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.
Graphics Applications
GIMP
GIMP is a versatile graphics manipulation package. It’s considered by many to be an excellent alternative to Photoshop.
Dia
Dia is a cross operating system diagram creation application.
Krita
Krita is a graphics application for everyone who wants to get creative with images.
Inkscape
Inkscape is a vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Adobe Illustrator.
FTP
FileZilla
FileZilla is probably the most popular ftp application. You can download a client or server version.
Cyberduck
Cyberduck is an FTP client built for the Mac.
WinSCP
WinSCP is an open source free SFTP client and FTP client for Windows.