15 Critical Mobile Apps That Web Designers And Developers Cannot Live Without
With the world getting mobile, every single thing is available under your thumb now. Modern mobile apps allow you to perform the real work than just cuddling your mobile phone with your thumb. Here we are giving you 15 most crucial mobile apps that today’s modern web designers and developers cannot live without.
Since the release of the original iPad, it has killed almost every PC fan and they are just running here and there for their consumption only.
Anyone who has used iPad or any other smart device knows that laptops and PCs are just space occupiers now. They are not of much use now. But still some designers look for their PCs and laptops for designing and creating their best imaginations. It is okay but what when you are away from your lovely set up but there is an urgent requirement of designing something on the spot? What will you do then?
There is no harm in becoming a little mod with the new trends in the market. The latest mobile applications will allow you to design your imaginations and ideas even when you are on the way to some place. And when you know how you have to deal with the technology, the best and useful apps always work. By asking and questioning various Web designers and developers we have found 15 mobile apps that will work for you.
Let’s get introduced to the Mobile applications:
1. Adobe Ideas
This application is compatible with iOS only i.e. iPhone, iPad. It will cost you nothing and is well known for its weighty and complex desktop apps. It is great to see that the companies are designing user friendly apps for web designers. This application is a common part of iOS users that enables the designers to jot down their quick and unique ideas that they can later work on their Illustrator or the Photoshop. Well designers say that this application ‘Adobe Ideas’ is awesome for sketching, especially when you have got Wacom capacitive display-friendly pens.
2. Adobe Shadow (now Adobe Edge Inspect)
This application is free of cost and is compatible with all the major platforms like iPhone, iPad and Android. Nobody knows from where does this app come but Web developers are enjoying working with it. This free software helps you to design and develop your mobile web content easily and quickly. It allows developers to browse the web content on their desktops and to see if the same content is already present on multiple devices. At this point the layout can be twisted on the fly to see the results immediately.
3. Byword
This application is limited to iPhone and iPad and costs you 4.425 US dollar. People who spend a lot of time in crafting their words as they perform coding and visuals, a tool is a must for a decent writing. Even though people also work with some variants of Microsoft Office, there are a number of writing apps available. Bloggers, authors and various writers are a big fan of Byword. This is a fantastic application for writing blog posts if you want clean and uncluttered interface and Markdown support. This app also boasts Dropbox-sync and iCloud across the iPhone, iPad and Mac versions.
4. DropBox
This application is free and is compatible with all the major platforms including iPhone, iPad, Android and BlackBerry. You need to have a DropBox account if you want to manage it. File-sync service Dropbox is known as the second most popular application among the people we have discovered. According to the developer Andrew Dean it is a revolutionary app but the potential is only realized by select few; he thinks that the next wave in the productive and creative apps will be focused around the services like DropBox. This app is useful for sharing different files and bringing the relevant and required documents to the iOS ‘walled garden’. People generally use it for transferring mock-ups to present them to their clients.
5. Evernote
It is also available free of cost and is compatible with all the known platforms like iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Android and Windows phone. Evernote is a digital scrapbook and archiving tool that allow you to store all your files and thoughts in an organized way by transporting your information to the magical world of elephants. With the web designers that often juggle with ideas and inspiration, there is no surprise in the fact that this application has become one of the most popular among the quality web designers and developers. We came across a Web developer and he said that this is the only mobile application that he uses extensively.
6. Flipboard
Again this application is free of cost and is available for both iOS as well as Android. This application takes in your favorite feeds and then converts them into a digital magazine for iOS. According to a web developer Daniel Ruffle, there are a number of inspirational applications and feeds available online, he find Flipboard as the best app for collating everything into a manageable and a well organized application to read. It gives you a newspaper like presentation and allows an easy skimming. You can easily exclude anything that does not interest you.
7. Harvest
Here comes one more useful application for web designers and developers. This application is absolutely free to download but will ask you for harvest subscription. This is available for both the platforms including iPhone and Android. Harvest is an online time tracking and timesheet software that is very famous among free lancer web designers and is liked by many web developers therefore it follows that the mobile apps of the related company should be popular. These applications also tell you that you need a lot more than a mere service connection. You need something that makes some valuable sense on mobile and that allows people to be more fruitful.
