Scott Hanselman posted an updated Tools List for getting up and running with development quickly, so I figured I’d do the same. What’s yours?
Note that I’m currently running Vista 32-bit, but when Windows 7 is released, I’ll be going to Windows 7 64-bit, so this list will help me when it comes time for me to update as well, much like it is for Hanselman.
Basic Tools / Browsers
- Office 2007 Professional – By far the best release of Office, ever. Even if only for their free PDF exporter plug-in, but I also LOVE the ribbon.
- Firefox 3 – My standard web browser. I also use (and abuse) the following add-ons:
- Adblock Plus – Best ad blocking software.
- Cooliris – A 3D way of browsing the web.
- DownThemAll! – An amazing download client. Helps me get all the juice (and then some) out of our dual-T1 (soon triple-T1) connection here at work.
- Firebug – I haven’t really used this nearly as much as the Web Developer toolbar, but it has some neat features. I mainly installed it for:
- YSlow for Firebug – Shows you how your site is slower than it should be, such as detecting gzip, telling you where to put your javascript and if to minify it, etc.
- Forecastfox – Weather in the status bar.
- Glasser – Makes the top of Firefox have an Aero Glass background to make it look more like IE7/8 on Vista.
- Hide Menubar – Used with Glasser to help it look and feel like IE7/8. Simply press Alt to show the menubar whenever you need it.
- IE Tab – Allows you to switch rendering engines to test your site in IE or Firefox without leaving the browser. Also great for Sharepoint and Outlook Web Access to get the “premium” experience with IE from Firefox.
- Stylish – Allows me to color the bookmarks bar to look more like Vista.
- TwitterFox – The only twitter client I use on the PC.
- Web Developer – The best toolbar for web developers. Has rulers, CSS editors, can resize the window to standard screen sizes, hit Ctrl+Shift+A to validate your site on W3C, and SO MUCH MORE. Amazing plugin.
- Safari – Currently using version 4 Beta, which has an amazing engine.
- Google Chrome – Another great web browser, but neither Safari or Chrome or IE work for my daily needs.
- μTorrent – Torrents are the only way to download linux ISOs efficiently.
Productivity
- Workrave – A timer to keep you from getting carpal tunnel syndrome. Recommended.
- Windows Live Writer – What I’m using to write this blog post. One of the best products to come from Microsoft in recent years.
- VirtualBox – The best standalone virtual machine software, and it’s free. And it supports 64-bit guests if you have virtualization extensions enabled on your CPU. And with VT-x, it is mindblowingly fast. It just keeps getting better and better.
- Administration Tools Pack for Windows Server 2003 SP2 (x86 | x64) – I will eventually move to the 2008 Server tools pack once we have more than one Windows Server 2008 machine, but this allows you to manage things like Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, etc. on your Windows Servers without logging in from Remote Desktop.
- Spark – We use OpenFire for an internal chat server, and Spark is the best client for that. Plus, we will soon be rolling out the FastPath web chat feature, where visitors to our website can chat with a sales representative. All of this is FREE.
- TightVNC – The best VNC client for Windows. I use it to connect to the console of one of our servers, but we also use it for remote administration with our Field Sales representatives. We don’t connect to them, rather they connect to us with a reverse connection. We forward a port in on our firewall to each of our machines, and whenever we need them to connect, we start the listening daemon, and they start a reverse connection on their VNC server. This way we don’t have to worry about their firewall or IP or have them VPN in or anything.
Design
- Adobe Photoshop CS3 – A must-have if you do web development. I’m sorry, but the GIMP doesn’t cut it. I haven’t used CS4 yet, but CS3 is outstanding.
Source Control
- SourceGear Vault Client – The best alternative to SourceSafe for Visual Studio. It has its issues, and I’ve never had much luck with the integrated VS client, but it does source control pretty darn well. Free for personal use, but for a team, you gotta buy licenses.
Database Administration
- SQL Server 2008 Management Studio – We run SQL 2008 Standard and Development here at work, and SSMS is the best way to administer them. Period.
- OdbcQuery – A custom WPF app I wrote to execute an ODBC query after MSQuery32 started breaking on my Vista machine. Supports syntax highlighting and experimental “IntelliSense” completion for table names.
Business Software
- ProvideX WindX – The thin-client software for connecting to our ERP solution, Infor FACTS.
- ProvideX ODBC Client – Necessary for our web site and client apps to connect to our ERP software.
Development
Here we go.
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Professional – There absolutely, unequivocally, undeniably is no greater development software than Visual Studio for any platform, ever. And, they have the free Express editions, so you can’t use cost as an excuse.
- ASP.NET MVC 1.0 – I haven’t used this for an actual project yet here at work, but I feel that it will happen someday soon.
- ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit – Great for things like the date picker.
- ASP.NET Charting Control – Create beautiful, anti-aliased charts on the server-side easily with this free component.
- SlickEdit Free Gadgets – A VS plug-in that gives you a great line counter, among other things.
- Refactor! for VB.NET – C# has code refactoring built into VS, VB does not. This is the missing piece. Free.
- Silverlight 2.0 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 – Silverlight 2.0 kicks ass.
- Silverlight 3.0 Beta Tools for Visual Studio – Silverlight 3.0 kicks even more ass.
- Silverlight Toolkit – A bunch of themes and great controls for Silverlight.
- Crystal Reports XI – Doesn’t deserve linking. I’m so done with this product. May it die a long and painful, hard death. Especially now that SAP bought out Business Objects and upped the developer price of CR to $2499. We bought XI developer for $99 a license. We will probably move to the DevExpress XtraReports Suite for the next project we need reporting on.
- Silverlight Deep Zoom Composer – I haven’t actually used this for anything meaningful yet, but it’s VERY COOL.
- Windows Mobile 6 SDK – I developed an app for WM6 that our customers can sign a PDA and capture a digital signature for our website.
Entertainment
2 comments:
Good luck! Upgrading can be brutal, but it's a good time to reflect on your toolset. I often create a virtual PC of my old system to keep handy in case there are tools that are incompatable, I miss something, etc. VMware has a free Server/Player toolset as well as a free converter app., although I'm sure Microsoft has similar. For Firefox bookmarks, extensions, etc., you might want to try MozBackup to package it all up in a portable form; I've used it with good success in the past. You can find it here: http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/
A Firefox add-on I would also suggest is NoScript (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722?id=722). Aside from potentially enhancing your security, it might be of interest to see how your site/app appears without scripting. It takes a little training to whitelist your trusted sites, but it's proved very useful for me when I have to take a turn down a virtual dark alley.
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