Minimizing Software Tools

[Guest Reesty]

I'm new to this forum and would like to say HELLO As for the topic...I have read in a few places where people have posted questions relating to what they should learn in the sphere of developing web sites. Quite often the responses have been to learn html, css, javascript, php, sql etc - a number of different tools.Considering the software technology available today and where it might be heading, is there a way of minimizing the amount of tools required for development? Only one language for client-side and server-side scripting for example?More to the point - What is the stripped-down set of tools that can still be used to create complex web sites and what packages integrate these into the least amount of development environments?Your suggestions/opinions would be appreciated.- Wayne

[Kcarson]

Wayne,Welcome, as far as the best tools to learn and trying to keep it to a minimum, that is kind of hard because they all complement each other. For starters, you will need to learn HTML/XHTML, next you need to learn CSS, after that you need to evaluate what your needs are and you can then decide either on a Client-Side Scripting language (probably Javascript) or a Server-Side Scripting Language (either PHP or ASP, your choice). You won't need to learn SQL until you start working with databases, and when you do begin it won't take long to get the information you need. As a whole, the tutorials on this site (http://www.w3schools.com) are very short, yet packed with useful information. None of them should take long to finish (a few hours each probably, maybe more for some of the scripting languages) and they will give you a good overall picture of what each language can do, from there you can decide which points you want to learn more about. I know it may seem daunting with all the languages, but you don't have to be an expert in each in order to create a good website, just start at the beginning and start using the knowledge as you acquire it.Best of luck.

[Skemcin]

Welcome to the W3Schools discussion forum. You have a very good question. At the bare minimum, I could develop with just Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Dreamweaver, and (of course) a web browser - Firefox with the Web Developer extension is my recommendation.Photoshop can be used for most of my graphical needs. I cannot produce animated graphics (without Image Ready - whihc comes with it) and it cannot produce Flash movies either - but thats not the majority of the work you need to do to be a developer.Dreamweaver - please in CODE MODE only - has everything you really need. It's great for coding Cold Fusion pages (my specialty) since it has all the extra tool bars you need to make your programming efforts more efficient. It also has the php and asp coding libraries and can therefore be used for that. It has full FTP support and other file management tools like file check-in and check-out security to reduce the probability of overwriting someone elses changes.Firefox - with the Web Developer extension, Firefox is the most powerful and most standard compliant browser out there - and its free. Its just the best browser to use hands down.Notes: Obviously there are more tools I use - you asked about the minimum - and there you have it. The Cold Fusion server is a free download as well, so even without IIS installed on my PC, I can still develop Cold Fusion applications locally before deploying them.Other applications you will might need (since you mention scripting languages) would include a database of some sort. MySQL is free as well which would make it an obvious choice as well. However, just because you use a scripting language doesn't mean you have to have a database - but its naturally something you use to take advantage of the scripting languages capabilites.All in all, I've only had to pay for Photoshop and Dreamweaver (part of Macromedia Studio MX) - not a bad investment over the last 10+ years.