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Top 5 Must Have Linux Web Developer Applications
I consider myself a web developer, not necessarily a web designer, but certainly a developer. As such, I do not require the latest Adobe suite of programs to get the job done. There are plenty of open source Linux applications that can help accomplish this for free.
I see five different areas of software that I use during development. I first, of course, need a development environment to generate my code. I need software to manipulate images that will be used in my sites. I need a program to encode videos into web friendly formats. After all of this, I need to get my files onto the web server. Lastly I need to be able to view the completed work to see how it turned out and determine where I need to tweak my code.
IDE
jEdit is my IDE of choice. I have tried others and could never find one the encompassed all of my needs. jEdit's robust module system allows enough expansion to cover almost any developers' needs. Most important of these is the FTP plugin for editing code directly on the server. The CSS auto complete feature is a nice plus too, though it was never a requirement that I had set out to find.
Image Manipulation
The GIMP is a no brainer here. It is the standard for image editing and creation in a Linux environment. A lot of people say that is severely handicapped in comparison to Photoshop. I am not a professional designer but have been able to do everything I have ever needed to do to an image with The GIMP. A legal version of Photoshop would cost me over $600, that's a cost I can't really justify for an individual – sans self-employed, professional designers. If you are into design that much, then you are probably a Mac elitist anyway – so why are you using Linux? I have found that I can almost always follow a good Photoshop tutorial I have found on the web and mimic it using The GIMP with equal results. I may have to add a couple more steps to the process, but that is fine considering I did not have to fork over any money to do it. Note: This argument does not acknowledge the option of Photoshop piracy.
Video Encoding
MPlayer's movie encoder is fast on the command line. I am able to take nearly any video format and then resize it and convert it into a Flash video. That makes it have a smaller filesize and also ensures that it will be in a format that is usable to most visitors.
File Transfer
I can edit my code directly on the server with jEdit, but I have to get my images, videos and whatever else I am delivering up on the server. gFTP is the only FTP client I have ever used in Linux. I have never found a reason to look elsewhere because it does everything I need. It allows bookmarking so I can connect to my sites with a click and get my files up.
Web Browser
Of course I use Firefox to test sites with. It is also my main browser for surfing the web. But Firefox is not representative of the users who will be visiting sites. Unfortunately most people still use Microsoft's travesty of a browser – Internet Explorer. Luckily I do not need to keep that OS available as an option on my machines just to use that broken browser. IEs4Linux is a script developed by Sérgio Lopes that enables the download and installation of IE 5, 5.5 and 6 through Wine, the Windows emulator. I do not use all of the versions of IE that he makes available, just IE 6 and 7. To get IE 7 you currently need to use the beta version of IEs4Linux.
Topics: Linux, Open Source, Web Development
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I have switched to KFtpGrabber on my Kubuntu box. Not sure if you tried it or not… but it works swell.
Great blog, I’ve added it to my feed list!
Thanks Keith! I will give KFtpGrabber a shot, I am definitely in an experimental phase right now as I wait for the new release of Fedora to come out at the end of the month – I will try about anything. In fact, I am considering doing a full switch over to KDE, the new version is looking really promising.
Greetings,
Just wanted to say I love your web layout.
I am a noob at designing (app dev at heart windows though) in a linux environment. I am about to change this around… the latest in Microsoft flops has finally convinced me I’m ready to move on to something better ( I Hope! =D )
My experience lays in developing in Microsoft’s Visual Studio IDE’s… So finally this comes to the real question(s)
1) Is there something in the penguin world that offers the same IDE?
2) How in the world do you get your table edges to round out like that?! Code? Callable class? Img?
Basically, I’m starting my linux adventures tonight… I’m taking a POS machine that is marked for decommision from my company (I am desktop support and LAN manager at one of our branches) and will begin w/ Fedora. Any info/advise would be awesome (hardware, books, forums, irc)… this article really hit the spot for me as well… I’m really stoked that there is a img/video dev that is free (Cost of Adobe always kept me from pushing into the newer world of the web…I’ve only just begun handling the .NET world (2yrs) ) Lack of ability to add video custom images to my pages has always left me frustrated and left out.
Any information would be great! Links, personal advise… anything =)
-Morgan
Thanks Morgan! I am currently working out a new design and appreciate your comment.
1) If you are interested in Visual Studio in the Linux world, then you need to investigate Mono. It is basically the open source version of .NET – as for the IDE, after you install Fedora, look for the
monodeveloppackage. It is an IDE designed for Mono.2) The rounded corners are images used as
divbackgrounds. I would not even try to implement something like that using tables. View the source code for a better understanding.If you are starting out with Fedora, then you will likely want to head over to the Fedora Forums and do some research. Most of the issues you run into will likely be covered (and hopefully resolved) there.
Good luck!
Your part about Internet Explorer 7 in IEs4Linux is misleading. While it is nice to have for testing web layouts as a web developer (for compatibility, Internet Explorer 6’s dominance makes it best), IE7 on IEs4Linux is simply the rendering engine in an old IE shell. It is very unstable as well making it barely usable. You would never want to use it for viewing more than testing.
And I would recommend staying away from Internet Explorer at large for now. There are enough great web browser options on Linux that you shouldn’t need IEs4Linux (Firefox, Konqueror, Opera, Seamonkey, Epiphany, Kazehakase, hv3, etc.)
Sorry to mislead you – it seems to me that the post is not advocating the use of IE for web-browsing and that it is to only be used to illustrate the rendering flaws of the IE engines.
That being said, I currently do not recommend the use of IEs4Linux, or MultipleIEs for that matter. I have found in several instances that these hacks do not always accurately render HTML in the same fashion as the real IE6 or IE7.
I feel that the only true method for running these browsers, without having a partition dedicated to a Windows installation, is through virtualization. I run Windows XP through Sun’s VirtualBox for native runs of IE6 and IE7 (not to mention Photoshop). I will post a tutorial for this process as soon as I have time.
gedit’s always been good enough for coding, although I do think its worth checking out more advanced tools. I’m not too sure on that because I’ve never really looked at any.
On the browser testing front, I’ve always fired up VirtualBox to test in IE and the like. Gave IE4Linux a go, but it gave me a dodgy memory leak problem, so I’ve stayed away from that for a while.
For web grahpics, I suggest the vector tool Inkscape. I’ve used it for stuff from doing site mockups to buttons.
FileZilla’s been good for file uploading, but I could really do with something thats like the upload tool thats built into Dreamweaver, just updating the files which have been changed locally.
Oh, and don’t forget XAMPP, cos uploading files constantly to the internet is just overrated. :p