My Top 3 tools for Web Programmers

The nice thing about talented programmers today is that many of them create softwares for users to enjoy for free and you can download it from the web. For that i salute those programmers! Cheers guys!

There are really lots of freeware nowadays. Too numerious to mention all. Others give you trial versions and expires for certain period of time and others are entirely free.

Maybe some of the most popular freewares, softwares that are absolutely FREE and doesn't require any software licence, are XAMPP, Notepad++, Photofiltre. These softwares, i could say, are needed by web programmers/designers like me.





XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use - just download, extract and start. If you want to create a dynamic web pages i think this software is one of the best that i can recomend. This is a 3 in one package and so easy to intall one click and you already have your mysql, PHP and Perl instantly. You can download them here :

* For Linux OS
* For Windows OS
* For Mac OS
* For Solaris OS

Notepad++ is a free source code editor and Notepad replacement, which supports several programming languages(Ada,ASP,Assembly,AutoIt,C,C#,C++,CSS,Flash AS,HTML,PHP and a lot lot more), running under the MS Windows environment. I use this often to my coding coz Primarily, very handy in space of my hard drive (2MB). Secondly, it does not let my computer comsume a lot of its memmory(very fast in opening and does not hang). Finally, one of my favorite about this software is the Macro. Macro enable you to record what you have coded and run it anytime you want to do it again and you don't need to open your files to copy paste it(it saves a lot of your time). You can download them here And it has a lot of other features like

Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding ( For the programs supported )

WYSIWYG (If you have a colour printer, print your source code (or whatever you want) in colour)

User Defined Syntax Highlighting ( It allows user to define his own language : not only the syntax highlighting keywords,but also the syntax folding keywords, comment keywords and the operators. ( screenshot1, screenshot2, screenshot3, screenshot4 ).

Auto-completion (For most supported languages, user can make his/her own API list (or download the api files from downloadsection). Once the api file is ready, type Ctrl+Space to launch this action "see screenshot". For more information about Auto-completion, please see Auto-completion HOWTO.)

Multi-View (You have two views at same time. That means you can visualize "edit" 2 different documents at the same time "screenshot". You can visualize "edit" in the 2 views one document at 2 different positions as well. The modification of document in one view will carry out in another view "i.e. you modify the SAME document when you are in clone mode, see screenshot".)

Regular Expression Search/Replace supported(You can search and replace one string in the document by using the regular expression.)
And a lot lot more to enjoy.

Photofiltre, is an image editing tools that has a lot of functionality like adobe photoshop. Though it does not have layers for you to enjoy i use this programs to a fast editing of my photos inorder for my Webpages to have a little flavor. Besides, photophiltre does not let your computer hang or load for a long time just opening it. You can Download it here.