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.

How To Create Barcodes in PHP

A few years ago I needed a way to generate barcodes on-the-fly using PHP, at the time there were several solutions available at a steep cost, so I wrote this script that generates barcodes in four barcode formats including Code 128, Code 39, Code 2of5, and Codabar. With a little over 100 lines of code you have the options of “vertical” or “horizontal” display, varying barcode heights, and one of four barcode formats. It does require the GD Library to be installed as a module in PHP.

This code is available for use under the MIT License

View the code here: http://www.davidscotttufts.com/code/barcode.phps

Example 1:

Parameters:
Text: “0″ (Default)
Size: “20″ (Default)
Code Type: “Code128″ (Default)
Orientation: “Horizontal” (Default)

HTML Source Code:

Result:

Example 2:

Parameters:
Text: “testing”
Size: “20″ (Default)
Code Type: “Code128″ (Default)
Orientation: “Horizontal” (Default)

HTML Source Code:

Result:

Example 3:

Parameters:
Text: “TESTING”
Size: “40″
Code Type: “Code39″
Orientation: “Horizontal” (Default)

HTML Source Code:

Result:

Example 4:

Parameters:
Text: “12345″
Size: “40″
Code Type: “Code25″
Orientation: “Horizontal” (Default)

HTML Source Code:

Result:

Example 5:

Parameters:
Text: “123ABC”
Size: “40″
Code Type: “Codabar”
Orientation: “Horizontal” (Default)

HTML Source Code:

Result:

Example 6:

Parameters:
Text: “The Real David Tufts”
Size: “40″
Code Type: “Code128″ (Default)
Orientation: “Vertical”

HTML Source Code:

Result:

Please leave comments with additions or improvements to this script. One possible area of improvement for Code 128 is figuring out how to add keyboard commands (i.e. SHIFT, DEL, FNC 1, etc.) to the barcode.

Again, you can view the code here: http://www.davidscotttufts.com/code/barcode.phps