Caitlin Woodward

Lately I have been interested in improving my workflow. I've spent the past month or so trying new ways of doing things in hopes of making my workflow a little better. Not much luck. I can't even find a good blog article for tips.

So I thought I would share my workspace with you.

I use my MacBook as my primary monitor, and a Dell 24" monitor as a second monitor. In addition, I also use three vertical spaces in Leopard's Spaces. Below is the setup that I usually start my day with.

I have my Textmate (code) on full screen in my main monitor, visible in Space 2. On my second monitor, I always have my chat (essential), browser (work and play), and a Finder window. The bottom left corner varies. Sometimes it's Firefox's download manager, a video, terminal, etc; whatever fits. I usually have Terminal open with Visor, for quick (and neat) access with a hotkey. I used to have Firefox take up the full external monitor, but after a while realized I could use the space more efficiently. Everything on the left monitor is set to be visible on all spaces.

In Space 3 on my main screen, I have all my image editing software, mostly set to show Photoshop and Illustrator. Below is a screenshot of what that setup looks like.

I use Space 1 for other random things. This includes VMWare, for browser testing, or Mail for email, or Sequel Pro for database management, or whatever else.

I used to have an FTP client also open in a space. I quit using a true FTP client because ExpanDrive integrated FTP into Finder. You can notice in the screenshots in Finder's far left pane that there are a couple red drives. Those are my active FTP connection. I can navigate the directories with Finder. If you are someone who needs to be able to see invisible files, then use TinkerTool to show them. Also, ExpanDrive works wonders with Textmate. I can just drag a folder into Texmate, and it automatically creates a project. And voila, you are working live and it is so seamless. You can see an example of this in my first screenshot.

Having the code and the browser side by side is nice because I can see changes by just looking to the left screen (and refreshing). A live preview would by nice, but I haven't found one that works well with PHP. I haven't looked very hard, though. Refreshing hasn't gotten in the way yet either, so.

If I need to reference or cut up some images from the PSD or AI file, I can just switch to the next space (for me, ctrl+down, alt-tab once or twice depending on how recently I've used the app, or I've even programmed a couple mouse buttons for switching spaces that will work). This gives me a side by side view of the browser and the design, and I can easily start to figure out the next step of my implementation.

Now that I have shared mine, I am interested to learn about your workspace, even if you are not a web developer. I think that my workflow and productivity could be improved, but I don't know how.