[MUSIC] Hi and welcome back. Before we get too far in to coding, I want to talk a little bit about web development tools. Now you hear we refer to tools a number of times during the course and it can be confusing exactly what is meant when we say this. But web developers like to talk about that the tools they use. Now for us this typically means some sort of text editor our tools are certainly not things like hammers and screwdrivers. And our text editors are usually operating systems, specifically, can be quite fancy. So operating systems like Windows and Mac. The two most commonly used platforms in types of computers. Have built in editors for instance on Windows that's Notepad and on the Mac it's TextEdit. And these are perfectly fine to use for our purposes in this course or for other work. But they're not the easiest to use, because even free text editors that we can use for web development have features that really outstrip Notepad and TextEdit. Aside from free tools, there are some of what I'll call big tools. And these are Dreamweaver, Eclipse, and Visual Studio. Now we'll look at their websites for these in just a moment. But these are very powerful popular with developers. None of them, well, I shouldn't say none of them. But most of them are not free and some of them, even though they're free, would prefer that you buy another version that's not free or that you make some sort of donation. And then we'll also look at tools that are completely free. And often we get what we pay for and some of these tools can be free, some of them can be commercial where there's a price, but it's somewhat reasonable. And others actually can be quite expensive. So we have to pick and choose. And for this course I'll be using a free tool which we'll look at in a moment, you'll see in many of the videos. And you're welcome to use the same one or something similar that works for your uses or your operating system. First Dreamweaver. Now Dreamweaver comes from Adobe you may remember them. They have Adobe Acrobats something most of us have issued on the internet to look at PDF files and here is their site. Notice there's a free trial, but eventually the free trial ends and you must buy it. Prices vary and eligibility for special prices vary. For instance, students and some organizations can often get competitive pricing for Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is not my preferred tool. Now, many developers love it. So you should, if you're interested, have a look and see if you like it as well. But sometimes I feel that certain tools, including Dreamweaver and others, can be a bit slow loading, a bit confusing, and have so many features that they're actually not as easy to use as I would like. Now, again, not everybody agrees with me about this with respect to Dreamweaver, and you can make your own decision When you're ready to use it. But again, for this course I'm going to recommend you use a free tool similar to the one I'm using or whatever you think meets your needs. So I mentioned Eclipse. Now, Eclipse, the current version here is Eclipse Neon which is their sort of code word for their most current product, Eclipse is free. Well, free, except they really would like it if you'd make a donation. Now, many developers use Eclipse. And Eclipse is not just used for the sort of development that we'll do in this course, which is sort of client side and so called front end development. But Eclipse is used for that purpose, and for server side development. And throughout the course, off and on in different lessons, we'll talk about those two kinds of main areas for development. So you can consider Eclipse, but Eclipse has some of the same weaknesses that Dreamweaver does. It is a large program. It is slow loading. It has many features, and it can be a little confusing, but when you need it, a tool like Dreamweaver or like Eclipse can really make your work a lot easier. So here we have the Visual Studio, which I mentioned. This is a tool from Microsoft. Now like the other two, especially like Eclipse, this can be used for both client-side and server-side development. That means, we can use it for things in this class or we could use it for other development we might do in the future. But, this is not a free tool. Now this is the community edition which can be downloaded and use in many cases for free. But the more full-fledged version of Visual Studio from Microsoft is definitely not free. Now depending on your situation, for instance if you're a student or work for some organizations, you can get free versions or low cost versions, so that's always something you might want to look into. Many developers make this their choice for developing professional websites. So while not free, it's definitely something to consider. So the tool that I'm going to use through most of this course is a plain text editor, or at least for the most part, and it's called Notepad++. Now, this is a free tool, and I am pretty sure that if we looked around here, we would find some case where they would like it if we would make some sort of donation or support them in some way, but this is not required unless you are so appreciative you'd like to. And so I won't go into the details of this one too much because you'll see it throughout the course. But one of the reasons I like it is because it loads quickly. And notice it colorizes text, so our code is much easier to read with this color coding. And then we'll look at another. This one is called Sublime. Now this is not free but it is relatively low cost. Many students like its default look where we have this dark background, but that can be changed, you could adjust that as you like, and it also colorizes text. This editor, Sublime, runs on both Windows and the Mac. I think it is quite popular with Mac users. So this is something you might want to consider. But as I mentioned this is also not a free editor. Though it is a very good quality. Not too confusing and it does move pretty quickly, which is something I personally appreciate. So that's my summary of some developement tools. This is certainly not an exhaustive look at development tools, there's always more, and you can choose the ones that work best for you. And sometimes you can choose one, use it for a while, and decide you'd like a different tool in the future. So you're not tied to one by using it, unless you really enjoy it. I'll see you next time.
