Must Have Software 2008 Edition

Development

FireFox 3 – Extensions have made this my main web development browser.  Too bad it feel clunky now compared to Chrome

FireBug – The best toolkit for any web developer out there.

Web Developer Toolkit – I uses this less and less with Firebug getting the job done 90% of the time.

Better Gmail – Makes gmail go over a SSL connection and also replaces attachment images with a nice icon representation.  I love the new skin, but at last Gmail is too slow on FF, have to use it on Chrome

ColorZilla – A great tool to quickly find the HEX value of anything on any web page.

Visual Studio 2008 – Visual Studio is still the standard for IDE’s.  Of course it could always be faster but it is really nice.

Resharper – Love rescharper, cleans my code as I type.

Microsoft SQL Server – Most .NET projects connect to this so it’s a good idea to have a local copy running

Management Studio – At first I wasn’t a Management Studio fan, give me back the 2000 version of Enterprise Manager and Query Editer.  Nevermind.  Management Studio is double sweet for the price of one.

Notepad++ – My texteditior and most of the time PHP ide of choice.  Fast, simple, customizable, a few nice plugins.  Love the custom color schemes, I go dark.

WinSCP – A free opensource SFTP manager for when you have to work on the nix machines.   FileZilla now does SFTP so I’m sure this is here anymore except it comes with PUTTY and they have a nice integration going.

FileZilla – Free, open source, clean, simple FTP client. Now does SFTP but doesn’t have way to open a terminal session like WinSCP.

Navicat – My preferred mysql manager of choice, although their query interface needs improvement.

CodeIgniter – Loving this PHP MVC framework.  Simpler then cakePHP. I’m building a little something, something in this, more to come on that front.

 IE Tester – A must for web developers.  Test against IE 5 and up all on the same machine.

Surround SCM – Of course my version control software of choice.   Cross platform, really nice GUI, intuitive interface.  Plus integrates on almost all IDEs.

TestTrack Pro – Our bug tracking software.  Great workflow engine.

QA Wizard Pro – Automated testing tool.

BitNami Wamp Stack – PHP development made much easier on windows.

Code Translator – I use to be a vb.net guy, this tools can be life saver.

System

Chrome – Some how this became my default browser of choice in less then 2 weeks.  It’s fast.

iTunes – I use iTunes to manage my podcast listening list.  It does a great job at that.

mRemote – Where would I be with out this terminal services manager.

Office 2007 – The biggest upgrade in Microsoft’s office line in some time.  The ribbon bar is nice and I love how they brought really useful features to the forefront.

Fireworks – Still better then photoshop for web graphics and cutting

Blackberry Manager – For upgrading your firmware on your crackberry and other crackberry tasks.

TweetDeck – Best twitter client I have found

Windows Live Writer – Who knew Microsoft could put out a nice Web 2.0 , errrr, Windows client.  Writing this post in Live writer as we speak…

CCleaner – Free PC crap cleaner.

7Zip – Can handle tar, zip, gz, and other compressed formats,

Foxit – PDF reader software.  Runs so much smaller then Adobe.

FreeRam XP Pro – RAM manager

Process Explorer – Free microsoft add on, this should replace task manager.

SlickRun – Launcher program

CleanMem – Runs in the background to release RAM

UltraMon – essential if you have more then 1 monitor.

Safari for Windows – because I have too

Sites

bloglines – nicer interface then Google Reader

gmail – the standard for web based email