My Favourite Free Mac Website Development Programs
Posted by baal | Filed under Software
I love designing websites and webpages on my Macbook. I found it quite difficult to track down really good free software to build websites, though – so I’ve written a short list of programs I’ve used, to save you the trouble of searching far and wide. They’re all pretty good.
1. Eclipse with the Aptana Plug-In (open source and free if you get the Community Edition)
Aptana is a fully-featured IDE (which I think stands for “integrated development environment”). It allows you to create websites using (X)HTML, CSS, PHP, (via a plug-in), Ruby On Rails, Javascript, etc. What I really love about this program is its live previews (in multiple browsers) and auto-code completion, which allows for crazy experiments with formatting and floating divs. In fact, it can do pretty much everything you’d ever need, and in a way that seems to develop as you learn; it combines perfectly with the W3 web-building tutorials here.
Aptana is code-based, rather than What You See Is What You Get, which suits me fine; however, if you’d prefer to use a Mac WYSIWYG editor, I’d recommend either Amaya or Kompozer, which are both open source (though beware – when I tried that last program, it kept on formatting my source code in very odd ways when I switched between code and design views; and Amaya seems not to be able to render web pages properly – even well-made ones, like Google; but all WYSIWYG editors mess around with your code to some extent, I think.)
Oh, yes: the only downside (for me) of Aptana is that it’s programmed in Java, which means it can slow down a bit if you’re editing large files.
2. Smultron (donationware)
Smultron is a swift and light text editor, for pure and simple coding in (X)HTML, CSS, etc. It can cope with all kinds of languages.
3. Cyberduck (donationware)
If you have a remote server, you need to be able to upload content to it, create new (sub)folders, etc.; Cyberduck is a great FTP and SFTP program with a lot of useful features. I use it whenever I’m editing this site.
4. Seashore (open source)
A good, basic image manipulation program.
5. GIMP (open source)
Almost a Photoshop rival; and it’s open source, so it’s free to use and to customise, too.
6. AFELO (donationware)
A useful batch image compressor and simple editor.
7. Audacity (open source)
Great for recording and editing MP3s, etc., for podcasts.