Web designers can be struck with inspiration at any time, but if you’re away from your computer there isn’t much you can do. Well, with an iPhone or an iPod Touch that has all changed. Now you can make notes, pick color schemes, ping servers and even FTP a file to your device, edit it and then upload it back. Why bother being tied down to a desk anymore when you can work just as easily from a beach if inspiration hits you?
These 40 applications cover the whole gamut of a web designer’s needs. Prices vary from free to several dollars, so make sure to check the cost before you click download.
Coding Language Applications
CSS Cheat Sheet: Keep this handy guide to cascading style sheets at the ready so that you can look up things such as backgrounds, borders, colors and more.
HTML Cheat Sheet: A quick and handy cheat sheet to various HTML commands such as colors, symbols, tags, attributes and more.
HTML Quik Ref: Gives you examples of HTML tags with a description and a sample.
HTML Test: Think you know everything there is to know about HTML? Just starting to learn the language? Give yourself this test and see how good you really are.
JavaScript CheatSheet: This app allows you to keep up with all of the commands you need for strings, dates, arrays, math and more.
jQuery CheatSheet: Keep up-to-data with this lightweight JavaScript cheat sheet that will help you with events, plugins, scrolling and numerous other commands.
PHP Cheat Sheet: This app is an actual database of PHP reference material, and not just a bunch of links to resources on the Web. Look up commands, loops, variables and a whole lot more.
PHP Ref: This quick reference guide contains all of the 5,149 PHP functions.
RegEx Cheat Sheet: A cheat sheet for regular expressions and how they are used in languages such as C#, .NET, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby and more.
Source Viewer: Allows you to take a look at the coding of any web site just like you do on a desktop or laptop.
Color Applications
cliqcliq Colors: Create a palette of colors starting with one you like, and then you can convert the finished product between RGB, HSB, Grayscale as well as integer and floating point scales. You can also extract colors from pictures taken with the iPhone, email palettes to anyone you like, generate full-screen color previews and a whole lot more.
Color Expert: Color Expert allows you to search through various Pantone color selections, web safe colors, HTML colors and more. You can email palettes in Adobe Swatch Exchange format, pick colors from photos, add custom colors and more.
ColorPicker: A simple color picker that allows you to use sliders to dial in a color you like and then see the RGB and HEX codes for it.
ColorRef: Name the theme you want to come up with and start choosing colors to be included. The colors you have added to the theme will have their RGB, HEX or CoraGraphics codes displayed for easy reference.
ColorSutra: ColorSutra is the perfect tool for people who have a difficult time figuring out what colors go with others. Pick a color yourself or from a photo and the application will suggest other colors that match it.
ColorTool: This application provides two sets of sliders that allow you to set the RGB values and then also play with hue, saturation and balance. Once you find the color you like, you can save it for later recall.
HEX RGB Colors Guide: A handy application for keeping HEX and RGB color codes close at hand no matter where you are.
HTML Colors: Play around with RGB colors to find the perfect combination of background colors to go with your choice for text. Also has a guide of the 216 “safe” web colors.
Palettes: Palettes will allow you to extract colors from a photograph, camera image, web site or add them manually, and then you can build a palette from any of the five color models. You can import & export palettes, email them, and back them up, as well as numerous other features.
Database Applications
DatabaseViewer: DatabaseViewer allows you to work with numerous database styles such as MS Access, MS Excel, Oracle, SQL Server, FilePro, FoxPro,Oracle, SQL and a few others. You can also ask it to sync the latest changes in a database to your device so you always have the most recent information.
iMy: iMy is a full client for sending a query to your database without ever typing in the words. The application has a list of selectable keywords you can choose from. Just pick what you need, send it and get your full results.
jHeidi MySQL/Oracle Client: A full client for communicating with your MySQL and Oracle databases. Send queries, browse databases, see tables and more.
MobileCan: A full client for that allows you to interact with PostgreSQL databases and send whatever query you would like.
MySQL Cheat Sheet: This application gives you a quick reference guide to just about everything you need to know about MySQL at a moment’s notice.
File Sharing Applications
FTP On The Go: An extremely handy FTP application that will allow you to upload and download files, make changes to text files with the built-in editor, see changes in the included browser and more.
ServersMan: Ever wanted to run a server from your iPhone or iPod Touch? Well, as odd as that may sound, that is exactly what this application allows you to do.
Font Applications
FontShuffle: FontShuffle is run by FontShop, and basically all this application does for now is give you the ability to browse through various font families while you look for inspiration on which to use in your project.
WhatTheFont: Ever see a font on a poster as you walked by and wish you knew what it was? Take out your iPhone, snap a picture, and WhatTheFont connects with the MyFonts database and lets you identify it. iPod Touch users aren’t left out either as you can use the tool to identify the font on any saved photo.
General Design Applications
Developer’s Tool Kit: Check out a fully categorized reference guide to the full ANSI UTF-8 character set. Also includes a scientific calculator and a slider to generate HEX color codes.
Web Developer Bible: A bit of a catch-all application with an RGB color picker, special character guide, C-Format strings and more.
Website Monitoring And Stats Applications
Analytics: This is the lite (i.e. Free) version of Analytics Pro, but may have just enough reports for your needs.
Analytics App: Allows you to interact with your Google Analytics account to see 41 various reports up to 100 lines in length. This application also allows you to switch through multiple sites, generate custom reports, customize your date range and a whole lot more.
Analytics Pro: See 50 of your Google Analytics reports in this application, including being able to turn to landscape mode for those wider maps.
BAM Analytics: Another entry into the Google Analytics application race. This one has more limited reports than most, but it allows you to get in to your account quickly and see the latest information.
Domain Tracker: Keep track of how your domains are performing on Google PageRank and Alexa Rank.
Ego: Ego gives you a little bit of monitoring for everything. You can check your analytics, see how many Twitter followers you have, the number of RSS subscribers to your feed and more.
Joe’s Network Utility: This application allows you to do pings, send traceroutes, do DNS lookups and a whole lot more.
Network Utility Pro: Keep an eye on your site with the ability to send pings, conduct TCP/IP port scans, WHOIS queries and more.
Ping: Ping allows you to test your iPhone or iPod Touch connection to a site by sending a number of packets you determine back and forth to the server.
Web Tools: This application mixes domain lookup, WHOIS information and the ability to ping servers to see if they are responding.
What are some of your favorite iPhone applications that help you with your design work?
Sean P Aune
