Free tools of the trade
Yes, I consider myself a geek when it comes to communication. I will analyze the heck out of an improperly worded sentence in a co-worker’s trivial email about lunch. I erupt in subdued anger when I hear someone in the media use double negatives. In any case, I believe that it is this obsessive compulsive side of me that has led me to a career in ecommerce.
And no, I don’t consider myself an expert designer… nor an expert developer (not at this point in my life yet, at least), but I am quite happy to have become immersed into the fascinating world of web design.
At a party recently, I was asked which programs I use to design web sites. I wish I could have answered that I use the industry standard tools, but those are out of economic reach for me at the moment. The short answer: I prefer to use open source software to help me build sites. The long answer: stay tuned.
In graduate school, we had the opportunity to work on either a research paper or a professional project. The research paper could be a qualitative, quantitative, or critical study of any aspect of communication studies. The professional project could be anything that a company might ask us to create, i.e., a business plan, a web site, a news report, a short film, a screenplay, an advertising campaign…
Can you tell that I was more excited by the professional project? Don’t get me wrong; I love doing research, and I especially thrived at the detailed and lively discussions in class regarding communication theory. But I relished at the prospect of getting my hands dirty in putting my obsessive compulsive passion to work.
I chose to redesign a website of an organization that I had been a part of in past years through another creative endeavor. It was a lot of work and a lot of coffee, but I survived. The project was such a success that the organization wanted me to update and maintain their site for two years. My first freelance job!
So through all the hard work and headaches, I learned which programs to use to continue my practice creating web sites. What follow are the open source or free programs I use as tools in my journey down the webby brick road (by the way, my work is done on a PC laptop… still using Windows XP Pro).
[Also if you plan on using these, please consider making a donation to their respective organizations since they are open source.]
Firefox Browser
This is my preferred browser, so I use this to test all my code. Once I get it working in Firefox, then I check other browsers to make sure they also read my code well: Internet Explorer, Chrome (my soon-to-be favorite browser), Opera, and Safari for Windows.
Notepad++
A code editor that can handle multiple languages. I use it to create my XHMTL and CSS files. I’ve also started doing some basic Javascript and PHP with it. I am very impressed with this tool because of it’s color coded text and tabular interface. The only drawback—if you want to call it that—is that it doesn’t offer an integrated preview browser.
The GIMP
A free alternative to the expensive program of the creative suite variety! It took me a while to get the hang of this software to enhance images or create logos and buttons, but there are a plethora of tutorials and quick tips on creating high-quality, professional graphics.
OpenOffice
Don’t want to buy that other expensive “suite” to create word processing documents, spreadsheets, or presentations? I use this open source solution mainly to create workflow diagrams in its Draw program, but I can also easily create invoices, contracts, or statements of work. What’s more is that I can convert them into .pdf files or even save them as the popular .doc files so that my clients can easily open it on their end.
ColorPix
This little color picker sits on your screen like a sticky note over all your other windows and lets you pick a color from any GUI element that you point and click. It gives you the pixel coordinates, RGB codes, HEX codes, HSB codes, and CMYK. It’s easier and faster than having to open GIMP just to get the color code you need for your HTML.
So those are my main, basic tools. I’m sure there are others out there that I haven’t explored. But this is where I’m beginning my journey.
In the next few posts, I plan to write about my decision to rebuild my portfolio site. So I will discuss the process and ideas that helped me to create this site you’re on right now.
Tags: beginner, communication, creative tools, CSS, free, freelance, open source, redesign, rookie, web site design, XHTML