10 Android Apps Every Web Designer Should Know About

Jul 14 2010 by Rob Thomas | 24 Comments

With the dominance of Apple’s iPhone in the recent years, Google’s Android OS seems to have been left in its shadows. However, this is only because the iPhone was released long before any Android device. Nevertheless, as the popularity of Android grows (and its growth is staggering) so does its range of apps.

In this article are the top 10 Android apps for people who make websites, enabling them to be productive whilst on the go.

1. AndFTP (free)

AndFTP (free)

Do you need access to your web servers on your Android mobile device? AndFTP is just the app for the job. Capable of uploading, viewing, and updating files from anywhere, it can be a lifesaver if you need to edit your (or your client’s) site without a desktop/laptop handy. It also supports multiple domains from FTP, SFTP and FTPS connections and has an excellent user interface for a first-generation Android app.

2. SilverEdit (free)

SilverEdit (free)

A simple source code editor app, SilverEdit lets you code up full HTML, CSS, PHP files that you can save to your phone or send to your email account. Combined with AndFTP (above), you can build and push websites with your Android handheld device! At the moment, it still suffers from functionality problems on certain Android devices, but is getting more stable with each version release (version 3 is currently in development).

3. Photoshop (free)

Photoshop (free)

Adobe brings the ever-popular Photoshop to the Android platform. Unfortunately–but as to be expected–it has limited functionality compared to its desktop counterpart, but does include the essential basic image processing functions such as crop, rotate, filters, and image saturation adjustments. It also allows you to share your work on Photoshop.com.

4. View Web Source (free)

View Web Source (free)

If you come upon a mobile site that you want to study whilst you’re browsing the Mobile Web, View Web Source allows you to inspect and download the entire source code of the page to its text editor. It gives you the ability to edit and manipulate the code, make comments, and save the file on your phone (or send to your email account).

5. Mobile GA (free)

Mobile GA (free)

The trusty old analytics favourite–Google Analytics–is now available on the Android platform. Google Analytics is the best free web service (hands down) for studying your website traffic statistics. Mobile GA (Google Analytics) uses the Google Analytics API for securely transmitting your site data without the need for third-party intermediate servers, maintaining the privacy and safety of your data.

6. Dropbox (free)

Dropbox (free)

A popular app for web designers and other creatives, Dropbox–the ubiquitous cloud-based file backup tool–allows you to access a remote folder with documents you have stored on the server. Simply save files on one computer and you’ll be able to access the saved files from any computer or mobile device. The free Android app gives you mobile access to your Dropbox account. It’s a must-have tool for those who work with files and documents that need to be shared across multiple computers and devices.

7. WordPress Mobile (free)

WordPress Mobile (free)

If you maintain a WordPress site, WordPress for Android is an open source app that allows you to write new posts, edit content and manage comments, all through the lovely WordPress UI. It’s great for blogging on the go.

8. Thinking Space (free)

Thinking Space (free)

As a web designer, you can’t turn off your magnificent creative brainpower and you’re always brewing up creative ideas for site designs wherever you are. Thinking Space is an Android app designed for recording brainstorms and for mapping out your garbled thoughts so that when an idea hits, you’ll have a structured medium to convey them in. An excellent feature of this app is the ability to sync with Google App Engine; this means you can upload your data to the cloud and access them from anywhere via your Android mobile device or through FreeMind (the open source desktop version of the app).

9. Typography Junkies (free)

Typography Junkies (free)

Every designer should have a good typography source of inspiration; web typography is an important part of design. With Typography Junkies for Android, you can keep up-to-date with the very latest in font news by way of videos, images, social media and much more.

10. HTML Test (free)

HTML Test (free)

Need to review your HTML prowess? HTML Test is a great Android app to have if you’re just starting out in this whole web design game. The app will test your knowledge about HTML, giving you multiple-choice questions that you have to answer within a predefined time.

If you’re an iPhone owner, be sure to check out a similar list called 10 iPhone Apps Every Web Designer Should Know About.

About the Author

Rob Thomas is head of photography for Designbysoap Ltd, specializing in architectural photography and web design. He also helps out with SEO, digital marketing and loves graphic design. Follow him on Twitter: @designbysoap.

24 Comments

Rehaan

July 14th, 2010

Thanks i love android. but i dont have any android devices :(

sarfraz raza

July 14th, 2010

Thanks for the extremely helpful tips. I wish I could find more extremely useful tricks/hack articles

Jordan Walker

July 14th, 2010

Awesome list. Now if only we could figure out how to fix the inbound voice speaker, so clients can understand what you are staying without the muffled chatter.

Luke

July 14th, 2010

I wish this list was available when I had my G1! Thinking of switching back to Android from Blackberry

Cisco

July 14th, 2010

Great article downloaded the AndFTP and Typography Junkie

Jae Xavier

July 14th, 2010

Dropbox is awesome for Android.

And… I did not know about Photoshop being on Android…

thanks!

Luke Jones

July 14th, 2010

Haha Rehaan, pointless comment?

Great article! One thing I love about is Android is the wide variety of free apps. I have to pay for so much on my iPhone. But it’s so hawt.

Flick

July 14th, 2010

Some great suggestions here! I have a Hero so am always on the look out for good apps. There has definitely been an explosion in the selection in the past few months, including – of course – the in-house WordPress app.

Avangelist

July 15th, 2010

No idea why you would want to try write a web page, or even emergency bug fix a page via a mobile device. That would drive me made.

Venkatesh

July 16th, 2010

Wow.. After read this article i came to know we can run a web design & development company without going to office (i.e.. Managing employees in office. LOL ).. Lot of peoples who are all working as a web designers and web developers don’t know about what facility that android phone is having.. Thank you so much.. will tell about android phone to my colleagues, actually who are all web designers and developers..

Liviu Mihalache

July 16th, 2010

Love my Droid Incredible so this selection comes in very handy. Thanks!

e11world

July 16th, 2010

Pretty nice apps here. Thanks for the list!
I’m testing them now on the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10

robbie

July 18th, 2010

Another useful app I use to SSH into my server and make small edits or run scripts is the command line SSH client, ConnectBot

Drew

July 18th, 2010

Thanks! I’m about to download a few of these on my HTC Hero!

tanel

July 28th, 2010

Great article, I didn’t bother to read all the text but installed all the apps mentioned in the article. Thanks!

J.L

October 9th, 2010

Hello there, how about the Pantone color chart for Android? Here is the link http://www.handster.com/pantone_color_chart.html?dm=1&multi=1

This app is very useful. Please check it out.

Thanks

Bandula Withanage

January 9th, 2011

Thank you very much.
Very helpful

Nebula Haze

February 5th, 2011

I’ve been searching for a way to view html source codes of web pages on android. Thanks for that plus these awesome other tools!

Dich thuat

May 12th, 2011

These apps is good for me. thanks

Ivan

May 23rd, 2011

We just release Codeanywhere for Android, try it out I think you guys will like it :)

https://market.android.com/details?id=net.phpanywhere&feature=search_result

John

May 28th, 2011

Please, check the Webmaster’s HTML Editor – very good code editor for Android with undo/redo and syntax highlighting:
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.welant.webmaster.DEMO

andy

September 12th, 2011

As a web designer I want carry round my “portfolio” on my phone – especially important when there’s no signal or network. Most sites are php and require a server. Is there an app which will enable me to run a server (eg Apache) on my phone?