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Three Free Lifesaving Programs

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The hard drive on my trusty Macbook died on me yesterday, which means that I’m forced to use our old desktop PC for the next few days. This PC runs Windows XP, and is used mostly for browser testing and- of course- gaming. That means no Photoshop, no Dreamweaver, no Transmit… you get the picture. Work, naturally, must go on- so what’s a web designer with a temporary PC to do?

Fortunately, all our files are kept on several external hard drives- so although the nice man at Apple support told me all my Macbook data was irretrievable, there was no great loss there. Also, I made the leap from an email client to using Gmail exclusively a long time ago, so no lost emails either. Important documents for current projects are in Google Docs, important dates and to-dos on Google Calendar. My biggest problem, as you can probably guess, is not having my favorite Apps available to me for the next couple of days. Thanks to a few hours searching and downloading, however, I’m back to work with the help of these three programs:

Image Editor: Gimp
First up, of course, was finding a good image manipulation program. I had heard of Gimp before, but hadn’t tried it until now- and wow. Gimp blew my expectations out of the water- from layers to brush modes to opening my PSDs without a hitch, the program works beautifully.

Text Editor: Notepad Plus Plus
Next, I needed a good text editor for my HTML and PHP code. I usually use a combination of Dreamweaver and TextWrangler, but since I just needed a temporary solution, I figured Windows’ built-in Notepad would be good enough. Then I downloaded and tried out Notepad Plus Plus, which is like Notepad on steroids.

FTP Program: GoFTP
Finally, I needed an FTP program. I’d been using Transmit on OSX for so long, I’d forgotten what Windows FTP program I used to use. A quick Google search brought up the snappily named GoFTP, and I’m glad I tried it out. The program is fast- and I mean, really fast. Small. Unobtrusive. Just what I need from an FTP program.

And there you have it: three free programs that’s gotten me back to work quicker than you can say “failed hard-drive”.

Has this ever happened to you? What programs saved your life?

5 Work Tools I Can’t Live Without

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As web workers, we all have our favorite applications. There are the big ones, of course- the ones that get installed immediately on all our new computers- Photoshop, Dreamweaver, maybe Flash. Today, however, I want to share with you five of my favorite work tools- little applications and utilities that work for me every day.

Before anything else: these are all Mac apps. Although I run and work both OSX and Windows (thank you, Bootcamp!), I do most of my work on the former.

  1. EverSave. This is an absolute gem, and you know why? Because most of the time, I don’t even know it’s there. EverSave will save all of your documents in specific time intervals- that’s right, I said all. Or you can set it to save only certain applications, or to ask you each time it’s about to save. I’ll tell you a little secret: I used to obsessively press Command+S every few minutes when I was working on something. With EverSave, I don’t need to do that any more.
  2. TextWrangler. Okay, I know you have your own favorite text editor: TextWrangler is mine. Not only does it have a cool rope-like logo (wrangler- get it?), it’s constantly surprising me with features I didn’t know it had. And, I’ll admit it, I’d be lost without its multi-file search function.
  3. Camouflage. How many icons do I have on my desktop? I’ll tell you: too many. Because I love the look of a clean and tidy desktop- not to mention being able to see my wallpaper- I love Camouflage, which, in one click, will hide all the icons on your desktop.
  4. Jumpcut. So much of the work I do requires copying and pasting, that discovering Jumpcut was a glorious moment for me. It does “clipboard buffering”- which gives you access to text that you’ve cut or copied, even if you’ve subsequently cut or copied something else. Sort of like giving your clipboard a “history” you can return to. Pure genius, and something I use all the time.
  5. RPP. And finally, because I work with images so much- and sometimes those images aren’t of the best quality- I adore my RPP: that stands for Raw Photo Processor, and it does just that:processes your images. It’s a little hard to explain how wonderful this little app is- I suggest you visit their page of examples.

And yes, they’re all free. Yay.

But I’m always on the lookout for apps to improve my work life. What are your favorite work tools?

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