Web design and development on a Mac

Filed under: Blog — by Rob — 28th January, 2006

For a long time the mac has been the platform of choice for the creative designer, proving itself as an essential tool for anyone working in print or digital media.

For web designers and developers on the other hand the PC has dominated in terms of tool of choice and there is no doubt that with it’s plethora of software and support its an easy platform to adopt.

I switched to the mac about three years ago after being a PC user for aeons (I still use a PC at my 9 to 5). Having made the switch, the hardest thing I found was finding the right tools and resources to help me maintain the same level of productivity I had when using a PC.

What follows are the products, resources, articles and tutorials that helped make the transition a painless one. These are not reviews of products so I’ll keep them brief. Hopefully this can help any new switchers out there.

I will be updating this list as and when new stuff hits my hard-drive so please visit again.

Coding

If your a Dreamweaver user then your in luck as Dreamweaver is also on the mac and seems to work just as well as its PC counterpart. Just like the PC version its a bit slow and cumbersome but still manages to do a descent job. Sadly the massively superior Homesite is not available on the mac and there are no plans to port it over.

If you’re hand coder and like complete control over your mark-up there are many applications to choose from.

I use Homesite on a PC at work and in my opinion this is the best code editor out there. I’ve yet to see anything on a mac to match it. Having said this there are some that come really close. Here are some of the best I’ve used to date.

SubEthaEdit

This is my day to day text editor, fast light-weight and fully loaded with functionality. Its great if you have more than one developer working on the same document as it uses the bonjour protocol (formerly Rendezvous) to find collaborators over your local network.

Smultron

This is a text editor that uses tabbed document editing. Its fast and seems to be reliable.

BBedit

Probably the most popular professional editor out there. I find it a bit bloated, but it has almost every feature you could need. Many swear by it.

skEedit

Looks good and I’ve heard lots of good things about it. I tried it for a while and found it buggy but this was an early version so it has probably overcome it’s problems by now. I would recommend you give it a try for yourself.

TextMate

I’m trying this one out now and first impressions are that its very very good. I’d say Its similar to bbedit without the bells and whistles and a fraction of the cost. This could end up being my favourite text editor on any platform. (review coming soon)

See Also

Pre Production

Siteflows, Wire frames, schematics, whatever you want to call them OmniGraffle is the application I use for flowcharts. Its the only one I’ve used to date on the mac so I would like to hear your opinions on this and alternatives.

FTP

Transmit by Panic

I’ve only really used the one FTP program on the mac and that is transmit from Panic. Considering that its just an FTP application It’s a real joy to use. I use it day in day out and it never trips up on me. Behind the beautifully clear user interface is a powerful piece of software that is always being updated by the panic guys.

Development environment

For my local development environment I did a lot of reading and followed many tutorials about setting up MySQL, Apache and PHP, I got lost many times and almost gave up. Then I found serverlogistics who provide easy to use installer packages of MySQL, Apache and PHP. With these packages I was up and running in less than an hour.

I use phpMyAdmin for web based management of MySQL. I’ve also used CocoaMySQL and found it easy to use and effective but I prefer the browser based phpMyAdmin - whatever floats your boat really.

Useful Articles

Please fell free to add your recommendations, and as I said earlier please visit again as I plan to add to this post over time with the aim of it becoming a resource.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 28th, 2006 at 1:36 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply

Web design and development on a Mac

Filed under: Blog — by Rob — 28th January, 2006

For a long time the mac has been the platform of choice for the creative designer, proving itself as an essential tool for anyone working in print or digital media.

For web designers and developers on the other hand the PC has dominated in terms of tool of choice and there is no doubt that with it’s plethora of software and support its an easy platform to adopt.

I switched to the mac about three years ago after being a PC user for aeons (I still use a PC at my 9 to 5). Having made the switch, the hardest thing I found was finding the right tools and resources to help me maintain the same level of productivity I had when using a PC.

What follows are the products, resources, articles and tutorials that helped make the transition a painless one. These are not reviews of products so I’ll keep them brief. Hopefully this can help any new switchers out there.

I will be updating this list as and when new stuff hits my hard-drive so please visit again.

Coding

If your a Dreamweaver user then your in luck as Dreamweaver is also on the mac and seems to work just as well as its PC counterpart. Just like the PC version its a bit slow and cumbersome but still manages to do a descent job. Sadly the massively superior Homesite is not available on the mac and there are no plans to port it over.

If you’re hand coder and like complete control over your mark-up there are many applications to choose from.

I use Homesite on a PC at work and in my opinion this is the best code editor out there. I’ve yet to see anything on a mac to match it. Having said this there are some that come really close. Here are some of the best I’ve used to date.

SubEthaEdit

This is my day to day text editor, fast light-weight and fully loaded with functionality. Its great if you have more than one developer working on the same document as it uses the bonjour protocol (formerly Rendezvous) to find collaborators over your local network.

Smultron

This is a text editor that uses tabbed document editing. Its fast and seems to be reliable.

BBedit

Probably the most popular professional editor out there. I find it a bit bloated, but it has almost every feature you could need. Many swear by it.

skEedit

Looks good and I’ve heard lots of good things about it. I tried it for a while and found it buggy but this was an early version so it has probably overcome it’s problems by now. I would recommend you give it a try for yourself.

TextMate

I’m trying this one out now and first impressions are that its very very good. I’d say Its similar to bbedit without the bells and whistles and a fraction of the cost. This could end up being my favourite text editor on any platform. (review coming soon)

See Also

Pre Production

Siteflows, Wire frames, schematics, whatever you want to call them OmniGraffle is the application I use for flowcharts. Its the only one I’ve used to date on the mac so I would like to hear your opinions on this and alternatives.

FTP

Transmit by Panic

I’ve only really used the one FTP program on the mac and that is transmit from Panic. Considering that its just an FTP application It’s a real joy to use. I use it day in day out and it never trips up on me. Behind the beautifully clear user interface is a powerful piece of software that is always being updated by the panic guys.

Development environment

For my local development environment I did a lot of reading and followed many tutorials about setting up MySQL, Apache and PHP, I got lost many times and almost gave up. Then I found serverlogistics who provide easy to use installer packages of MySQL, Apache and PHP. With these packages I was up and running in less than an hour.

I use phpMyAdmin for web based management of MySQL. I’ve also used CocoaMySQL and found it easy to use and effective but I prefer the browser based phpMyAdmin - whatever floats your boat really.

Useful Articles

Please fell free to add your recommendations, and as I said earlier please visit again as I plan to add to this post over time with the aim of it becoming a resource.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 28th, 2006 at 1:36 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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