10 iPhone Apps Every Web Designer Should Know About
With the huge development in mobile device technology in the past few years coupled with the ever-increasing media business sector, isn’t it time we, as web designers, started taking advantage of some of the fantastic mobile applications to make our job a bit easier?
From cheat sheets to running servers, here’s a list of the 10 most useful iPhone apps for people who make websites.
1. What The Font (Free)
If you don’t already know about this web service, MyFonts is a free online service where you can upload images of text and give you matches with options to buy the matched font. The iPhone version works in much the same way as its desktop counterpart, but allows you to snap photos then upload them to the font identifier and find out matches. This is excellent if you spot a font on a magazine or billboard and want to find out what it is.
2. Color Expert ($9.99)
Admittedly, this iPhone app is quite pricey, but it’s a powerful and endlessly handy tool that combines several features available on other apps. It includes an interactive colour wheel for picking complementary colour schemes, an image picker that allows you to create palettes from photos (either freshly snapped or from the camera roll), and a full Pantone colour library.
3. Source Viewer ($0.99)
This app is designed so you can look at web page source code from your iPhone. It has a nice, easy to use interface and is definitely worth the $0.99.
4. FTP On The Go ($6.99)
Again, a little on the pricey side, but this app brings all the features of a desktop FTP client to your iPhone. Capable of uploading, viewing and updating files from anywhere, it can be a lifesaver if you need to update your site (or your client’s) on the go. Note that the new version (2.2) fixes some small annoying bugs that this app previously had, so if you’ve been hesitating to pick this up, you should be all good now.
5. ServersMan (Free)
Have you ever wanted to turn your iPhone into a web server? Probably not. But in the off chance that you are one of those geeks that have wanted to, once you have installed this app, you can access the files on your iPhone via a computer on the Internet through the webDAV protocol. Originally only in Japanese, the newer versions are English-based and now support multithread processing so that more than one person can access your "iPhone server" at one time.
6. Web Developer Bible (Free)
This little app, as its name suggests, is an excellent reference for web developers and includes references for HTML and CSS code sheets, and a hex colour converter.
7. Ego ($1.99)
This app lets you stroke your ego by checking on all of your personal stats in the social networking/media space. With support for web services like Ember, Feedburner, Google Analytics, Mint, Squarespace, Tumblr, Twitter and Vimeo, it means you only have one place to check how many hits you’re getting on all of your sites within one simple, user-friendly interface.
8. Full Browser ($0.99)
This iPhone app lets you browse the web on your iPhone without the Apple Safari web browser bars at the top and bottom. Simply shake or tap the screen to bring the address bar up, enter the website and the bar will disappear again, giving you up to 25% more screen space in portrait mode and 40% more in landscape mode.
9. Photoshop.com Mobile App (Free)
Adobe brings the ever popular Photoshop.com platform onto the iPhone. Unfortunately, it suffers from slightly limited functionality, but does include crop, rotate, filters, image and saturation adjustment. An excellent basic image editing app, it also allows you to share the results via a Photoshop.com account.
10. iSEO (Free)
This is a nice little analysis program for any web page you might want to find out more about. Simply type in the URL of the page you want to analyse and iSEO gives you information on the keywords used, as well as the details of how well it ranks on various search engines, and even metadata.
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35 Comments
DSM Design
June 21st, 2010
Some really cool apps there, going to have to download them all when I get the new iPhone 4 :)
Michael Beckwith
June 21st, 2010
Any chance for a similar article for the droid users out there?
app developer
June 21st, 2010
Hi Rob
Thanks for the tips.
Maybe it’s time I gave FTP on the Go another try and Color Expert should look fantastic on the iPhone 4 or iPad – better get back to work so I can afford them!
Not an iPhone user
June 21st, 2010
so, to be a “good” web designer, I should a) own a $1000 piece of equipment fairly irrelevent to my chosen career path, and b) know about ten applications that do things I shouldn’t need to do while “on the go”. Shouldn’t you really be re-evaluating your business plan if you absolutely need to use an FTP client in a setting where you can’t use a laptop.
