Dynamic websites / work environment

[joliett89]

I want to get into making some websites (LAMP, HTTP, CSS, JavaScript) and I am wondering what would be the best working enivronment, software that can be used. I was looking at Dreamweaver and some people actually recommend it, but I dont think it is that good. I am at something like this right now:

Xampp
Eclipse (with PHP and JavaScript); I know there are plugins etc, but I did not get to that yet...
Firebug, Chrome and IE Developer Tools
(Notepad++)

I just discovered the tools and these are very powerful (like executing a JavaScript code in real time line by line, watching the variables etc). Working with these tools can make a whole lot of a difference, if you know what I mean. Chrome is good for CSS also.

I also heard Microsoft's Visual Studio Express few times, but I did not look at this one at all.


I am just wondering what are the other programs / tools software that can be useful like that etc (again, I am talking about building dynamic websites only: Unix / Linux, PHP, MySQL, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript). There are also good websites out there, like website optimization, keywords, traffic rankings etc, that can make a lot of a difference right from the start also...

Thank you in advance for any info.

[venegal]

You have a pretty good setup already, which is very close to my own.

XAMPP/WAMP: You're not going to get around this one. You will want to enable Xdebug, though, so you'll be able to step through your PHP code the way you're doing with your Javascript now.

Eclipse: The main selling point for me here is Mylyn, which lets you switch between contexts with literally one mouse click. This is invaluable if you're working on several projects simultaneously (or have to go back to older projects every now and then to make a change), and although Eclipse sometimes drives me mad, no other IDE provides this kind of functionality.

Chrome/etc.: You will need debugging tools for all your browsers, so you can track down browser specific bugs, but luckily all modern browsers come with their own tools anyway. Using Chrome for main development purposes is a good choice.

I'm also running a SASS compiler in a Ruby process during development, which is very handy if you're sick of writing redundant CSS. Have a look here: http://sass-lang.com/

[alykins]

just to add an FYI... visual studio is great, don't get me wrong (i personally love it and run 2010)... but there is a major issue with you using it...

Unix / Linux, PHP, MySQL, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript

only use visual studio if you are coding asp.net... since you didn't mention it at all I assume you will go the php route