Linux Gui Applications for Website Design/Development
If you’ve got a site to develop or design, it’s easy to set up a working web server based environment in Linux. As stated in another post, you will need an IDE-style text editor (or at the very least you’ll need an editor that lets you keep several files open at the same time).
Run your pages using a web server such as Apache
While there are a few ways to do this, installing XAMPP for Linux by Apache Friends is simple. It is free, well-documented, and you can set up a website very quickly. By default, the web server is not started at boot time, (which to me is a plus) and starting/restarting can be controlled by issuing a command at the terminal. XAMPP comes with MySQL and PHP 5, so it gives you just about everything you need to develop/create dynamic, database-driven web pages with the ability to reuse code (via PHP “include” directives).
Check your work in a few browsers to ensure consistency
If you’re running Linux it may seem a daunting task to evaluate your site’s appearance in Mac OS-X or Microsoft Windows. Daunting yes, but you can come close. Safari in Mac OS-X uses the “webkit” layout engine and you can view your pages in the konqueror web browser as a poor-man’s substitute. It’s not perfect, but it’s close. Mozilla firefox uses the Gecko layout engine so it won’t show you know how a site looks in Internet Explorer for Windows. Firefox has a browser plugin called “IE Tabs” but I’m not sure if this reasonably captures the look and behaviour of the native IE. Be sure to browse the Firefox Web Development add-ons page.