There are several open source and free alternatives to almost every piece of software on the market, and this article is just a run down of apps I have found especially useful over time. In this article I take a look at some of the free alternatives on the market.

Aptana – Web Development Environment

Aptana has just recently overtaken Dreamweaver as my editor of choice. It comes in two versions; a free and a paid. The differences can easily be overlooked and seems to come down to support requests. The interface is clean and doesn’t look too boring which can often be the case with open source software. The team behind aptana have recently added support for PHP which I have been wanting in some time. I didn’t make the switch fully until they added PHP support. PHP support comes via a plugin and is really easy to install. It is probably not completely up to scratch if you are a hardcore PHP developer, but for us humans who just wants something to edit our WordPress files,Aptana is perfect.

Aptana, My Favourite IDE

There are several cool features supported in Aptana and here are just a few of my favourites:

• Syntax highlighting
• Auto Code completion
• Easy tag wrapping
• Auto indention
• Auto source formatting

The Pro version, though not free, still checks in way cheaper than Adobe’s DW at $99 with upgrades costing $79. The main focus of the app is on Ajax development, but it is more than adequate for web designers HTML work and CSS coding. One thing I like about the paid version and which might just make me buy it, is the built in FTP feature which by the way works better than the one in Dreamweaver.

FTP Software

Even though I like the built in FTP feature of Aptana and Dreamweaver, I still need a standalone FTP client for those unrelated files and WordPress zip files that needs uploading to various hosting accounts. The one I currently use is a Firefox add-on called FireFTP and it does the job just fine. It doesn’t have any fancy features, but it’s stable and reliable. Not much to say about it, it just works.

Word Processing and Spreadsheets

None of us can live without some form of Word processing software, spreadsheets are used by many for budgeting and invoicing, so pretty essential. The only ones I really have experience with, mainly because they were too good to get rid off, is Google Docs and Open Office. Open Office is a fully fledged Office Suite right up there with that of Microsoft Office. And despite recent actions, Open Office is a very popular and widely used Office Suite. Google Docs run in your browser and can be accessed from anywhere. I normally use it for writing things like blog posts and documents that I would like to have access to from anywhere.

I also like that Google Docs doesn’t apply an insane amount of styling to my documents when it comes to copying and pasting them into WordPress. It’s nice that you don’t have to go through each paragraph to remove font styles.

Email

This might seem like an obvious one, but if you use Microsoft Outlook, you might not know that there even exist any other software for managing your emails. Up until a few months ago I liked to have a desktop email client, but now I have completely switched to Gmail for several reason. Mostly because of it’s great search features and labels, but I also got tired of having to keep several computers in sync. I wanted all my email to be available to me anywhere I went. If you want to use a desktop client and have all your emails synced at all time, I recommend Thunderbird in conjunction with Gmail. Simply use Gmail as you email hub and use IMAP with your Thunderbird client. This way you will always have all you email in sync across all your PCs and still have it all in Gmail. I had this setup for quite some time, but found myself simply using Gmail exclusively, so I ditched Thunderbird in the end.

Design & Art Work

This is an area where I haven’t completely managed to get rid of Adobe’s flagship Photoshop, but I keep making an effort in order to save some cash. As you are reading this article, I assume that you use Photoshop and are looking for an alternative.

The GIMP is pretty popular but very different from Photoshop

There are quite a few on the market but none exactly like Photoshop. The obvious alternative is the GIMP, and by using GIMPShop you can imitate many of Photoshop’s features and get the apps visual appearance to resemble that of PS. You can even get a script to add the same keyboard shortcuts to GIMP, but it is still not Photoshop, and you will have to make an effort if you want to completely make the switch. But if you need the money it’s definitely an alternative.

Other options include Paint.NET (Windows Only), Blender for 3D creation and Inkscape for an alternative to Adobe Illustrator. I don’t have enough experience with these tools to offer any commentary, so if you have any, leave them in the comments.

Invoicing & Time-tracking

We all need something to keep track of our time, and invoice clients. For that task I use Freshbooks, you are limited to a few clients at a time with the free version, but that is not a problem for me as I usually only work with one client at a time. You have great time-tracking abilities and simple elegant invoicing, which you can even brand in the free version which I like. You can provide your clients with a login so they can track the process and save you all those email updates.

Multimedia Playback

No one can work without some noisy distractions and for most of us that includes listening to a lot of music. You are probably using iTunes which is of course free, but not really open source.

If you want an open source iTunes alternative, I recommend checking out Songbird, it has been in beta for several years and has just recently been released in a stable version. My favourite is MediaMonkey which comes in both a free, and a paid version, but both great alternatives to iTunes.

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