Bookmarks
My favourite tools, apps and products for business, productivity and web development
Business & Freelancing Tools
- Wave
- Free accounting and invoicing software. It automatically imports transactions from bank accounts and credit cards.
- You can create professional-looking invoices and clients can pay right on the invoice. (Credit card processing is done via Stripe).
- Toggl
- Simple app for time tracking. I don’t usually bill clients by time, but I’m fascinated with knowing how I spend my time. Tracking my time helps me understand where my time goes and helps me evaluate if I’m using my time effectively.
- Zapier
- I love Zapier! You can create “triggers” from one app / service to another.
- Example: I set up a Zapier “zap” so that whenever someone fills out my contact form, all of the information goes straight to a Google spreadsheet.
Useful Apps & Tools
- Alfred
- Alfred super-charges your Mac’s searching capabilities. The basic version is free (that’s what I use). It’s how I open programs, search for files, and google things.
- Check out my blog post Why I love Alfred to learn more about it.
- Bartender
- Mac application for organizing all the icons and cleaning up your menubar.
- Buffer
- Lovely tool for managing and scheduling social media posts. Offers great analytics on engagement and clicks.
- I especially love the iPhone app. You can add content and drag and drop items to re-order them in your queue.
- ImageOptim
- Free Mac application for optimizing images for the web. I usually run ImageOptim after resizing images. It reduces the file size while maintaining the quality of the image.
- Mobee Magic Charger
- So useful if you use an Apple Magic Mouse. It’s a charging dock and battery replacement for the mouse. You’ll never run out of batteries again.
- Paparazzi – free (Mac-only) app for capturing screenshots of websites.
- Amazingly useful app for taking full-screen screenshots of websites. You can even enter custom sizes to snap screenshots of a website at desktop, mobile, or tablet dimensions.
- Learn more about Paparazzi in Zoe Rooney’s blog post: Q&A: Full Site Screenshots (I discovered Paparazzi via her post!)
Web Development
- Emmet Re:View (also: Emmet Re:View Chrome Extension)
- Powerful Chrome extension for viewing all of the responsive breakpoints on a website. It displays all breakpoints on a particular website side-by-side.
- Wave – Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (also: Wave Chrome Extension, Wave Firefox Extension)
- Fantastic tool for evaluating the accessibility of websites.
- I use the Chrome extension. It offers in-browser notes on errors, a colour contrast checker, and provides links to resources to learn more about any accessibility issues found during testing.
Web Development: jQuery Plugins
- Anchorific
- jQuery plugin that automatically adds IDs to headings and sets up in-page navigation that toggles as you scroll down the page.
- Instagram Lite
- jQuery plugin for creating a simple list of an Instagram user’s photos. You can customize the number of images displayed, whether captions are displayed, and more.
- jQuery Collapse
- Lovely jQuery plugin for creating a collapsible accordion of information. You can customize the mark-up and it’s fully accessible (compliant with WAI-ARIA).
- Responsive Lightbox Plugin
- Lightweight jQuery plugin for adding lightbox pop-ups to websites.
WordPress Plugins
- Crop Thumbnails
- WordPress creates different-sized copies of every image you upload. This plugin gives you control over how those images are cropped.
- GM Block Bots
- This plugin blocks annoying spam bots from appearing in your Google Analytics stats. (ie. websites like 4webmasters.org, best-seo-offer.com, buttons-for-website.com)
- WCAG 2.0 form fields for Gravity Forms
- The WCAG Gravity Forms plugin improves the accessibility of Gravity Form fields by adding proper “for” attributes on labels and more.