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Applications Using Linux Web Development Your Choice

Favorite Linux Apps: Web Coding

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.

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