Whether Macs are the best computers for web development is up for debate, Every web developer has their own favorite platform to create in. Some prefer Linux, while other prefer Windows or Mac.

Here are some essential bits of software that every Mac-owning web developer should have in their toolkits. From text editors to command line tools, here is the best Cupertino has to offer to aid the web developer, soup to nuts.

1. Firefox For Mac - Firefox is a must have for web development because of three great add-ons – Firebug, the Web Developer toolbar and ColorZilla. Firebug lets you edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page

2. MAMP is what you need to manage websites locally when you are without an internet connection or want to test changes without making them live on a website.

3. Textwrangler - TextWrangler is a multipurpose text editor that works for editing code and plain text documents. It can even open files from (and save them to) remote FTP and SFTP servers.

4. JAlbum - JAlbum helps you make attractive photo galleries for websites. JAlbum comes with various templates built-in, but you can also customize your own template to better match a web project you’re working on

5. Aptana - Aptana takes up where Textmate leaves off in some aspects. It is a full featured code editor, but adds the FTP support of Cyberduck, as well as important web technologies like Ajax, Adobe AIR and PHP.

6. Marsedit - MarsEdit allows you to compile draft blog posts on your local machine before publishing them live on your blog. I use it daily to take notes on various blog topics I think of and then I can easily compile a blog post over the course of a week.

7. inkscape - Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator. It is the first open source program to adopt Spiro curves. You can also go through their clip art collection and find dozens of images made with Inkscape that are free to use or modify.

8. skitch - I was only recently introduced to this by GoodOnPaper @ FOWA. Allows you to easily share images/screenshots on the web and using the Skitch editor you can add notes to your image or highlight areas of a screenshot. Very useful and saves having to load up Photoshop for simple tasks.

9. xcode - Xcode is Apple’s development package. This gi-normous 900mb download adds tons upon tons of system mojo that you’ll probably have to eventually install to your system that you’ll probably use down the line. Many serious development software like SVN and the like use dependancies that Xcode takes care of. Xcode is free for the taking.

10. Gimp -  Gimp is the second-most popular photo editing software program on the market, second only to Adobe Photoshop. The difference? Gimp is absolutely free!

11. Phpmyadmin - phpMyAdmin is the kindly old grandfather of database management scripts. Not necessarily hip to an attractive user interface, phpMyAdmin still has the skills to pay the bills. You can manage your databases locally using this stable script. It ships with MAMP, so installation is a breeze.

12. Cyberduck - Cyberduck is the all-in-one FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3, WebDav and Mosso Cloud Files browser application. Web developers often need to switch between different file systems, and Cyberduck does this without a hiccup.

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