Many open source tools have features comparable to expensive applications and are excellent alternatives for web designers. These freeware permit the user to use, design, modify, improve and redistribute in modified or unmodified forms.

Open source applications and tools are a great alternative for web designers on a budget. Many open source tools have comparable features to the expensive applications, and are also free. This makes it possible for a web designer to have all the tools and applications needed to complete everyday tasks without even spending a cent.

This can save money and also provide access to diverse production models, communication paths, and interactive communities.
There are a variety of tools here that include source code, WYSIWYG, and graphic/image editors, as well as useful software utilities that can improve your task management and production processes.

In this post, you’ll find 13 exceptionally handy open source applications for web designers. There are a variety of tools here that include source code, WYSIWYG, and graphic/image editors, as well as useful software utilities that can improve your task management and production processes.

Aptana Studio

Aptana is a robust free open source, JavaScript-focused IDE for building dynamic web applications for Linux, Windows and Mac systems with many features for HTML and CSS. It has an in built site manager enabling you to make edits to your copy and then synchronizing for instant gratification Aptana is also equipped with thousands of additional plug-in created by the community. It provides “Code Assist” which is context related help showing possible java-script functions and parameters, HTML and CSS tags. Besides being available for all major platforms – Aptana can also be installed as a plug-in to eclipse.

KompoZer

KompoZer is a fully-featured web authoring system that has an integrated FTP client, an intuitive tabbed user interface, and support for all major operating systems.

Bluefish Editor

Bluefish Editor is a lightweight, fast editor for web designers and programmers. It has useful wizards for HTML documents, great project management features, and a powerful search-and-replace option for quickly batch-replacing source code.

CSSED

CSSED is a fully-featured GTK-2 based small developer CSS editor and validator, that tries to ease the CSS editing and that has a plugin system for utmost extensibility. CSSED have some support for HTML, XML, JavaScript, Java, PHP, JSP, C, C++, Apache configuration files, .htaccess, Python, Perl, SQL, SH and other languages so it can serve quite well as multi-purpose editor.

It includes syntax highlighting, a CSS library, and auto value insertion and properties of quick CSS and MDI notebook, which is based on an auto-completion interface. Other features include box wizard, color wizard and for dealing with complex rules, it has the selector wizard. CSSED also has toolbar icons and dialogues for CSS tags that are often used.

Selector scanning enables property values to be quickly changed and temporary bookmarks ensure quick access. It has a digest view incorporated in the style sheet that is fully clickable and easy to use due to a reference browser for CSS2.

Amaya

Amaya is a free, open source web editor and web browser developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Amaya started as an HTML/CSS editor and has since grown into an editor for many XM

OPEN BEXI HTML Builder

Open BEXI HTML Builder is a browser-based open source application for creating HTML web pages. It has a CSS color picker built into the interface and a very simple project management option.

NOTEPAD++

NOTEPAD++ is a very popular open source text editor for Windows. Though not strictly just for web designers, it has an excellent source code editor the supports HTML, XML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Inkscape

Inkscape is the premier open source 2d vector graphics editor editor much like its commercial counterparts, Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW and Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. It supports advanced SVG features such as markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.

It enables you to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. Advanced gradient fill tool gives the drawings substance and brings them to life. Inkscape even include bitmap tracing and will let you export your drawing as both png and postscript. All normal file handling is performed natively in scalable vector graphics (svg) file format.

SeaMonkey

SeaMonkey, fostered by the Mozilla Foundation, is an “all-in-one” web browser that has a simple yet powerful HTML editor for in-browser source code editing (called SeaMonkey Composer).

Scintilla

Scintilla is a free source code editing component. It comes with complete source code and a license that permits use in any free project or commercial product.

Firebug

Firebug is a plug-in for Firefox that allows you to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

GIMP

GIMP is a versatile graphics manipulation package. It’s considered by many to be an excellent alternative to Photoshop.

jEdit

jEdit is a mature programmer’s text editor with hundreds (counting the time developing plug-in) of person-years of development behind it. To download, install, and set up jEdit as quickly and painlessly as possible, go to the Quick Start page. While jEdit beats many expensive development tools for features and ease of use, it is released as free software with full source code, provided under the terms of the GPL 2.0. The jEdit core, together with a large collection of plug-in is maintained by a world-wide developer team.