I switched from PCs to Macs a little over two years ago. Aside from a little time spent in Linux, almost all of my web development work is done on my Macbook. I thought I’d take a minute today to show you the four applications I use the most when I’m working. All of these programs are highly recommended by me, but if you have any alternatives or suggestions that I should check out let me know in the comments.

Coda

I’ve written about Panic’s Coda before but I just can’t say enough good things about it. It puts everything I want under one window: file editor, FTP, previewing and terminal shells.

Without having to switch between different programs to edit, upload, etc. I find it much easier to concentrate and focus on the specific task at hand. Coda has done wonders for improving my efficiency when it comes to building sites. I use Coda every single day and that’s probably the best endorsement I can give it.

On The Job

There are a lot of options to choose from when it comes time to track your billable hours. There are even online solutions but I’m personally a bit leery of trusting someone else with my sensitive financial information. After a lot of trial and error I eventually found On The Job from Stunt Software and I’ve been using it ever since.

On The Job has a simple interface and is really easy to use. That’s exactly the kind of program you should be looking for when you have to do a tedious but necessary task like writing invoices. The best feature of On The Job, aside from the basic time tracking, is the PDF invoices it generates based on your time entry. I can have all of my monthly billing done in short order thanks to this program.

MySQL Query Browser

If you’ve read just a few posts on this site you’d know that I’m a PHP/MySQL guy so it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that I spend a lot of time using the MySQL Query Browser.

A lot of people like to use phpMyAdmin to interact with their databases and I think these people are insane. There are also other desktop programs to let you do MySQL work but none are as cheap (meaning, free) and as well put together as the MySQL Query Browser.

Paparazzi!

Paparazzi! is the type of small utility that I don’t use very often but when I do it’s a very serious timesaver. With Paparazzi! you can take high quality full-screen screenshots and thumbnails of any website.

I use Paparazzi! a lot when I’m sending comps to clients. It’s especially useful when they want to see how progress is coming but I haven’t worked out all of the quirks for a design in Internet Explorer yet. It’s a great utility.

I want to drop a quick note of thanks to Elliot Jay Stocks for his nice tutorial on getting PNGs from application icons. It was extremely helpful.