Free Web Design Tools

Posted: February, 25 2010

Below is a list of free web design and multimedia software that I recommend. Not everyone can afford Adobe or Microsoft products, so I hope all you designers out there find this list helpful.

  • Filezilla - Free FTP / File Upload Software.
  • Notepad ++ - A great free coding alternative to Dreamweaver or FrontPage. Not as many bells and whistles, but still a fantastic coding editor. A step up from regular Notepad and a must have for PHP coders.
  • GIMP - A great free alternative for Photoshop.
  • Google Analytics - A must have for all websites. This tool allows you to measure traffic, keywords, and tons of others statistics about your visitors.
  • Google Web Master Tools - Another extremely effective tool to measure the success of your sites placement in search engines and making sure your site can be found by people while they are searching.
  • Firefox - Free alternative to Internet Explorer. Firefox has many great toolbars and plugins to install to help web designers. Plus you should at least download it and install it to test your designs for compatibility. Firefox is widely considered the 2nd most popular browser being used on the Internet today. Also be sure to try and test other free alternatives: Safari, Chrome and Opera - as they are used widely across the net and can render your website differently.
  • Firefox Web Developer Plug-in - Good for analyzing and testing code.
  • Firefox HTML Validator - Good for validating your code.
  • Audacity - Free audio editing software.
  • Open Movie Editor - Solid free video editor.
  • Blender - Free 3D modeling software.

    • With this list, there is no reason you can't design and develop a great website. I currently don't have a free alternative for Flash related graphics - recommendations or suggestions that I could share here would be great!

    Good luck designing free of charge!