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?

Fotografix

Fotografix is a portable graphics program that lets you both edit and create images. There are brush tools, support for custom brushes, layer and channel support (including adjustment layers and masking), and a variety of other tools included.

One of Fotografix’s biggest advantages, though, is it’s tiny file size: it’s only 367KB. If you want a really lightweight and easy to use graphics editor, Fotografix might be the right choice for you. However, it’s not as robust as a program like Photoshop, so keep that in mind.

Artweaver

Artweaver is a portable, freeware paint program. It lets you create sketches right from photos and includes a wide variety of brushes. It also lets you create new brushes and customize existing ones.

Artweaver also supports transparency and layers, and a variety of image formats (JPG, PNG, PSD, and more). It’s expandable via plugins, too. Artweaver works on Windows 2000, XP, or Vista.

VLC Media Player Portable

VLC Media Player Portable is a portable media player for using audio and video files. It will play MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV, MP3, and a host of other file formats. And, in addition to playing your various media files, it can also act as a media server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6.

Winamp Lite

Winamp Lite is the portable version of Winamp MP3 player software. Skins and plugins are also portable, making this another great solution for listening to MP3s on the go. Portable setup is a bit involved but not particularly complicated.

Coding

Notepad++ Portable Edition

Notepad++ Portable Edition is a coding application that includes all the features you’d expect in a coding app. It’s written in C++ and runs on Windows. It’s open source and was released under the GPL license.

The portable edition includes all the features of the regular version. It has multi-view, supports a multi-language environment, a WYSIWYG editor, auto-complete, syntax highlighting and folding, and macro recording and playback, among its other features. It’s a great lightweight coding app.

Nvu Portable

Nvu Portable is the portable edition of Nvu Web Authoring Software. It includes a WYSIWYG editor and powerful file management. It’s aimed at users who might not be particularly technically savvy and only have a limited knowledge (or none at all) of HTML and CSS.

The portable edition has all the features and capabilities of the regular version. It works on Windows systems, and was released under the open source GPL license.