Jacob Gube
June 21st, 2010
@Not an iPhone user: $1000 U.S. dollars? Also, I don’t think the author of this post was saying you need an iPhone to be a “good” web designer, not sure where you got that conclusion.
manny
June 21st, 2010
@Michael Beckwith
i second a similar post for android users too :)
Tyler
June 21st, 2010
I guess these might be good for the most “hardcore” web designers that are obsessed with this kind of stuff. Being a Web Designer myself and owning an iPhone I can tell you these are rather pointless… 9.99 for a color picker? (I know its more than just that but I’d much rather wait for when I get on a computer for kuler or something). Though, if I had an iPad I would probably use it for designing and experimenting but the iPhone screen is just way too small to make anything out, much less look at source code and do any type of design. Though, FTP on the go might be good for an emergency change “on-the-go” but that is about as far as I’ll go for mobile web design.
I imagine these are still some of the best designer apps for the iPhone so I suppose this is still a good list.
Karen
June 21st, 2010
Some really cool apps there, going to have to download them all when I get the new iPhone 4 :)
iphone
June 21st, 2010
Excellent apps, i have already preorder for my iphone. Once i will get it, I will download some of my favourite apps you mentions.
Jordan Walker
June 21st, 2010
These are great apps for designer and developers alike.
Roodee
June 21st, 2010
I found this really helpful. The FTP on The Go is especially handy. Any chance of another 10 apps?
Eva
June 21st, 2010
We always need new iphone apps!! I’ll go for the font & the photoshop ones.
Sharath
June 21st, 2010
What the font looks really rad!
Young
June 21st, 2010
very nice list! i agree we should at least “know about” these. i probably won’t pay for any of them, though. i don’t surf on my iphone enough.
really wish the web developer bible had other references like PHP, ASP, Javascript, jQuery, etc…but I guess that’s a little too much to be app-ified to a free app. A lot of these seem useless to me, since if I’m web developing, I’m already on a computer, not an iphone.
Sase Antic
June 21st, 2010
Good to know about those apps.
Thanks for sharing!
Sahus Pilwal
June 21st, 2010
iSEO does not seem available on the UK App Store :(
Guhan Iyer
June 21st, 2010
I am a huge fan of the Photoshop for mobile. I do agree with some of the comments that these apps are a little redundant until development of apps can actually happen on the phone itself.
Shane Jeffers
June 21st, 2010
Great list guys! I’ve missed a few of these.
blueshell
June 22nd, 2010
Thanks for sharing the great 10 iPhone apps for web designers to work easier.
David
June 22nd, 2010
Thanks for posting this, there is some very nice designer apps here. What the Font app looks really useful for finding out what a font is in a magazine or poster.
Photoshop App is also really good for making some small edits to photography on the go and it’s free!
Pinky
June 22nd, 2010
I liked to try the new iphone apps. I’ll also go for the photoshop, what the font and iSEO.
Thany
June 22nd, 2010
Why would you do such things on a phone in the first place?
whitewish
June 22nd, 2010
Is there any apps like ‘color expert’ for Android OS?
Aisha
June 22nd, 2010
Absolutely amazing….great post.Some amazing stuff in here,really good info,thanks for sharing.
Steve
June 23rd, 2010
As neat as these are, I personally can’t think of a situation where I’d need to use any of them on my iPod Touch unless I traveled alot, and even then, for the most part I could just depend on my laptop.
Kent
June 23rd, 2010
Very useful, especially the seo one… off to download!
Carlos R
June 24th, 2010
I’ve been searching for new web apps and this is very helpful. I can’t wait to try some of these out.
Jon Brink
June 24th, 2010
Too bad so many people hock their stuff so cheaply. It’s really kind of ruining our hobby.
DSM Design
June 25th, 2010
Loves it! cheers for the heads up! Best get downloading!
NickM
June 25th, 2010
If interested, I can offer a list of useful applications for the iPad.
job ballard
June 30th, 2010
colour expert and what the font near the top and rightly so… thanks for this…
SJL
June 30th, 2010
Awesome post, all these apps look awesome. Going to have to download some!!
Thanks.
jayadrathsingh
June 30th, 2010
Gr8! post. thanks for sharing. I wud love to try them.
TheKid
September 8th, 2010
Really cool.
maybe you can check out this app as well. pretty amazing too
Graphic Design Quiz.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/graphics-design-quiz-for-iphone/id387240098?mt=8
The app keeps track of the users score. The hi-score is “guru design”. The user can post the score on facebook as well
barry
September 19th, 2010
what the font is such a useful service…didn’t realize there was an iphone version until today
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