I sat down at yet another new win32 workstation on Monday morning to start at a new workplace. It took me a while to remember all the software (apart from the CS Suite, which was already installed) I would need to civilise the evil OS.
So I’m listing them here, mostly for my own future reference. First essential is a minimal Cygwin install – no X, just the command line utilities I can’t live without (grep, sed, diff, etc). PuttyCyg is a patched version of PuTTY that allows you to log on to Cygwin at localhost (without running sshd), circumventing the horrible win32 cmd.exe that is the default interface to Cygwin. Also the Java-based muCommander to replace the (bog) standard Windows Explorer.
For web, Firefox, and the brilliant extensions Web Developer (a whole range of tools for inspection and live tweaking of markup and CSS), ColorZilla (a PhotoShop-style eyedropper for web content), MeasureIt (a handy little ruler) and LiveHTTPHeaders (for inspecting HTTP traffic and debugging web apps). Also the Charles web debugging proxy, that allows you to inspect AMF packets – great for RIA development.
Development tools: the Eclipse platform, which requires the latest JRE; FDT, an Eclipse plugin, and the best ActionScript editor I’ve come across (although I haven’t fully explored the .NET-based FlashDevelop). The standalone Flex Builder runs much better than as a plugin, in my experience. Also the Subversion client. And XMLMind’s excellent XML Editor for writing docs in DocBook.
I think that’s about it …
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