Usefully, the application has a modicum of tools for
web publishing.
SOFTWARE GUIDE
505
F
The author??™s toolbox
I often get asked what hardware and software I use, so here is a quick list:
Hardware: I use a Mac Pro, with lots of extra RAM and several hard drives for daily
and weekly backups, along with a MacBook as a backup machine. I personally prefer
Mac OS X over Windows, but with Intel Macs, the real advantage is being able
to design on the Mac, test on Mac and Windows, and host stuff locally for testing
on the built-in Apache server.
Design software: I mostly use Adobe Photoshop for layout design, although Adobe
Illustrator is wheeled out occasionally. Color Consultant Pro (www.code-line.com/
software/colorconsultantpro.html) assists with color schemes, while Color
Oracle (http://colororacle.cartography.ch/) and Sim Daltonism (www.michelf.
com/projects/sim-daltonism/) both enable me to check whether designs are
usable for people who are color blind.
Authoring software: This will likely come as no surprise if you??™ve read this book, but
I tend to favor a code-based approach to creating site templates. However, I don??™t
like wasting time, so applications that speed up code creation are a must. CSSEdit
(www.macrabbit.com/cssedit/) is my weapon of choice for CSS, and it??™s perhaps
the best piece of shareware available for the Mac (worth the entry price just for its
preview override function, which enables you to override a live site??™s CSS with a
local file).
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