How many of you are doing Web design? Go ahead, raise your hand. I know you look foolish holding up your hand. Don’t worry, you can put it down when I finish counting. OK, it sure looks like there are a lot of you doing it.
Today I’m going to suggest a series of tools that can help you develop a top-notch Web 2.0 site. The best news is that all of the tools are completely free. Aptana has developed each of these tools through the open-source community and they work with many of the development technologies in use today. Download the development tools and platforms you need and start developing.
Admittedly these tools are not for Web beginners unless you want to put in the time to learn all of the ins and outs of Web development. But they are certainly a lot less expensive than tools like Dreamweaver!
I’ve been using Aptana Studio for some time now: PHP, JavaScript, etc.
My main complaint is that it is so heavy-handed. It has tons of features, but it can take literally minutes to open. It also tends to hang during heavy editing sessions, especially with Firefox also open, to view my results.
Just recently, I read in the Sitepoint TechTimes newsletter, that NetBeans now supports PHP. And today I gave it some good first testing. The final vote is not in yet, but it seems like I may have found a more agile alternative.
(And Aptana lacks an Undo button on the toolbar. It just irks me.)
Just an addition to my own comment:
NetBeans is available here:
http://www.netbeans.org/
On the download page, you can choose the PHP version, or the all-inclusive version, among others.