PHP, CSS, HTML, Web & beyond

What better way to start out?
With the complete basics :)

We cannot develop good applications without the appropriate tools. A bit like a carpenter doing some wood job without the perfect hammer or pincer.

I'm gonna show you 5 awesome applications that will change the way you program and develop.

This is without a doubt one of the tools that has helped me the most all these years.
Easy to use, lightweight and groups all the features you need while debugging or analyzing a website.



From all the features I find the following the most important:

• Convert POSTs to GETs


• Cookie Information


• Current Window Size


• Disable Styles


• Display Form Details


• Enable Autocompletion


• Hide Images


• Outline Block Level Elements


• Outline Images Without Alt Tags


• Outline Table Cells


• Resize to 640x480


• Resize to 800x600


• Resize to 1024x768


• Validate CSS


• Validate HTML


• Validate Section 508 Accessibility


• Validate WAI Accessibility


• View Source


• View Generated Source

I personally use the View Generated Source a lot when I'm developing AJAX supported applications.

You can get this plugin here.




Originally created for Mac OSX (MAMP - Mac Apache MySQL and PHP) this was, for me, the best application I've tried.
It does 3 in 1 one-click-support for a complete web server directly on your Mac. No need to do hard configurations. Just set the port to be used by Apache and MySQL and you're set. (I used 8888 for apache and 8889 for MySQL)



Above all other functionalities it really shines when you need to continue working and you are not able to get an Internet connection (Yes it did happen to me a couple of times), just use MAMP widget, start your servers and access your own server by going to "http://localhost:8888".
As simple as that!

WAMP as you probably figured out by now is the same application but this time for Windows.
WAMP is not as simples to set up as MAMP, but nether less, it keeps the do-it-simple.



Download MAMP or WAMP





I know this one is for Mac OSX only but I cannot go by a not mentioning it.
An awesome tool for developing and completely managing you websites projects.





Coda has all the fancy tools that any web developer uses on they're daily basis.

Download it at Coda



Sequel Pro is the perfect tool for quick and easy management of a database (MySQL one).

Very simple and easy to use.
It allows all normal views, Table, Content and SQL, it has SQL code verification and support for various databases.



As for windows, from what I've seen, there aren't many applications that can surpass MySQL Administrator.
Created by MySQL development team this is The tool for MySQL management, and the good thing about it, it's free :)



Download Sequel Pro
Download Sequel Pro



A few months ago I didn't know about this application, but as soon as I got in contact with it I just started to love it.

It's data modeling made easy and fast. The great thing about this piece of software is the ability to export to SQL, most of the types as supported.



Download Power*Architect

There are a lot more good apps and I only chose these ones for they're utility and easy to use features.

Feel free to comment and suggest a few more.