Posted on by Glenn

CMW: Tools & Technologies

Creating and Maintaining a Website: Selecting Tools and Technologies

Selecting Tools and Technologies

  • Text editors
  • Graphics editors
  • FTP applications
  • Databases
  • Validators
  • Troubleshooting Tools

Tools and Technologies

For Writing HTML

  1. Built in to Windows: Notepad or WordPad (with caution to save and edit as Plain Text).
  2. Built in to Mac: TextEdit (with the same caveat).
  3. For Mac: Text Wrangler (http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/)
  4. For Windows: Crimson Editor/Emerald Editor (http://sourceforge.net/projects/emeraldeditor/)
  5. Adobe Dreamweaver: download a free trial at http://www.adobe.com/downloads/.
  6. Microsoft Expression Web: download a free trial at http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Web_Overview.aspx.

Graphics editors

  1. Photoshop, Illustrator and Fireworks are part of the Adobe Creative Suite (http://www.adobe.com/downloads/)
  2. GIMP is a free, open source analog of Photoshop: http://www.gimp.org

FTP applications

  1. Commercial: Transmit for Mac: http://www.panic.com/transmit/.
  2. Commercial: CuteFTP for Windows or Mac: http://www.cuteftp.com/products/ftp_clients.aspx
  3. Free: FileZilla for “all platforms:” http://filezilla-project.org/
  4. Dreamweaver has built in FTP tools

Browser Tools

  1. The Web Developer toolbar for Firefox. It should be installed on your classroom computer. To get it for your home computer, go to http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/

Validators

  1. The Web Developer toolbar has links to many validators.
  2. The W3C Validator: http://validator.w3.org/