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6 Open Source Programs For Web Designers
As the economic situation in the world worsens, everyone is looking for a way to cut back costs. One way you can cut back costs is by using open source programs instead of expensive programs. While the open source programs may not be as pretty, they do get the job done. What’s even better is that almost all these programs run on multiple platforms, so you can share work and get more done without worrying about compatibility.
1. The GIMP
The GIMP is a free graphics program that you can use to create and edit almost any type of graphics. It has support for Skins, and is pretty much a open source version of Adobe Photoshop.
2. Nvu
Nvu is a free web editor. While it doesn’t have all the features and interfaces of DreamWeaver or Sharepoint, it does allow you to edit code and design at the same time. It also allows you to move design elements without looking at any of the design code.
3. Open Office
If you run any spread sheets (for billing for example) or save documents in Word format, Open Office is a world renowned open source editor that supports almost all of the futures of Microsoft Office at a great cost – free. The interface is similar and you get almost the exact same results as you would using any Microsoft program.
4. Firefox
While Firefox in and of itself is great, the plugins that go with it, turn it into a formidable web development and debugging tool at a great cost. See our previous post on great plugins for firefox.
5. WinSCP
If you find yourself using telnet, ssh, scp and other file transfer protocols, you may be using a paid file transfer program. WinSCP is completely free and supports multiple sessions, different protocols and can store sessions, usernames and passwords.
6. Audacity
If you do any kind of audio editing, then Audacity is the best program for you. You can splice MP3s, record, change pitch, and do almost any type of sound editing. Great for editing soundtracks, flash background music and more.
Maya Richard is now writing about high speed internet for the Cable Modem Help blog. She can be reached at mayarichard@gmail.com
Fantastic, just looking into Audacity now, just what I needed, thanks!
This is something great. very good effort
I have been on the winscp site, it offers a great free file transfer, great suggestion hopefully these tools will help me to progress. I use flash fxp now which is a little outdated with how fast it actually transfers files.
I agree on GIMP, FireFox, and Audacity. For me, open Office is slow and NvU is not so good.
I am not a web designer but I am familiar with Firefox,Gimp and Open office. And I want to learn on how to use Nvu, WinSCP and Audacity.
You have a nice web design blog. Cheers.
kimberly ventura
Awesome is not a perfect word to describe your post. its excellent pal. the short description the vibrant video. all fabulous
I’ve used 3 out of the 6 programs listed. Audacity is great for editing sound programs, I used it when editing the sound for a youtube video. Firefox is must for web development, and gimp is very cool. It’s hard to learn at first but it is very useful.
This is definitely an interesting post!
Keep up the great work!
Ovi Dogar
AbsoluteCovers.com
Is there any other free alternative to NVU? This is a good program however I feel some improvements should be done on it…
@MDiogo: Yes there is, but now it’s called kompozer. http://kompozer.net/
BTW, where is Inkscape?
I came acroos this site its very intresting post.Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the tips: Audacity I had heard of, but didn’t know it was open source, and may look into. Of course, Firefox and Open Office are practically the Bible for any semi-knowledgeable geeks out there today: I’m gonna have to differ with you on GIMP though. I can’t stand it! Maybe I should look into the ’skins’ feature, but I’m not too sure whether that would fix the irritating multi-window pop-over/under problems that always seem to happen with GIMP. Unfortunately, Photoshop For The Win on that one, I think.
Some of the more popular opensource programmes that I like are:
‘WebGrabber’ which is a bot that downloads a web-site by crawling it, and ‘Skype’ great for making free voice calls to other Skype users whilst working on a web project.
Anybody know any good Opensource FTP Programmes?
I know there are some good Opensource FTP Programmes?
you may try to contact Ivan at bft web design.
We use FireFox, of course with the Firebug plugin. That tool is priceless for troubleshooting issues with html, css or javascript. We also use Open Office Draw during the wireframing process on the website’s design. WinSCP looks like a pretty cool tool. Will check out The GIMP as well because the photoshop licenses are getting expensive. I can’t complain though because we found a really good online seller for software who gets us the full version of Web CS4 Premium for under $1000.00
We’ve been using Open Office in-house for a while. Can’t really think of a reason why we’d want to switch back to an MS solution.
Currently in the process of checking out open source CRM software. If anyone’s interested, would be happy to feed back.
Best,
Jo
thanx 4 information but
Can you tell me instead of audicity which software I should use?
Good blog! I have tried using gimp but it seems a bit buggy on vista and just couldn’t achieve really proffessional results, but I hope they stick at it. Web designers should check out the firefox addons some great tools in there. Also I find xenocode and ietester invaluable for browser testing!
being a web designer and home music producer I use a lot of these apps and I think they are awesome, having found them randomly over a couple of years this post has brilliantly brought them all together – great post
I like the joodix one LOL
By the way, take a look: http://www.vismomedia.com
and get paid for hosting cool videos in your blogs.
thanks for information… you have very nice blog
[...] You Design a SiteWho says web design has to be expensive? Maya Richard over at WebDesignMo outlines six open source programs that are helpful to any web designer. Sure, you will still need to pay for some programs to build a [...]
I am not a web designer but I do use the following Fire Fox and Open Office, these have to be my two best. Great post will have to check out the others that you have mentioned.
I use Firefox with the firebug and web developer plugins and find them really useful. I’ve used The GIMP a lot in the past to and its a really good piece of open source software
Can you recommend an open source code similar to audacity but for video? We’d like to be able to mark segments of an embedded youtube clip and only show the marked (start/stop) in a video container.
Thanks for the great info.