Everything a Web Developer Needs to Get Started

Ever consider Web Development as a career? The following list of free resources will help you get up-and-running as a Web Developer.

PHP – Currently the most popular and widely used web development platform in the world.  After starting my software/web development career several years ago in the world of Microsoft, it was a relief to see that there was a simple solution out there that made far more sense (and was free).  PHP is also the “P” in LAMP, which is an acronym for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP – a combination of technologies forming an open source development environment.
XAMPP – Configuring a web development environment couldn’t be easier, with XAMPP a development server can be up and running within a half hour instead of several hours.  It installs and configures PHP, MySQL, and Apache on your operating system.
PSPad – There are many great text editors out there, I just happen to prefer PSPad.
FireFox – A browser that can be extended by installing web developer friendly plugins, here are my favorites:

• Firebug – Allows you to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page
• Web Developer Toolbar – Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools
• MeasureIt – Draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage
• ColorZilla – Advanced eyedropper, color picker, page zoomer and more
• HTML Validator – Adds HTML validation inside Firefox
• Operator – Finds microformats and other semantic data that are on many web pages
• ScreenGrab – Captures an image of what you can see in the window, the entire page, just a selection
• YSlow – Analyzes web pages and tells you why they’re slow based on Yahoo’s high performance rules

jQuery – A JavaScript library and AJAX utility.
Wordpress and WordPress MU – Blogging tools and CMS publishing platforms. (not just for blogs anymore)
TinyMCE – A JavaScript WYSIWYG editor for content entry on your websites.
phpMailer – An advanced PHP class for sending emails from your web applications.
SWFUploader – A multi-file flash uploading tool for your website.
Silk Icons – 1000 free web icons.
Gimp – A free image editing tool which is a great alternative to Adobe’s Photoshop.