10+ Useful Portable Apps For Web Designers and Developers
We like portable apps because those applications are lightweight and require no installation to run. As a web designer/developer, i used to work with different PCs. Rather than carrying my laptop everywhere, i prefer saving frequently used applications into my USB drive.
I had collect a lot of useful portable applications and i would like to share those applications with my readers. Let’s look into these applications now:
Browsers
1. Firefox Portable Edition
Firefox is a popular web browsers and portableapps.com had created the portable version of this application. Install this application on your USB drive and you can bring your bookmarks along with you. I have this application in my USB drive together with some useful plugins.
2. Google Chrome Portable
Google Chrome is quite popular browser and it has advantages over other browsers. For example, Chrome will run different tabs as separate processes, which will prevents different windows to interfering each other. So, grab the portable version of Google Chrome and start chroming.
3. OperaUSB
Probably you want to try out your design in different browsers. We have Firefox portable, Chrome portable and IE installed by default. So, it is better for us to have OperaUSB installed on our USB drive so that we can try out our design in these popular web browsers no matter where we are.
Text Editors
4. Notepad++
Notepad++ is one of the most popular notepad replacement for Windows. You can download the portable version of this application from the portableapps.com website.
5. Web Design Toy
Web Design Toy is a simple application that will splits into two views where you can instantly preview the output when you type he HTML code. Download the application and double click the exe file to launch. No installation required.
6. Oiko Visual CSS editor
Oiko is a visual editor for CSS. It lets user design the CSS easily and use tree-node method to display the structure of the HTML and CSS. Choose the portable version when you download this application.
7. KompoZer Portable
Although we have Notepad++ and visual CSS editor, but an easy-to-use web editor will save us a lot of works. Kompozer uses the same Gecko engine that powered Firefox and Thunderbird.
Image Editors
8. GIMP Portable
Perhaps every web designers know this application. GIMP is the best alternative for Adobe Photoshop. With this portable edition, you can edit your image easily no matter where you are (as long as you can access a PC).
9. Inkscape Portable
Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor, which is also alternative for commercial product such as Adobe Illustrator. It should be included in your portable applications collection if you are web/graphic designer.
0. Fotografix
Fotografix has a tiny footprint – it is only 760KB after extract. It supports layer, scripts, filters and has features like Magic Wand, Eye Dropper, Clone, and etc. This application may be another alternative for you when you just want to do simple image editing and don’t want to open huge application like GIMP.
11. Artweaver
Artweaver is yet another alternative for Photoshop. It has bigger size than Fotografix and users can download the plugin pack which has filter such as Super Nova filter, Remove Red Eyes filter, and etc.
