40+ Desert Island Web Development Tools

What would you do if you were suddenly stranded on a desert island in the middle of nowhere, with only a USB drive, a dial-up internet connection, and a barebones computer with no software outside the operating system installed? Of course, you’d use the internet connection to call for help first, but what about after that? How would you keep your design business going?

The apps on this list can help you with everything from coding to graphics to running your business and managing your projects, all from a single USB drive. And while USB drives are getting bigger all the time, you still need special programs in most instances to have true portability. The apps below are just that: truly portable and small enough to fit on a USB drive.

Graphics and Multimedia

Blender Portable

Blender Portable is a portable version of the Blender 3D rendering program. It works with the PortableApps.com platform. The portable version includes all the features of the regular version of Blender.

Blender has a range of features for rigging, modeling, animating and rendering 3D images. It has a fully customizable window layout and a non-overlaping, non-blocking UI. And it includes a built-in text editor for annotations and editing Python scripts.

GIMP Portable

GIMP Portable is a good alternative to Adobe Photoshop in a portable format. While GIMP’s user interface takes a bit of getting used to compared to other photo editing programs, it’s actually quite flexible.

The portable version of GIMP has all the features of the full version, including layers and filters. It can also be extended and expanded, just like the full version.

Lightscreen Portable

Lightscreen Portable is a portable app that runs on Windows and lets you take screenshots of the desktop of whatever computer you’re on. It will perform five configurable actions (to capture window, screen, etc.) and each has its own hotkey.

Lightscreen will save images in PNG, JPEG and common other image formats. It also has a delay function for taking screenshots. It runs as a hidden background process and is activated with one or more hotkeys.

Portable Audacity OS X

Portable Audacity is portable audio editing software for Mac OS X. Audacity has tons of features, including the ability to record live audio, edit (including the ability to edit and mix an unlimited number of tracks), add effects to audio files, and work with a variety of different file formats.

While the full version of Audacity is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux machines, the portable version is only available for Mac OS X. But considering it’s open source, it makes sense that a portable version for Windows or Linux would be developed if there’s enough demand.

Portable Inkscape OS X

Portable Inkscape is a portable vector graphics editing program. Inkskape has features similar to other vector graphics programs, including Illustrator, CorelDraw, and Xara X. It saves graphics in SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format.

There is extensive documentation available for Inkscape on their website, a big plus if you’re new to using it. The portable version is only available for Mac OS X, though the full version is also available for Linux and Windows.

FastStone Capture

FastStone Capture is a portable screen capture utility. You can capture anything on your screen: windows, full screen, rectangular regions, objecs, freehand regions, and even scrolling windows (a big plus over many other screen-capture programs, portable or not).

Other features include the ability to add text annotations to captures, resize them, and use hotkeys for specific functions. FastStone Capture only works on Windows systems, but is compatible with Windows98 right up through Vista.