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 just a few exceptions — such as images, media files, and server databases — 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 and JavaScript? Text and, again, text.
What this text-only landscape means is that you don’t need any highfalutin, high-priced software to ...