This application mainly focuses the User Interface for the most important tasks like their recording time and the expenses. You can take the receipt photos and can sync them later.
8. iMockUps
This particular application is limited to iPad only and is available at 6.391 US dollar. iPad is becoming one of the most popular devices these days. It is actually a device that is helping individuals from every age group to develop and to grow. This means there will be no distractions, and it will allow you quick and efficient get on the tasks. It is really great for creating wireframes with low-fidelity for designs. The interfaces that it provides is a simple drag and drop affair that allows you to concentrate on your functionalities rather than any other thing. You can even email the documents in the format of the application or it can be exported to BMML.
9. Instagram
This application is a free app which is available for both iPhone and Android platforms. This is a photo sharing app. It has now hundreds of users. Tom Muller is the designer of this application and he tells us that this application is not used for production work but people use it heavily for broadcasting the work in progress and other images that are related to work like Twitter images, Images for the blog post and so on.
10. LiveView
This application again falls in the category of free apps and is available for iPhone and iPad only. With the popularity of smart phones these days every single thing is getting mobile. Developers and designers too are creating projects for mobile devices but surprisingly they are not using mobile devices for creating them. This produces disconnect because what you can see on your computer’s display, you might not be able to see exactly what you want to see. This application named “LiveView” will give you the instant views on how your design looks like, about the designing graphics for mobile apps or the websites.
11. Opera Mini
This is again a free of cost app that you can download directly into your smart phone. This app is available for all the major platforms like iPhone, iPad, and android, Windows, Symbian and Windows too. A web developer and a web designer both can explore and can do various tasks by downloading Opera mini on their smart devices. You can install Opera mini for additional testing of the designes you have made.
12. Penultimate
This application is available only for iPad and costs you nothing, designers like to scribble their notes, ideas, sketches and wireframes. They also like to collaborate which is not very easy to perform if you have to scrawl at the back of the random envelopes. This is where you need Penultimate. This is my go to app when someone wants notes or quickly sketches something. It is very easy to use and also support your Dropbox and Evernote. It gives a beautiful appearance with a large canvas and there is a selection of different paper with a variety of patterns and textures.
13. Share Board
This application is available at $5.99 and is available for iOS as well as for Android. Although we have already mentioned that there are a number of sketching apps available but one must consider SketchShare app for iPad. With the variety of sketching apps available in the online market, SketchShare offers you something different and allow you to share your sketches in the real time with other iPad users. In case your conference call is not working or you are unable to show your designs you can sketch on the spot. This is a true sharing tool and hence your client can also discuss his own ideas by drawing on the same page. This is a better way of discussing the ideas rather than chatting and exchanging emails one after another.
14. TeuxDeux
This application is available for free for all iOS users as well as Android users. This compelling Teux Deux is another application that is popular among web designers and developers. This application is free for the web users and this is a professional application for smart phones. Students and designers are a big fan of this TeuxDeux application. It makes you to organize your work like to do list things. It is very simple and therefore it is used by almost every web designer and web developer.
15. TED
This is again a free application for iPhone users, iPad users and Android users. This application is absolutely free of cost. This app is basically about building new things and is intended to inspire you for new things and make you keep on thinking for more unique and quality ideas. This application presents video talks from some of the world’s most fascinating people. You can find more than 1,400 TED Talk videos within the official app and can learn something new even when you are not online.
These applications are highly useful for web developers and web designers for exploring their skills on the go using such apps in their phones. These are just the selected good ones but if you search on the internet you will find lots more. Enjoy Designing with these apps!
Thank you! I love all the tutorials and freebies you share with us. Really, you are awesome.
thanks for your wonderful tutorial. this is really very important.
good article but im amaze to see Instagram int his article. I mean as a developer you use Instagram for photo sharing. Nice idea :)
Well I must say it is a very useful write up. I was not aware of many such tools which I read here and now I am going to download those apps and will work on my designs in a better way. Thank you!
The list you provided is absolutely true as some of the apps are used by me in daily. Also i will download some of those today.
First of all thank you very much for sharing such a useful post. All these apps are very useful and is frequently used by many designers.
Totally agree with you Katie! I am a mobile app developer and totally rely on all the above apps. Very well described about the apps. Thanks!