes. and Icons. Make sure you locate and read the terms and license, if you are planning to use any of the resources in public facing projects. Generally they offer stuff that you can use for personal sites/projects, and sometimes for commercial use as well.
5. Development tool – A programming IDE. I do most of my freelance programming in PHP, and
   Dreamweaver CS5 – but it is very expensive. I’ve used Komposer, Komodo, vim, emacs, Notepad++ and so on, and I keep coming back to Dreamweaver, since I’ve been using it since version 3. This is 100% personal preference, but my advice is to find a good IDE, and really stick with it – really get to know every aspect of it to improve your workflow – the faster you develop good code, the more money you’re going to make in the long run.

100 Useful Tools To Make Freelancing Easy and Profitable

To make money working from home as a freelancer, you need to have the right tools to do the job – tools that don’t get in the way, but help to streamline your creative process/work flow. Remember, even though you’re working for yourself, you should still be calculating your per/hour income – the benefits of working from home as a freelancer lose their shine pretty easily if you end up working for less than minimum wage! In that spirit, we present ou with these lists of useful webapps, web applications, desktop/air applications that are indispensable to freelancers working from home!

http://web.appstorm.net/roundups/51-web-apps-for-web-designers-and-developers/

http://web.appstorm.net/roundups/50-air-apps-and-browser-addons-for-web-designers-and-developers/