If you're just starting out in web design, you may be rather overwhelmed with the prices with some of the products that professionals use such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Dreamweaver which can cost up to $754-$1,000 individually or almost $3,000 for a suite. It is safe to say that not everybody will be able to afford this or willing to get a copy. There is a fairly large crowd of free alternatives to these programs to help you in your daily basic design jobs.
GIMP
Commercial Counterpart: Adobe Photoshop
GIMP works across multiple platforms including windows, Mac, Linux and more. GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program and is suitable for a variety of tasks. It's features include customizable interface, since each task requires a different environment, GIMP allows you to customize the view and behaviour the way you like it. It uses widgets and docks that allows you to stack them into tabs or keep them open in their own window. GIMP features a full suite of paiting tools including brush, pencil, airbrush, clone and more which include sub-pixel sampling for all paint tools for high quality anti-aliasing. There is a powerful gradient editor and blend tool, as well as supporting custom brushes and patterns.
Inkscape
Commercial Counterpart: Adobe Illustrator
Inkscape is a free vector graphic software which features tools similar to Illustrator. The supported functionalities of it's main format, SVG, includes forms, text, markers, clones, alpha channels, transformations, reasons and groupings.
Xara Xtreme
Commercial Counterpart: Adobe Illustrator
Xara Xtreme for Linux is a powerful, general purpose graphics program for Unix platforms including Linux, FreeBSD and OS-X. The software features such tools as selection tool, zoom, push, pen bezier path, shadow tool, blend, bevel and loads more. You can drag objects around, plus scale, rotate and shear. It includes a drag and drop file import feature, as well as guidelines, rulers, document templates, status line and progress bar, clipviews, tracer tool, etc.
Notepad++
Commercial Counterpart: Adobe Dreamweaver
Notepad++ is a free source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages and is only available for Microsoft Windows users. Notepad++ colours your code depending on what language you have selected (such as HTML, PHP, Javascript, Java, C++, etc.) Notepad++ had a lot features, including auto-completion, search functionality, macros, running a file (opening it up in a browser or otherwise), many "TextFX" features such as modifing all text (to uppercase, lowercase, or converting text), quick inserts and ways to tidy your code. Notepad++ is allows compatible with plugins, it has it's own plugin manager where you can install, update plugins, as well as view your currently installed plugins.
Eclipse
Commercial Counterpart: Adobe Dreamweaver
Eclipse is an open source community, whose projects are focused on building an open development platform comprised of extensible frameworks, tools and runtimes. The main eclipse tools are Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers and Eclipse for PHP Developers. The softwares allow you to connect with a SVN Repository so you can easily work with others over a network. With the SVN, you are able to compare and replace your own edits with the repository. Eclipse also has a plugin manager, with many plugins for debugging, SVN, coding, and more.
NVU
Commercial Counterpart: Microsoft Expression Web
NVU is a complete web authoring system for Linux, Windows and Macs to rival such software like Dreamweaver and Expression Web. NVU also has a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, meaning you can see both the code and the design as it should look like. Nvu has a built-in site manager, and is able to connect to your own website online, which makes making chances quick and easy.
FileZilla
Commercial Counterpart: SmartFTP
Filezilla an open source FTP solution. It is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with features such as tabbed user interface, drag & drop support, IPv6 support, bookmarks. It also supports resume and transfer of large files (more than 4GB), and a powerful site manager and transfer queue. You can configure the transfer speed limits as well as being able to compare directories.
FireFTP
Commercial Counterpart: SmartFTP
FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers. Its features include directory comparison, search/filtering, export and import accounts, remote editing, drag & drop and more. You can also manage directories and files on both your local machine and the server.
jEdit
Commercial Counterpart: Adobe Dreamweaver
jEdit is a programmer's text editor written in Java. It uses the Swing toolkit for the GUI and can be configured as a rather powerful IDE through the use of its plugin architecture. jEdit also allows you to modify it's visual appearance, and add or delete widgets with it's tabbed interface. It also featured keyboard shortcuts for everything, unlimited undo/redo, copy and paste with an unlimited number of clipboards, markers for remembering positions in files, a "kill ring" feature that automatically remembers previously deleted text, and more. It also includes syntax highlighting for more than 130 file types, including PHP, JavaScript, Java, CSS, HTML, XML, C++. jEdit is also able to to search and replace, including multiple file searches, and has an extensive file management.
OpenOffice
Commercial Counterpart: Microsoft Office
OpenOffice is a popular suite of free content writing, spreadsheet and presentation creation tools that are almost on par with Microsoft Office. It's a great application to use for creating draft website copies and proposals to clients. It's suite contains Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw and Base. Writer has everything you would expect from a modern, fully equipped word processor or desktop publisher, with powerful features like Auto Correct, Auto Complete, Auto Format, Styles and Formatting, Text Frames and Linking, and more. Calc is OpenOffices spreadsheet, whcih includes Advanced DataPilot technology, Natural language formulas, and more. Impress is a tool for creating effective multimedia presentations, with 2D and 3D clip art, font works, special effects, animations, and more. Draw is the equivalent to MS Paint, it allows you to communicate with graphics and diagrams, manipulate objects, rotate in 2D or 3D dimensions, and more. Base enables you to manipulate database data by creating and modifying tables, forms, queuies, and reports.
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