I figured I’d document the apps, libraries, and utilities that I install, partly for self-reference, and hopefully for informing others of some of the essentials for professional web development (on a mac). I aim to be very specific about what I install, and oddly minimalistic considering all the space I’ve gained.

So, lets start with the main apps. There are a few must-haves, including the super powerful text-editor TextMate, s/ftp dream Transmit, hacker must-have Quicksilver, and who could forget the only svn gui worth mentioning, Versions. Last but not least, the essential web browser, Firefox and it’s various plugins (such as Firebug and the web developer toolbar). On the big expensive software side, it’s never a bad idea to have Adobe CS3 at your side.

Essential programs taken care of, there’s a few other things to install for a dev system to be complete. MacPorts is the key to most of these, including ruby / rails and it’s various gems, svn, php, and other processes you might need. Git is the only missing piece, but it can be installed fairly easily from source.

Now that I have these installed, I really feel like I have everything at my fingertips to start working. There’s a handful of other apps I will probably end up installing as time goes on, but these are the only ones absolutely necessary for efficient, happy programming.

So, I’ll mention them all. First up is a site called Mint, which is just brilliant. You sync up your bank account info with them and they put your finances together in a spectacular array of animated bar graphs and pie charts. It also helps you manage your budget and find ways to save expenses. It’s also full of cute little statistics like the Starbucks data to the left (which apparently helps you realize you went a little crazy with the lattes). I’m a total nerd for this stuff, and the app, which is built in Flex, is smooth and responsive in ways which almost make me feel like a fool for sticking with this javascript stuff.

Besides Mint, there’s also a lot of other applications of all types that have been coming around. First, Versions is finally out, and it’s quickly found it’s way into my ‘most used apps’ list. There’s also 280 slides, which does amazing things with web-based presentation tools; Fluid, which turns any website into a self-running webkit-based application; a youtube/last.fm mashup, and more. Much more.

Firefox 3 is settling in, and every day I find something new I like about it. Today, I read an article that confirmed my beliefs that the new Firefox has fixed the memory leak problem which would often cause me headache. I also read about some of Firefox’s new css features and was stoked to see support for inline-block elements, in particular. It really makes me wish Firefox 2 just go off and die already… as bad as that sounds.

There’s some new things personally as well. I’ve decided to rejoin the twitter community. We have an awesomely made new feature on zenbe for twitter, and it makes twittering really convenient, so we’ll see how it all turns out. I’ve hooked it up to the sidebar, along with my tumblr accout, which I just love. Their pre-sets for media types are really clever, and it’s just fun and totally random.

I’ve also been working on some old ideas and some new ones – including a new method for analyzing your iTunes data, which I’m real excited about. It involves a lot of pie charts and bar graphs. Hopefully animated ones.

So expect more soon. New York is beautiful in the summer, and I’m feeling more productive than ever.

But, for the first time ever, I’m not thrilled with it. In fact, I’m quite mad about it.

The problem arises with the fact that Adobe took out the ImageReady program. Now, ImageReady was kind of a ‘niche market’ tool, but as a CSS-based web designer, it had become somewhat of a staple program to me because of it’s ability to allow you to ’slice’ a web photoshop comp. You could slice, name, and optimize layers right there on the screen, and most importantly – you could toggle these slices on and off, allowing you to make overlapping slices with no problems.

It’s come in very handy for me, because it allows me to keep every slice I ever create – so if needed at any point in time, I can go back, adjust an image (maybe add a new title graphic), and save it out – without having to guess the pixel-perfect dimensions of my slices before.

Well, apparently Adobe didn’t feel like the usage market was big enough to keep the program around – after all, image slicing and optimization IS available in Photoshop (as a much much toned down version).

So they took the program out, and you know what, that’s fine Adobe. Maybe it doesn’t need to be it’s own program. However, what Adobe failed to do is vamp up Photoshop’s slicing abilities. There’s not even a toolbar in Photoshop to name / toggle slices, which is the core of the reason behind this rant. There was a great toolbar in ImageReady for this – so come on, Adobe. Add it for CS4? Please?