Web Editing Tools
99 percent of my development of Web pages is done on a PC running a Debian Linux derivative called "Ubuntu". It is a free, open-source distribution and for me has been a great alternative to the high price and bloat of Windows. On January 1, 2008, I started using Ubuntu exclusively on my notebook PC. Ubuntu comes with a text editor that has a lot more functionality than the basic text editor that comes with Windows. One of my favorite features is the syntax highlighting that the Ubuntu text editor has. Not only does it provide highlighting for HTML documents, but CSS and PHP as well as a host of other document types. The text editor is also very user-configurable.
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CSS syntax highlighting in the Ubuntu text editor
I used to be a big fan of the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editors, but over the years I have come to discover the control and power of the simple text editor and checking my work in a Web browser. And as I mentioned before, the Ubuntu text editor has also become my editor of choice for CSS and PHP files. It used to be that I needed to see the page in front of me so I didn't feel "lost", but gaining a greater understanding of CSS and (X)HTML has allowed me to conceptualize more in my mind.
One of the other HTML editors available in Ubuntu is called Screem. I have used this editor in the past, but unfortunately it has some sort of bug that causes it to crash. One of the features I like the most is the (context list?). Anyone who has used this feature can attest to how handy this feature can be in reducing the overall amount of typing required in coding. I believe there is a new version currently in development that will address the bugs in the current version. However, due to the instability of the program, I have had to seek alternative tools for my Web development.
Development Environment and Testing
As mentioned above, my editing is done on a notebook. When the pages are ready for testing, I upload them to an older Dell box (desktop PC) on my home network that has a server version of Ubuntu running on it. The server has what is called a LAMP installation (Linux+Apache+MySQL+PHP). Once again, this is a free distribution. Since Microsoft wants an arm and a leg for their competing products, I decided to go the way of open-source. Besides, LAMP is just better, more efficient, more powerful and more popular than the MS garbage. There is a reason why Unix/Linux installations (with Apache/MySQL/PHP) are more popular!
As I gain more knowledge in working with PHP and MySQL, testing of this functionality will also become a part of the Development and Testing cycle.
Validation
Once I get my pages how I want them to look and behave, one of the final phases before deployment to the Web server is to validate them using the tools available at W3C.org
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In one of my "past lives", I was a Software Validation Specialist (e.g. "software tester") for a major medical device manufacturer. As much as I enjoyed this line of work, I was limited by my lack of a 4-year degree of any sort. Because of this, I was not eligible to be assigned to most of the really cool projects. They were developing equipment that could do some pretty amazing things in the world of production automation and SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition). I had planned to go back to school for either Computer Science or Electrical Engineering, but it would have been on my own dime. At the hourly rate of pay I was getting (even though it was pretty high for a non-degreed person), there wasn't much money left over after paying bills and health/life insurance (I was working for a contract house so I was paying for my own health insurance).
I could read between the lines as far as what the future held for me in that line of work and at that company. As a result of this, I decided to return to the railroad industry. There are many days I wish I was still in that line of work, as our design team (mechanical and software engineers) was second to none and it was fascinating to see what solutions they could come up with. I did however gain a new perspective on how important it was to thoroughly test software and applications. It is this methodology that I bring along with me as a part of this project.
Once any errors found by the validator have been corrected, the pages go through a final round of testing to make sure the changes have not had an adverse impact on the desired appearance or behavior of the page(s). Then it's off to the Web server we go!