Required Course Tools - 5367

Created Tuesday 11 May 2021

You will need:

Web Browser
Text Editor / IDE
File Transfer Program (some "File explorer" type programs have this built in)
Terminal Emulator/Shell (probably? This may be optional for Windows people)

Optional but recommended:

Access to a computer capable of running a light virtual machine (if you're unsure, odds are you can, but we will have to confirm)

Web Browser

I highly recommend Firefox over all other major browsers, but this is a shifting environment as always.

Text Editor

Generally, you may use whatever works best for you. Some level of IDE type tools is strongly recommended, i.e. something beyond "Notepad." We will spend some time looking at these.

Cross-Platform:
ScITE / Scintilla
jEdit - this is the one I will likely use the most; cross platform and runs on everything.

Linux (Graphical User Interface)
Leafpad
Gedit
Geany

Linux (Command Line)

nano
vi/vim
emacs

Windows
notepad++

Mac (wow, it was hard finding free ones, though I guess I shouldn't be surprised)
TextWrangler (I think)

File Transfer (FTP/SFTP)

You will need a program or other method of copying the html files that you create to a webserver. One option is to use the command line; I imagine Linux users will already be somewhat familiar with this approach.

Details on Filezilla, a cross-platform program, are available here.

Terminal Emulator/ Shell

Linux and Mac users have these built in.

Windows users have a slightly confusing range of issues to deal with, since most of the web is a "Unix/Linux/*nix" type of environment, and Microsoft was ill-prepared for the internet generally. Very very recently, Windows has added the use of GNU and Linux shell tools, so you may want to check that out. (Embrace, extend, extinguish?)

PuTTY (and PSCP/PSFTP) is a good choice for basic command-line work,
Cygwin is another interesting option for users who want a more complete option.