Sure, there are other products that work or have the same features as Apple do – but they don’t seem to be able to pull it off in the same way.

So enough of the usual Apple fanboy babble, onto this post which is about three essential tools for anyone doing any Web Development on a Mac. I have included a local server, code editor and database management tool. I’m not going to go too in depth with each one – i’ll leave that for you to go and discover, but trust me they are all worth having on your system.

Mamp – local server

Coda – code editor

Sequel Pro – MySQL database manager

Slammer – grid system overlay tool

Balsamiq Mockups – rapid wireframing

Fireworks/Photoshop – design

Little Snapper – screenshot/annotation tool

Tweetie – to subscribe to brilliant resources

Spotify – you need to listen to tunes while you work right?

I have started using a new tool when coding my sites – Coda. This tool in my opinion beats Dreamweaver on a number of points, amongst which the simple but useful tool bar that features:

• A proper preview – Unlike Dreamweaver, Coda uses your favourite browser to render a preview of your page (if you use Dreamweaver you will understand what I mean, a site never looks the same in the ‘Designer’ tab. Its easy to switch to preview as you don’t even need to leave the application.
• A good file browser – That allows you to view remote and local files and offers syncronisation between them. A nice feature is that if you are within a sub-folder on the local site you can publish directly to its equivalent on the root with one click.
• Editor – does exactly what it says. Colour coded for various types of code.
• CSS editor – allows you to easily edit your css files
• Terminal – Allows an SSH connection so you can remotely edit your server
• Books – features full books for quick reference to web related topics.
• Cover flow – A graphical representation of all your sites. Simply click the preview to launch the site.

Coda isn’t free, its about £40 for a single license. Try it out and give it a go, i’m sure you will agree its a bit easier than Dreamweaver to use. Head over to the Coda site for a better review.