In this class we will be building websites using a client-server development architecture – you need to setup some software on the your own computer and there is also software that needs to be setup on your server.
This post will discuss the software and setup that you need to have running on the computer you use to work on your projects. I will discuss how to set up the webserver environment for this class in another post.
- Adobe Dreamweaver CS5
- Adobe Extension Manager & Adobe Widget Browser
- Mozilla Firefox and/or Google Chrome
- Firebug and DOM Inspector, or equivalent tool
- MySQL Workbench
- Support files for Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 with PHP
Dreamweaver
You should install the Dreamweaver CS5 11.0.3 updater to have the latest HTML5 & CSS3 features available.
Adobe Extension Manager & Adobe Widget Browser are Adobe Air applications that are available right in Dreamweaver CS5. They include many jQuery and other useful widgets.
Using the Adobe Widget Browser.
Browsers & Debugging Plugins
In the past 2 years, browsers have evolved very quickly toward new standards that web designers should be taking advantage of now. My philosophy is to teach the cutting edge of capability in web standards, even if this means leaning away from strict adherence to w3c compliance of adopted standards. This does NOT mean sacrificing accessibility or functionality, but may mean that users on IE7 or IE8 miss out on some of your design features. IE9 beta seems to headed in the right direction and will hopefully be in production before this semester is over. Given this, I suggest you use production versions of Firefox or Chrome as the browser that you develop and test your website for. These browsers have the standards compliance and debugging tools for the assignments we will be working on.
MySQL Workbench
This class may be an introduction to SQL database servers for many of you. We will be using MySQL as the database server and will be installing databases into your SRJC server account during the first class. In the classroom and on your own personal computers we will be using MySQL Workbench as the tool to develop our database components. You can download the standard version at their website.
The textbook we are using, by David Powers, promises “you’ll be able to move beyond Dreamweaver’s built-in server behaviors to add practical functionlity to your website, such as sending email in plain text and HTML, uploading files, and adding attachments to email, as well as building a simple content management system.” The book comes with a CD of support files which can also be downloaded here, which include starter files for his tutorials and the Zend framework. David Powers is a well known and respected expert on Dreamweaver’s advanced features and I have taught this class with previous books that he has authored.