synthgeek's blog

Complete with examples, graphs, reference, and the ability to save your output as an image or audio file.

http://madtealab.com/

I’ve had a few people ask me what software I use for my graphics & web design work, so decided to make a post about it. Free software ftw.

For graphics, my main tool is The GIMP: http://www.gimp.org/ – I’m not familiar enough with Photoshop to make comparisons, but I have yet to run into anything I need that GIMP can’t do (and it also runs on Linux). I also use an old version of Paint Shop Pro which was given to me as a gift. The only reason I still use it is because I know it so well it’s sometimes quicker than using GIMP for certain things. Had I not learned it first, I wouldn’t be using it.

For coding, it depends on what I’m doing- the standard windows Notepad is what I generally use for simple html & css. If I want nice color-coded context editing (handy for both php and more complex css stuff), I use a program called Notepad++: http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/ . On Linux, I like Kate for the same thing.

That’s it for the creating/editing side of things. There are also a couple of utility programs every web designer should have: Firebug (http://getfirebug.com/) and YSlow (http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/). These are great programs for troubleshooting or just figuring out what’s what. Firebug is like an advanced version of “veiw source” in the Firefox right-click menu, and YSlow (as the name implies) can tell you why a page is loading slowly.

I’ve also worked with several CMS packages, my favorite so far is Drupal: http://drupal.org. I’m not a huge fan of the default forums, but those can be replaced. There is a thriving community of Drupal users contributing themes and other add-ons, and the documentation is some of the best I’ve seen for free software.

For blogging software, I guess it goes without saying that I like WordPress.

Last, but not least, a couple of essential reference links:

http://www.w3schools.com – learn xhtml, css, etc. Has a really cool in-site editor that lets you try out code while you learn.

http://www.php.net/ – the home of php. Has downloadable manuals in a few formats.

So there you go- everything you need to build a damn fine website, totally free.

Like last time, doing this mostly to learn. Since the new SC site has it’s own built-in blog, I won’t have as much to post here, but I’m doing it anyway. New theme to come (most likely).