by Kay Andrews

Created on: April 15, 2008

Web designers need to test designs over a variety of platforms including both macs with firefox, safari, Opera as well as Windows with Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Opera. Because of this, many designers with Macs kept a spare PC in the closet for testing purposes. Also, there are some useful tools for web designers and web programmers that currently are developed only for the Windows platform. Many of these tools allow for rapid development. Custom PHP or ASP sites with databases now take a few hours to build and prototype instead of a week or more.

OSX provides the best of all worlds, a Unix based development stack with commonly used commercial tools such as Adobe Creative Suite. 95% of the time I am developing websites that will be deployed on some Unix/Linux based server. Having the ability to test in this environment without having to switch machines saves time and energy as I only have one machine running instead of two or more. OSX has Apache webserver preinstalled along with PHP and many opensource database packages are available with GUI installers that makes installing MySQL or PostgreSQL easy for even novice Mac users.

Since the shift to Intel x86 based processors, one can also run Windows via Boot camp or with a virtual machine software such as VMware or Paraellels. This allows designers to test a webpage across multiple platforms and web browsers to ensure that it looks right in all browsers. And the MacBook Pros with 2GB or more of RAM handle both OS's at the same time with little slow down that I can notice.

It comes in handy as many code generators that I use to give me a leg up on PHP/MySQL projects are windows only. Now I can load windows using Paraellels, generate the needed code in just a few minutes, then test in a *iux environment on my mac. Previously I had to keep at least one old Windows box around to test web pages and CSS code in MSIE and Firefox for windows. Now it's just a double click of the mouse, boot windows, test, and exit all from my MacBook Pro anywhere in the world.

If you are looking for the ability to do it all on one machine, Apple is hard to beat these days even if they charge a few dollars more for the hardware. Especially if your one computer is a laptop where you can now travel with one machine that will run it all.

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