It’s been a year and a half  since I moved on OsX.  Coming from the Linux world it wasn’t that hard  to get used to the new operating system. At that time I had some issues to make the perfect selection of softwares and tools I need for my work.

My expertise is PHP, JS  (MooTools),  HTML+CSS  and sometimes I  design –  though it’s been a while since I opened the Photoshop.

I will try to present what software I use  and I hope you will comment with your setups – maybe this will help some others to make their perfect setup.

Let’s start:

Filemanager(s): – Forklift :

Why? Because it reminds me of Krusader, the perfect filemanager for me, even is not that good. It is capable of remote connection –  FTP/SSH that I fully need as I work on a remote server  almost all the time.

I like a lot the “buffer” that it makes between my remote folders (ftp or ssh) and my editor.  It has some nice features like quicklook, folders sync (I love this),  synchronous browsing.

What I would really need would be a diff plugin to help me make a diff between 2 folders/files selected.  But in the end I think it’s the best filemanager for OsX until now.

Browser(s):

As my primary browser I use Safari.  Don’t get me wrong, I Like Firefox, but it still needs to get on a diet – it eats lots of RAM and it’s slower than Safari.  For developing I’m  usingMozilla for its Firebug extension.  For testing purposes I have installed Opera and Camino and  a windows machine that I control by using SynergyPlus (read below to find out about)

Editor(s):

There is only one  - Textmate. It takes a while to get used with but after you did it’s addictive. At the moment is the best editor I’ve worked with. The code completion ,  snippets and bundles improve the productivity very much. Nothing more to say.

Communication:

Adium, Skype and Tweetie

Graphics:

Photoshop and Preview

Other tools:

For the server side when I cannot reach my remote server –  MAMP -

Is just like LAMP, only for mac. It works nice and smooth and you don’t need much to do.

Sequel pro -

The best mysql admin tool I’ve seen. It can connect to any mysql server using sockets, normal way or even ssh.

Screen grabbing – xScope -

A nifty tool that helps you with the screenshots, there are nice measurement tools, a loupe, a “screens” tool that gives you an exact space you have in the most popular browsers at a given resolution.

ImageOptim -

A wrapper for useful tools that optimize images –  it keeps  the images at the same quality-  only it removes the extra information from it. I use it after I finalize a project on all the images in the site –  it can save you  a lot of bandwidth.

Terminal+Visor –  Terminal( command line interface ) +  a nice plugin that hides the window for you and let you call it in any space you are.

Reggy -

A regex tester, very useful.

Growl –  the notification system

Quicksilver -  needs more introduction?

Versionapp – the most beautiful svn client ever

SynergyPlus

SynergyPlus is a some sort of virtual KVM which allows you to share a mouse and a keyboard between computers with different operating system.

So this is my setup – or better said the tools I use when I work. What about yours ?

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