5 top free web development tools

I think the best tool I use often in developing a website is the internet itself. If there is anything I don’t know or am stuck with, I Google it. As you probably know Google is now actually a verb in English dictionaries. This is due to the fact that so many people use Google to research and seek out information due to its superiority over other search engines.

Over the last few years I have come across many tools and utilities that have helped me complete various tasks and I have decided to list them here in the hope that the will be of help to some else. They are not listed in any particular order as they are all great.

Edit Plus
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Edit Plus is a great text editor that supports probably every known programming and database language there is. It has great colour highlighting, ftp, customisable scripts and extensions and much more. Its a 30 day free trial, but in the past I have used it for much longer than 30days meaning, I guess that purchase is voluntary. No doubt you will find it so useful you might consider paying the shareware fee.

Set permissions Dreamwever extension for Dreamweaver mx 2004
Download (You need to login the Dreamweaver exchange and search for it)

Currently I use Dreamweaver MX 2004 as its a great HTML editor, and also I didn’t see any real benefit in upgrading to Dreamweaver 8. the downside is that if ever I want to change file permissions of a folder I would have to login into the ftp account with internet explorer, which takes ages. This little extension allows you to change permissions simply by right clicking on the folder directly in Dreamweaver.

PhpMyAdmin
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If you use PHP and MYSQL you will need some way of managing your MYSQL database. Of course you could write your own system, but why bother when someone has already done it for you. This is a must have for web developers. Like all of the software listed here, its completly free. There are alternatives such as MYSQL DB, but this one is server-side and can be modified if needed. Installation can be a little bit tricky the first time, but after one install its pretty easy to set up another.

Open Office
Download

If you are serious about running your own company you will need office type applications. The majority of people use Microsoft office which is fine, however its expensive. Open Office is completely open source, in fact Tesco’s are selling it for £20!

You can do everything with these tools that you can with Microsoft Office, but for free.

Firefox Web Developer Extension
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This great extension for Firefox allows to you do a variety of tasks with your browser. From view the HTML and CSS, resizing the browser window, to validating your code. Fantastic!