There are many applications that can help you work faster and efficiently. Though, not many applications come cheap. For this post we tried to digg deep to find the best selection of free and open source mac applications that will help you be a more efficient designer. We’re covering from application launchers, GTD (Getting Things Done) to design utilities that can help you focus on what’s important: create.
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Working on a Mac is a nice experience. Not only because of the aesthetics, but also because of the many useful tools built right into the operating system. One such tool is Exposé, which allows instant access to just about anything on your desktop with the press of a button. If used correctly, it can be a powerful ally in the war against screen clutter, but if you’re unfamiliar with it, it can seem quite daunting.
That’s where I come in – I’m here with five useful tips that will allow any Mac user to get the most out of Exposé, and their screen space.
You may be interested in the following related posts as well:
* 30 Must Have Tweaks For Your Mac
* Mac Hacks: 17 AppleScripts To Make Your Life Easier
* Mac OS X Leopard: Designer’s Guide to Icons
* 200+ Hotkeys To Boost Your ProductivityRead more…
In one of the recent posts, we looked at some reasons why some developers switch to the Mac. If you’ve decided to make the switch yourself, you can do a lot to make the transition smoother. We will take a look at some must-have software, configurations and hacks that can make your life easier as you switch and that can get you up to full productivity (and maybe beyond) in no time at all.
We have tried to find as many free solutions as possible, but you have to pay for some applications to get their full functionality. If we have missed a configuration, hack or piece of software that you found helpful when switching, please post it in the comments.
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If you are an experienced professional, chances are you have a good set of tools and a work process that you repeat on a daily basis to handle your work. That’s good; it’s how you become more productive, and become an expert. But with repetitive processes come repetitive mechanical work. Whether it’s opening a file in Photoshop to change the format or adding an iCal to-do item based on an email you received, these little tasks can be streamlined. That’s the purpose of AppleScripts.
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Below are 15 useful project management applications, almost all of which are targeted directly at web developers, designers (both web and graphic) and other creative types. The last one is not geared specifically at creative types, but is the most unique project management application I’ve found, and was included on that basis as well as its potential usefulness for designers and developers.
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Beautiful HTML is the foundation of a beautiful website. When I teach people about CSS, I always begin by telling them that good CSS can only exist with equally good HTML markup. A house is only as strong as its foundation, right? The advantages of clean, semantic HTML are many, yet so many websites suffer from poorly written markup.
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Some of you may remember the days when 30KB was the recommended maximum size of a web page, a value which included HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, and images. I find with every new project with even the slightest bit of complexity, it’s not long before that 30 KB ideal is well out of my reach. With the popularity of CSS layouts and JavaScript-enriched web page experiences, it’s not uncommon, particularly for large sites, for the CSS files alone to jump well beyond that 30KB ceiling.
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Once your latest project is finished, you are very likely to forget the structure of the project’s layout, with all its numerous classes, color schemes and type setting. To understand your code years after you’ve written it you need to make use of sensible code structuring. The latter can dramatically reduce complexity, improve code management and consequently simplify maintainability. However, how can you achieve sensible structuring? Well, there are a number of options. For instance, you can make use of comments — after all, there is always some area for useful hints, notes and, well, comments you can use afterwards, after the project has been deployed.
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We’ve taken a close look at some of the most interesting and useful CSS tricks, tips, ideas, methods, techniques and coding solutions and listed them below. We also included some basic techniques you can probably use in every project you are developing, but which are hard to find once you need them.
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CSS isn’t always easy to deal with. Depending on your skills and your experience, CSS coding can sometimes become a nightmare, particularly if you aren’t sure which selectors are actually being applied to document elements. An easy way to minimize the complexity of the code is as useful as not-so-well-known CSS attributes and properties you can use to create a semantically correct markup. We’ve taken a close look at some of the most interesting and useful CSS tricks, tips, ideas, methods, techniques and coding solutions and listed them below.
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