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If you're anything like me, you occasionally forget to do something on a web site you just deployed or you need to do make a quick edit. I can honestly say that on more than one occasion I've been out and about and for one reason or another I've needed access to my web site to make some changes.

This web site is an example, as only hours after going live I was on a friends computer when I noticed I messed up the validation on a form. But because I'm lazy and don't always take my own advice, and because my friend has none of the software I need, I had to wait until I got home before I could rectify this situation. Never again!

So having a web dev studio in your pocket can be especially handy even if it only helps you out on the rare occasion.

Ingredients

You're going to need:

• 1 USB thumbdrive
• A bunch of portable applications
• About 15 minutes of your time

Get the portable applications

Point your browser to PortableApps.com and grab the following:

• Firefox portable
• KompoZer Portable & Nvu portable or Notepad++ Portable if you don't need a full blown editing suite
• Putty portable (only if you need a Telnet and SSH client)
• Gimp portable (sure it's a far cry from Photoshop, but it's free and enough to edit bitmaps)
• FileZilla portable or FireFTP as a Firefox add-on
• XAMPP portable (if you need a server in your pocket)

Portable Firefox lets you install any add-on like you normally would, so be sure to grab The web developer toolbar, HTML validator, Firebug and any others you want from the usual place.

I suggest extracting all the files to a folder on your PC and setting everything up how you need it before transferring it to your thumbdrive. The truth is there is actually nothing stopping you from running all these apps on your PC for your primary development environment. You would then have the advantage of being able to sync your local dev environment with your portable dev environment so they're always the same.

Security implications

Like any other data you carry around there is always the risk of accidental loss and falling into the wrong hands. With that in mind I wouldn't be saving FTP passwords or any other information in Firefox portable.

Likewise for any of the web pages stored on your thumbdrive that could contain sensitive client information and database connection strings among other things. If you lose your thumbdrive and you didn't secure any of the information on it, you're going to have a hell of a time updating all the web sites that will potentially be at risk.

A colleague of mine suggested keeping a 'disposable' thumb drive handy. If you're forced to download files that might contain private or critical information onto the thumbdrive so you can make changes to them, "blow it away" (format the thumbdrive) when your done.

How convenient?

As you can see these portable apps should cover you for almost everything. The next time you need urgent access to your web site files you can whip it out (your thumbdrive that is) and duck into a nearby internet cafe or any other computer within reach.

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