The last 3+ years or so has seen some very useful web development application tools being introduced to streamline the process of both creating and further developing websites. Here at 4GoodHosting we are always keen to offer more to our clients as part of being a quality Canadian web hosting provider, and we know that more than a few of you are the webmaster behind your website. In this week’s blog we are going to offer our recommendations on some of them that have really made the grade in our opinion and have much promise in allowing you to develop and expand upon your website. Developer Tools Notepad ++ - Choosing Notepad to write or edit your code is still a viable option, but there’s the potential to increase your productivity and efficiency with Notepad++. Among the more notable improvements with ++, it has syntax highlighting and syntax folding features that simplify the process of weeding out bugs, and a well designed tabbed interface allows you to work on multiple documents. In addition, Notepad++ boasts an auto-completion feature that makes writing code that much faster (relative to using Notepad). Notepad++ is available as both a full install and as a portable app. FileZilla - FileZilla is regarded as one of the best free FTP, SFTP, and FTPS clients around. Aside from being available for multiple platforms (Mac OSX, Linux, & Windows), it is relatively easy to navigate and use. It’s optimized for allowing webmasters to manually backup the files on their sites’ FTP servers and while FileZilla is only available as a full installer, it’s still really a top notch tool and worth the space if you’re especially active. Database Browser - This free tool lets you easily connect to databases, as well as modify data on your DBs and export or import data plus run SQL scripts any time you like. Notable supported database servers include MS Sql Server, ODBC, Oracle, MySql, BDE, SQLite, Firebird, and Interbase, among others. Like Notepad++, the program is available as both a portable app and full Windows installer. XAMPP - XAMPP gets high marks for the fact it is an extremely important tool...
