Development Tools

Use these development tools to help you create ProjectPier sites faster, easier, and with less effort.

Tools for Your Browser

• Microsoft Internet Explorer (Free. Proprietary. Windows only.)
  • Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar
  • Multiple Internet Explorer versions for testing purposes. This is not supported by Microsoft. It may be wise to backup your computer before installing
• Mozilla Firefox (Free. Open Source. Linux, Mac, Windows and others.)
  • Web Developer Extension - Adds a tool bar and menu to the browser with various web developer tools. For example, you can disable form fields; reveal hidden form elements; edit CSS in real time; and clear the browser cache and session cookies.
  • Firebug - More tools for the web developer. Program CSS, HTML and JavaScript in real time; easily locate divs; examine a breakdown of the time components of your page take to download; discover errors in Javascript, CSS and XML; and explore the DOM.
    • YSlow - A Firefox add-on integrated with the Firebug web development tool, YSlow analyzes a web page's performance and returns a "performance report card," calculated by determining how well the page utilizes a set of "best practice" guidelines for high performance web sites.
• Opera (Free. Proprietary. Linux, Mac, Windows and others.)
• Safari (Free. Proprietary. Mac, Windows only.)
  • Webkit - Safari-based tool similar to Firebug. (Free. Proprietary. Mac, Windows only.)

Tools for Editing Text & Code

Emacs and vi are historically the two most popular editors. Which is best is a matter of some debate and so before deciding which to try you may like to read this Wikipedia article. VIM is based on vi and is much more feature rich.

• Emacs (Free. Open source. Runs on Linux, Mac, Windows and others.)
• VIM (Free. Open source. Linux, Mac, Windows and others.) -- Vim is an advanced text editor based on vi, but more powerful. The learning curve is reasonably steep and the interface can be confusing at first, but this is soon rewarded with greater editing efficiency.

Other Editors

• BBEdit (Commercial. Proprietary. Mac only.)
• Bluefish Editor (FREE. Open Source. POSIX > Linux. Mac. Fast Lean multi syntax WYSIWYN editor - GTK+ based).
• Dreamweaver (Commercial. Proprietary. Mac and Windows.) -- A WYSIWYG HTML editor.
• jEdit (FREE. Open source. Runs on Linux, Mac, Windows and others. Java based.)
• Komodo Edit (FREE. Proprietary. Runs on Linux, Mac and Windows.)
• Notepad++ (Free. Open Source. Windows only.) - A light-weight notepad replacement with tabbing and syntax highlighting.
• Textmate (Commercial. Proprietary. Mac only) -- Has a built-in DIFF bundle that speeds up the rolling and applying of patches.
• UltraEdit (Commercial. Proprietary. Windows only)
• E-TextEditor (Commercial. Proprietary. ) -- Has support for Textmate bundles

Integrated Development Environments (IDE)

• Bluefish Editor (FREE. Open Source. POSIX > Linux. Mac. Fast Lean multi syntax WYSIWYN editor - GTK+ based). A lightweight, fast, multi-syntax, IDE that supports projects, multiple documents, ftp/webDAV/sftp/http/https/samba, user custom integration with many programs like make, lint, weblint, xmllint, tidy, javac, more..., multi-language translations, etc. Just an awesome text editor on steroids.
• Eclipse (Free. Open source. Linux, Mac, Windows and others. Java based.) Probably the most popular open source IDE. Read details including how to install and configure. Eclipse requires plugins in order to develop PHP. Some plugins/packages include:
  • Aptana (Free. Open source. Linux, Mac, Windows and others. Java based.) -- A full-featured Web Development IDE. A package based on the Eclipse environment that comes with the essentials right out of the box (PHP highlighting, ftp/sftp, code browser, etc).
  • PHPEclipse for PHP development using Eclipse up to version 3.1.
  • PDTeclipse & Zend for PHP development using Eclipse from version 3.3+
• Geany (FREE. Open Source. POSIX > GTk+. Linux. Mac. Windows. Fast Lean multi syntax - GTK+ based).
• Komodo (Commercial. Proprietary. Linux, Mac and Windows.)
• Zend Studio (Commercial. Proprietary. Linux, Mac and others. Java based.)

Other Tools

• 7 Zip (Free. Open Source. Windows only.) -- Extract archived and compacted files (such as tarballs).
• Cygwin (Free. Open Source. Windows only.) -- Allows Windows users to use a Unix like shell. This is particularly useful for interfacing with SVN and patching files.
• Filezilla (Free. Open Source. Windows and Linux. Mac version delayed.) -- Graphical FTP client
• IE Net Renderer - Check your site on IE 6 & 7 without Windows!
• UnxUtils (Free. Open Source. Windows only.) -- a lightweight option for adding some Unix command line utilities such as patch and grep to Windows, for those not wishing to download Cygwin.