While there are numerous posts and tutorials detailing web development tools for Windows and Mac operating systems scattered throughout the internet, there are very little for Linux. I’ll show and describe the tools I use to code PHP, Python, Javascript, HTML and CSS on a Linux platform (Ubuntu 8.10). None of these tools are distro specific.

Netbeans

Netbeans is a full featured IDE written in Java by Sun. Some people prefer Eclipse and Eclipse based IDEs (Aptana) but I find them slow and laggy on my system. The current Netbeans version in the Ubuntu repositories is 6.1, whlie this is good for Java and C++ developement, PHP support wasn’t included until 6.5.X. You can download the PHP package here – 26mb. Netbeans comes with standard project support, code completion, syntax highlighting and searching. What sets Netbeans apart from the rest is that it has on the fly PHP debugging (that works!). It also has version control support out of the box and in general it’s very quick.

Gedit

Gedit is the default text editor for GNOME, if you use GNOME, chances are it is already installed. If not you can find it by the package name gedit in your distro’s repository. The KDE equivalent is Kate. By itself it is just a text editor, but with a few plugins you can turn it into a mini IDE. You can view all of the available plugins here they range from version control to a lorem ipsum generator. I recommend you install the following:

• Browser preview – Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer (done through ies4linux)
• Python Console – Supports PyGTK, PyQT and Tkinter. Think of an in-editor IDLE
• File Browser – Gives a pane to view files. Comes with Gedit out of the box.
• Code Snippets – Allows you to type a few characters and expand them to full code snippets. Comes with Gedit out of the box.

Heidi SQL

The choice of SQL editor largely depends upon the person as there are many with similar features. I prefer HeidiSQL. Although there are no native builds of HeidiSQL for Linux, it runs perfectly under WINE. I find it easier to use than phpmyadmin as content loads seamlessly and you can be connected to several different servers simultaneously.

Firefox

Although Firefox is primarily a web browser, there have been many creative addons released that add extra functionality to it. I won’t cover Firebug as there are many articles and tutorials out there but I will bring your attention to Pencil. Pencil allows you to prototype user interfaces. It includes Microsoft Windows and GTK+ widgets that you can drag and drop onto a palette. Although it doesn’t actually generate an XML file like the Glade Interface Designer does, it allows for rapid prototyping for both desktop and web. As it’s a firefox addon it’s cross platform, so you can share interfaces you make with colleagues.

Filezilla

Filezilla is an open source cross-platform FTP client. It has an easy to use five pane interface. Two for local directories and files, two for remote directories and files and one for the status of transferring files. Filezilla can also connect through proxies or sFTP. One of my favourite features of Filezilla is that you can edit remote files on the fly. Just right click on the file and choose the edit option and it will download the contents and open it in your specified editor. When you save the file it will automatically re-upload itself to the server.