Lately I’ve been asked a lot about what sort of applications I use to work. Since I deal with a lot of different areas (development, design and IA/ID), there’s a few applications in the whole work flow, so I’ll attempt to describe both the app and the use I give it.

Firefox (page) needs absolutely no introduction and honesly, I won’t trade it for any other browser unless Mozilla seriously screws up in some future version. A couple of reasons are are obviously the standards support (and if you’ve seen my post about CSS3 columns selectors you know how much I like it) and it being open-source and cross-platform.

Web Developer Extension (page) is a Firefox extension that simplifies the job of the Web designer (and the web developer, as the name so implies) by giving the user an extra developer-oriented toolbar that packs quite a punch when it comes to important little tools. Things like automatized validation of code as well as showing block sizes and outlining important blocks on the page are extremely important for me.

DevBoi With Rails (page) is yet another extension that I’ve been giving some use lately. It is basically a sidebar for firefox that you can use to read reference on Ruby on Rails, Ruby and XHTML. So if you’re working on a piece of code and you don’t know how to use a function or need to check out the docs, you don’t need to look further than your sidebar.

TextMate (mac only | page) is probably the most useful text editor I have ever used, and it is usually what causes the “Wow!” effect behind me whenever I’m working on any kind of code. It’s automatization features as well as modular experience (allowing 3rd parties to create bundles to support new languages) are so good that I didn’t actually hesitate to pay for the application. Even if there are good (and in some cases free) alternatives out there like SubEthaEdit (mac only | page).

CSSEdit (mac only | page) is the only application that actually substitutes Textmate (above) for editing any source - in this case, CSS. It is actually so good with CSS that there’s no contesting rival on both Macs or PCs. Whenever I don’t have CSSEdit around, I use Textmate or any other plain text editor, but when I do, there’s no beating it.

OmniGraffle (mac only | page) is the de-facto application to build diagrams on macs. If you’re on windows and you know Visio, OmniGraffle does the same thing and packs a couple of other uses, but with the simplistic mac-oriented look and feel. I mostly use OmniGraffle whenever I need to come up with diagrams or explanations for flow on pages but since this hardly ever substitutes a good whiteboard or paper and some pens, I was almost about not to post about it. Still, if your line of work envolves diagrams and specs, OO is the way to go.

The other stuff

It’s funny how few applications I use on my work (and some of these are nothing but utilities), but I was never a guy that would use bloated applications to get clean work done - it just doesn’t happen. I keep my “toolset” at a minimum but specific enough so that the applications (or tools) are so good at what they do that they become a must-have.

Naturally, there are applications that I use extremely often like NetNewsWire (mac only | page), Photoshop or Illustrator. But those would be a whole new post. The applications above, probably being already in the harddrives of most my readers, are my toolbox for working with development, design and IA. What are yours?