As your skill set grows, you’ll probably find it increasingly helpful to start collecting a set of software tools to help you developing. The first thing you’d do well to get would be a good text editor. Fortunately, both Windows and Macs come with text editors; Notepad and TextEdit respectively. Unfortunately, Notepad (and possibly TextEdit; I’ve never really used it) sucks like a black hole when it comes to web development. It can be done, but so can driving with your knees, and neither are exactly the best ways of doing their respective tasks.
If you get really into web development, you’ll probably want to use an IDE. If you’re just starting out, however, you probably want to go with a simple expanded text editor. If you’re a Windows user, I’d recommend that you give Notepad++ a try. I’ve been using it since not long after I started seriously doing web development, and I’ve never looked back. There are a lot of features, but you don’t need to know them to be able to use the program. It has syntax highlighting for a number of different languages, including JavaScript, PHP, and Perl. It can even highlight the syntax for different languages, depending on the context, e.g. if you’re typing an HTML page with some JavaScript in it, it can tell what parts are JavaScript and highlight them correctly.
The plugins, however, are what really make me like this program. There’s an FTP plugin, a file browser, and my favorite, an auto-complete plugin, and even a text expander that I absolutely love! I just think that it can really grow with you, increasing its capabilities as you increase yours.
Oh, and it’s free. That’s nice too.
If you are on a Mac, however, you are sadly unable to use Notepad++, as it is Windows only. If you’re willing to spend some money, I’d suggest looking at Coda, which costs $99. While that may seem a bit expensive, I’ve heard nothing but good things about Coda from people who use it, though I’ve never used it myself. It does also come with a 14-day trial period.
Other free, cross-platform, editors I’ve seen include Komodo Edit (the full IDE costs money, but the text editor is free) and jEdit. If these don’t meet your needs, keep looking. There are a bunch of free text editors out there, and I’m sure one will match up with what you need.
Well, that’ll about wrap it up. In future I’ll probably do a post on how to get the most out of Notepad++, but hopefully this is enough to get y’all started. Take care!