Chapter 2
Setting Up Your Web Development Home
IN THIS CHAPTER
Understanding the need for a web development environment
Gathering the tools you need for a local development setup
Installing a local web development environment on a Windows PC
Installing a local web development environment on a Mac
Learning what to look for in a good text editor
He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.
— JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
One of the truly amazing things about web development is that, with the exception of the databases on the server, all you ever work with are basic text files. But surely all the structure you add with HTML tags requires some obscure and complex file type? No way, José: It’s text all the way down. What about all that formatting stuff associated with CSS? Nope: nothing but text. PHP? Text. JavaScript and jQuery? Text and, again, text.
What this text-only landscape means is that you don’t need any highfalutin, high-priced software to develop for ...
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