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Web design software

Web design software can be split into two different branches: server side software and client side software.

Server side software runs at different levels which is collectively called a “stack”. In web development, the lowest level of the stack is the operating system, followed by the web server, the database server and finally scripting engine. The website code itself is said to run “on the stack”.

  • LAMP / WIMP
    http://bitnami.org/stack/wampstack
    Arguably the most popular stack is the Linux operating system, Apache web server, MySQL database and PHP scripting language (LAMP). It has a windows counterpart with the first two parts being replaced by Windows and IIS or Apache (WIMP/WAMP). The fastest and easiest way to get started is to use an installer that gives you everything you need for a web server in one package.

  • Microsoft web platform
    http://www.microsoft.com/web/
    Microsoft has it's own preferred stack that contains no open source software (LAMP is 100% free software). They don't use an acronym, but it is based on Windows, IIS, SQL server and ASP.Net. The package also includes client side software with a light version of Visual studio.

These stacks are used for dynamic, database driven websites. But technically all you really need to create a basic static web page is a text editor and a web browser. Here are a few essential web development tools.

  • Notepad++
    http://notepad-plus-plus.org/
    An experienced web developer will hand craft their markup using a text editor. This editing tool offers syntax highlighting in a number of different programming languages.

  • Komposer
    http://www.kompozer.net/
    However, budding web designers might want to start with a WYSIWYG editor that generates markup automatically.

  • Filezilla
    http://filezilla.net/
    Eventually every developer will need to transfer their website to a production server. This is almost always done using the file transfer protocol (FTP).

  • Firebug
    http://getfirebug.com/
    An absolutely essential Firefox web browser extension that will help you find and debug all types of website issues.

There are without a doubt thousands more web design software packages that could be added to this list. However, we decided to limit the list to only essential software that is free to download.