A short list of free tools I find useful for blogging and web development! Includes Microsoft Visual Studio Code, ImageOptim, ForkLift 2 and Commander One.

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code, currently in Preview, is excellent although more complex than what I'm used to with Visual Studio.

It's now my go-to editor for Markdown with live preview!

To associate .md with Visual Studio Code, secondary click (i.e. right-click) on a .md file and select Get Info. Change the Open With to Visual Studio Code.app and click Change All....

I also use it for .twig templates. Since .twig is not a known extension, there is no syntax colorization... but there are many third party extensions to support it. Or just change the language to from "Plain Text" at the bottom right of the status bar to HTML or Handlebars.

Short cuts are Command-K, M or "Language Mode" from the Command Palette.

ImageOptim

I also use ImageOptim to squish PNG's as much as possible before posting. It even can be run from the Terminal command line.

I've created a nice screen capture script to automatically take a window screen shot, generate one regular retina sized, and one at 50%, and then optimize them both.

ForkLift 2

ForkLift - File Manager and FTP/SFTP/WebDAV/Amazon S3 client is currently my favourite dual pane file manager. ForkLift version 2 is free on the App Store, while the paid new-and-improved version 3 is on the BinaryNights web site.

Commander One

Commander One is a great free dual pane file manager, so much better than Finder! There is also a paid PRO version with FTP, 7-Zip and ZIP support and other features.

Updated 23 May 2017: Added ForkLift 2.