13 Excellent Open Source Tools for Web Designers

Posted by Henry Jones on Oct 12, 2009 | 23 Comments

Open source applications and tools are a great alternative for web designers on a budget. Many open source tools have comparable features to the expensive applications, and are also free. This makes it possible possible for a web designer to have all the tools and applications needed to complete everyday tasks without even spending a cent. In this article you will find 13 of the best open source tools for web designers.

Text Editors

Aptana Studio

Aptana is a complete web development environment that combines powerful authoring tools for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, along with thousands of additional plugins created by the community.

KompoZer

KompoZer is a complete web authoring system that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing.

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. It runs on Windows and is governed by a GPL License.

Firebug

Firebug is a plugin for Firefox that allows you to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

Quanta Plus

Quanta Plus is a highly stable and feature rich web development environment.

jEdit

jEdit is a cross platform text editor with hundreds of person-years of development behind it.

23 comments

Eyenox Media
October 12, 2009
Great selection of tools, also smart move to put some extra stuff at the bottom!

Greetz
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Sunil
October 12, 2009
Good collection of software. I think you have missed some software. http://www.myhtmlworld.com/web-development/free-tools-to-develop-website.html
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Lee
October 12, 2009
Nothing new. Sorry.
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designfollow
October 12, 2009
thanks you

nice open source
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Mohammed Ilyas
October 12, 2009
Hello Henry!

Very nice article. Thanks for providing lot of information about this applications.
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stooni
October 12, 2009
well done , cool tools for webdesign prof.

—————stooni
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Zaskoda
October 12, 2009
I use Gimp frequently. I haven’t installed any commercial alternative on my workstation in years.

I use Dia regularly. I tried to use Visio on a Windows machine recently for a project. I ended up just downloading Dia to the machine. It does what I needed it to do fairly well. A slightly more “brisk” interface would be nice.

Filezilla is powerful, but the UI is just a train wreck. I still use it most of the time as it’s one of the few FTP apps that properly supports umasks.

I use netbeans over Aptana because I ran into issues with Git support in Aptana. Netbeans is OSS and a very good IDE.

Speaking of, Git and SVN can be a Web developers best friend… would be nice additions to the list.

Oh, and then there’s Firefox and the many plugins, of course.
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Jonathan Bennett
October 12, 2009
I recommend Eclipse. A great open source IDE!
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Web Design Maidstone Kent
October 12, 2009
Some nice links to investigate, I would certainly be lost without filezilla
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GioPhotos
October 12, 2009
Thank you so much for the tools but I think there are more software available.
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Web Development & Web Design
October 13, 2009
You wanna talk about lifesavers, firebug is #1. The DOM options plus the xpath ability is key for any person in our industry
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Pradeep CD
October 13, 2009
Great list… Aptana, Firebug and GIMP are my favorites…thanks…

you forgot FireFTP…
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theComplex
October 13, 2009
Great list of resources. I’ll be sure to start passing these along.
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cssah
October 14, 2009
Aptana and notepad++ very powerful and productive .Thx
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Jason
October 20, 2009
I’ve heard a lot of positive reviews about notepad++
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MrJuls
December 3, 2009
Thanks for these links, I didn’t know Aptana Studio, and it seems to be an excellent tool!
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Arun
December 8, 2009
Thanks for sharing this article..
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Sasha
December 19, 2009
I think Selenium web site testing framework should among the first 3 in this least, here is a short introductory article – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/
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Johnson
April 23, 2010
gud one..
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mr.design
July 7, 2010
Great article. I’d also add Blender 3D to the list:)
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Zhille
September 11, 2010
I’ve used much of the software listed. Here are my impressions:

Aptana – excellent tool but bloated and slow loading, a little like dreamweaver in terms of usability. For an average HTML/PHP/CSS/JS coder, just too massive. Great community and plugins though.

Notepad++ – my personal choice for years, with a few plugins, you can’t beat it. Experienced web app developers I worked with use it exclusively. Starts faster than notepad, haha.

Another of my recommendations is Inkscape, one hell of a vector program, with excellent bezier tool, and workflow is nice. You might have to search online for some explanations about how to use extensions like Perspective, but there are some resources. Learning curve is very fast.

Gimp – just hate it…god-awful, tried it a lot of times to see if it maybe changed to better. Paint.NET is way better, but lacks more advanced features and path support.
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The G.
February 7, 2011
Thanks. A great intro to the open source environment.
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BauerPower
November 14, 2011
You have an interesting take. I like it! Great post!
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