What software to buy.

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supafly1

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Hi there,

I have decided to do a web development course, what would be the best software to use to lean on as well as to use to design websites.
 
Web DEVELOPMENT and DESIGN and two different things. In DEVELOPMENT you will have to acquaint yourself with server-side technologies, development languages and database engines. For DESIGN you will have to learn the basic principles of good graphic design first, before you can have a hope of designing a visually appealing site. The technologies you use in both only overlap at HTML/CSS.
 
supafly1 said:
Hi there,

I have decided to do a web development course, what would be the best software to use to lean on as well as to use to design websites.
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That depends on where you want to go with this? Web design normally includes Photoshop/Fireworks, possibly DreamWeaver - or at least, that's what is punted out there, and what you can learn in courses. Web Development opens up a whole new can of worms - there are plenty of free/open source applications for whatever platform you choose to learn.

If I were you, I'd look around on the net first. There are plenty of beginner tutorials out there for free, and they can give you a good idea as to what exactly you will enjoy, and should focus on.
 
Where, if i may ask, are you studying?

Im self taught in front end(designing) and would recommend you learn CSS HTML before you use dreamweaver or something similiar.

All you need really is a text editor , im liking notepad ++ which is free
 
Eight PHP IDEs Compared

"InfoWorld's Rick Grehen provides an in-depth comparative review of eight PHP IDEs: ActiveState's Komodo IDE, CodeLobster PHP Edition, Eclipse PHP Development Tools (PDT), MPSoftware's phpDesigner, NetBeans IDE for PHP, NuSphere's PhpED, WaterProof's PHPEdit, and Zend Studio. 'All of these PHP toolkits offer strong support for the other languages and environments (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL database) that a PHP developer encounters. The key differences we discovered were in the tools they provide (HTML inspector, SQL management system) for various tasks, the quality of their documentation, and general ease-of-use,' Grehen writes.'"
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Go open source = free :)
 
notepad.... it'll teach you the fundamentals like nothing else out there...
 
AcidRaZor said:
notepad.... it'll teach you the fundamentals like nothing else out there...
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If you're gonna do that, rather use an IDE like Aptana Studio - you get to do the source code thing, but get help (closing tags, syntax highlighting, etc.) with the boring bits of coding - plus errors get pointed out to you, and you can preview the result with the click of a mouse.

Now I know you can do the same, more or less, with notepad++, etc. but Aptana does it all in one, it's free, it's stable (based on Eclipse) and its Javascript support rocks.
 
AcidRaZor said:
notepad.... it'll teach you the fundamentals like nothing else out there...
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Or Notepad2 if you want Syntax highlighting at the very least.

I used that and NET SDk 1.1 compiler to teach myself C# and Forms a few years ago.
 
Raithlin said:
If you're gonna do that, rather use an IDE like Aptana Studio - you get to do the source code thing, but get help (closing tags, syntax highlighting, etc.) with the boring bits of coding - plus errors get pointed out to you, and you can preview the result with the click of a mouse.

Now I know you can do the same, more or less, with notepad++, etc. but Aptana does it all in one, it's free, it's stable (based on Eclipse) and its Javascript support rocks.
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I was quite surprised that Aptana wasn't in that php IDE comparison article I posted :confused: I've look at it before and looks really good (from the outside).

To all the guys telling him to code in Notepad, look at why you should use an IDE.
 
Er. No. Syntax highlighting, auto-tag closure, errors being pointed out... it won't teach him ****. So when he is in a production environment where he needs to perform and then sits with a problem like trying to figure out why the hell his form is not submitting, he could have at the VERY LEAST already know what the problem is (form within a form, etc)

These IDE's take away from the learning experience. Imagine him having to fix code and the only thing available to him is RDP and the server (with no IDE installed, because seriously, anyone who installs an IDE on a live server should be hung...and not in the good way)? He's going to suffer because each time he types <br> it doesn't auto-correct to < br /> ??? or won't know how to type or use &nbsp; because "in the IDE all i had to do is switch to the design and press space"????

No dude.... IDE is for when AFTER he has learned the basics. Not before
 
Let me put it this way. Imagine playing Quake with sound, you can hear people coming towards you or a missile on it's way/gunshots etc. Imagine you play this and you think "OMG I'm the best I rock the dogs balls"

So then you start playing online, so people start to semi-kick your ass... you then lose the sound because of WHATEVER reason, and you SUCK EVEN MORE.

Now imagine if you were deaf and playing Quake... sure, people will semi-kick your ass... but you will get BETTER not WORSE because of the loss of sound ;)
 
AcidRaZor said:
These IDE's take away from the learning experience. Imagine him having to fix code and the only thing available to him is RDP and the server (with no IDE installed, because seriously, anyone who installs an IDE on a live server should be hung...and not in the good way)? He's going to suffer because each time he types <br> it doesn't auto-correct to < br /> ??? or won't know how to type or use &nbsp; because "in the IDE all i had to do is switch to the design and press space"????

No dude.... IDE is for when AFTER he has learned the basics. Not before
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Even better, you have to ssh into a apache server with PHP, and you only have vi to edit with. You might have syntax highlighting, but that is it.
 
I recon All you need it something with auto indent & tab size adjustments, those are the reasons I don't like coding in notepad.. syntax highlighting in a nice + .. so go for notepad++
 
I also started learning some web development recently. I finished learning HTML/ CSS and did all my coding in Notepad++, definitely the best way to learn as you have to watch for all syntax yourself and make sure you a opening and closing tags properly. Once I got used to all that I used a free WYSIWYG application called KompoZer to fine tune the website, then back to Notepad++ to clean up and validate the code. Now I'm busy learning MySQL and PHP, I'm using XAMPP Lite for running the Apache and MySQL server on my PC.
 
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