Portable Web Toolbox
As web developers, we can take for granted all of the important tools we use regularly and keep at our fingertips on our computers. That is until the unfortunate day that we suddenly find ourself sitting in front of a strange machine we are unfamiliar with. It’s cold monitor glaring back at us with no love in its pixels. We find ourselves at the mercy of this machine that does not contain our go-to apps. Our lifelines. Here I am going to try and alleviate some of that discomfort by providing you with a list of portable windows apps which can be loaded onto a single flash drive to create a portable web developer’s toolbox. With this, you should be able to do any web developing you need to do from any computer, loveless pixels or no.
Firefox
Use – Web Browser
Bonus – Install Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar to complete your toolbox
Size – 27-77MB (depending on addons)
Download Portable App | Visit Main Site
Thunderbird
Use – Email Client
Bonus – Also has RSS Capabilities
Size – 25MB
Download Portable App | Visit Main Site
Sunbird
Use – Calendar, Scheduler and GTD
Bonus – Leaves no personal information behind on the machine you run it on
Size – 17MB
Download Portable App | Visit Main Site
OpenOffice
Use – Office Suite including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing package and database
Bonus – Compatable with MS Office, Word Perfect and Lotus
Size – 231MB
Download Portable App | Visit Main Site
Notepad++
Use – Text Editor
Bonus – Major features include syntax highlighting and auto-completion
Size – 10MB
Download Portable App | Visit Main Site
Xampp
Use – Setting up an integrated server package of Apache, mySQL, PHP and more
Bonus – Available in both a full and lite package depending on your personal needs
Size – 221MB
Download Portable App | Visit Main Site
FileZilla
Use – FTP Client
Bonus – Has an intuitive drag and drop interface
Size – 9MB
Download Portable App | Visit Main Site
Gimp
Used For – Editing Images
Size – 67MB
Download Portable App | Visit Main Site
7zip
Used For – Compressing and Uncompressing Files
Bonus – Compress and Uncompress 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2, and TAR. Uncompress RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB, and NSIS
Size – 2.5MB
Download Portable App | Visit Main Site
Sumatra PDF
Used For – Viewing PDFs
Bonus – Extremely small and starts very fast
Size – 1.5MB
Download Portable App | Visit Main Site
VLC
Used For – Media Player (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, XviD, WMV, mp3, ogg, avi, DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols)
Bonus – Can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network
Size – 32MB
Download Portable App | Visit Main Site
Toucan
Used For – Synchronise, backup and encrypt data
Bonus – Includes portable variables, point to places on you USB drive no matter what its drive letter is
Size – 3.1MB
pidgin
Used For – Instant Messaging
Bonus – Works with AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo and more
Size – 50MB
Download Portable App | Visit Main Site
Your Turn
Were there any apps essential to your toolbox that I left out? Leave me a comment and let me know.
As Chief Creative Officer, Adelle Charles oversees the creative and strategic direction at Fuel Brand Inc. which she co-founded with her partner Joshua Smibert. A designer and entrepreneur at heart, Charles has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Graphic Design from RIT and has won various awards for her past work in television. You can follow her on Twitter. [Fuel Brand Inc., creators of fuelbrandnetwork.com + madebytinder.com]
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Keeping up the good mood along with foobar2000 portable :)
Total Commander
Used For – File management
Bonus – Many plugins
Size – 2.5MB
I love that these apps leave little to no personal info behind. I used to work for a company that would periodically come around and check your browser history after hours and if you had anything that wasn’t work related on it you were in trouble. Even a site like fuelyourapps would have gotten me in trouble. This way I could take my thumb drive home with me at night and be safe. I don’t really have a use for the portable apps anymore so I turned that usb drive into this: http://frozencanvas.com/thaw/mac-on-a-stick/
i think the list needs a css editor like cssed editor and mySQL administration tools
Firebug and the web developer tool bar are probably the best extensions ever built. I know thats a statement and a half but they help me so much.
@pstoev – I’ve never used foobar2000. If you’ve used both, how would you compare it to VLC?
@Lucian & blaze boy – Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll look into those.
@Shawn – I really liked that aspect of them as well. It helps out with work computers like you said as well as dealing with things like public library computers.
@Martyn – I agree. I can’t say enough good things about those two addons. Firebug is perhaps one of the best inventions for web developers since sliced bread (not that I know what sliced bread did for us developers lol)
I actually have every App mentioned here ;-) (I admit I am a N3rdy App Addict)
I would add a few things:
Inkscape Portable – essential in any well stocked WebDev and Design Toolbox!
Keepass Portable for gathering and securing Login and Passwords – works home and away!
Xmarks (for Firefox) for Sync and Backup of bookmarks across systems.
All in all a nice list but not 100% complete…
@TheCount – I thought about Inkscape and decided that the Gimp would probably be enough. But it seems I was wrong and should have added it after all :)
I use Delicious for my bookmarks so I didn’t even think of a sync app for those.
Thanks for the additions!
Thanks for the list. I had not heard of Toucan – I’ll have to check it out.