Popular Open Source IDEs for Web Development

Let us explore popular open source IDEs for Web development. The IDEs mentioned here are just to whet the appetite of readers so that they may delve deeper into the subject. The article does not go too deep into specifics but informs just enough to rouse

P rogrammers are always looking for a handy piece of software that acts as a code editor, compiler and debugger, while also providing a fancy GUI. One doesn’t wish to type every piece of code in the text editor or use the command prompt. IDEs always maximise productivity by saving time and removing redundant tasks. For such reasons programmers look for IDEs that provide a large range of features or those that meet their specific requirements. This article lists out a few open source IDEs used for Web development. Note that they are not ranked in any particular order.

Eclipse Eclipse is a free and open source community of tools and projects and collaborative working groups, on which many development frameworks like Web projects and applications are based. Most developers prefer IDEs rather than console-like text editors. Eclipse projects are focused on building an open development platform comprising extensible frameworks, tools and runtimes for building, deploying and managing software across its life cycle.

Aptana Studio Aptana Studio is another widely used IDE for Web development. It’s available either as a standalone app or as a plugin for Eclipse. Aptana (the company) also offers hosting

for your projects, so if you use that service, the IDE ties in those services perfectly. It’s based on Eclipse, and supports JavaScript, HTML, DOM, CSS, code-completion, JavaScript debug capabilities, etc.

Joomla Joomla is a content management system (CMS) that allows users to build websites and online applications. It is an easyto-use, extensible open source software. This CMS keeps track of every piece of content on your website—photos, text, music or videos. It is used in many corporate websites, portals, online news magazines, e-commerce sites, for online reservations, government applications, SME business websites... and the list goes on. Joomla is offered under GPL version 2.0 and its source code can be found at https:// github.com/joomla.

Bluefish Bluefish is a full-featured Web editor for developers and Web programmers, which runs on Linux, Windows or Mac. It’s an open source project released under the GNU license. It is considered by far the most powerful among HTML editors. Features include a code-sensitive spell check, auto-complete in many different languages (HTML, PHP, CSS, etc), snippets, project management and auto-save.