Mac
OS X web
development and recommended FREE tools
Netbeans PHP
IDE with
Xdebug, and MAMP (Apache
& MySQL)
Plus some
other tools
making working with MAC OS
X easier!
We said some time ago bye bye to Windows
software and
Windows computers.
Why? Nu, mostly because of never ending hacking, and trojan placement
attempts. And also
because some
graphical tools are working better on Mac computers, and finally the
much more
silent work
of our Mac's, even when the CPU is hard working, makes our work
more
enjoyable.
First of all, we use Macbooks (Intel) with 4GB
RAM. Problem was to find some good firewall and Antivirus (free) for
our
computers. After lang research we use now as firewall WaterRoof
(2.1) from hanynet.com, and
iAntiVirus
from
PcTools. Nice tools,
eating not to much system resources, and best of all both are free.
After that we were seeking a good Xhtml
editor with WYSIWYG abilities, and we
ended up with Amaya
11.1. An awesome
Editor. When installed it crashes until you reboot once, and then it
works like
a charm. At least on our computers. We will not more miss it.
It needs a bit training, as its
handling is a
bit unusual if you are used of NVU or Kompozer or equal editors, but we
trust
that anybody quickly learns how to handle this tool. We surely not will
give up
on it. Please note that Amaya seems sometimes frozen, don't worry,
wait, take a
cup of.. or glass of .., its worthwhile. We hope that those Amaya
developers do soon fix that inconvinient problem that Amaya goes slow
when pages are a bit large (like this page) on any Mac , but even, if
inconinient, it
is wortwhile to use this nice authoring tool meanwhile. Time is of
paramount
essence, but by the end Amaya helps you to avoid a lot errors if you
use Xhtml
webs. It would be nice if Amaya correct also double style instructions,
like if
you set in body style text-align:justify and you put into the body
something like
<p style="text-align:justify;"> per example
excidentially, Amaya does not remove
those
irrelevant double instructions. Nothing is perfect, and any good
webmaster will
check his code, and remove those senseless extra instructions we trust.
Nevertheless, at least we cannot work without Amaya! As backup we use
Kompzer at our Mac's, also not an alround tools for MAC, BUT in
combination with Amaya all we need.
Then we entered the main problem, we are PHP
programmers, and Amaya is only our tool for designing of web pages,
checking
the ABC, and to set Xhtml proper codings for pages or page parts. We
needed
first of all one easy installation of Apache and MySQL, to test our web
developments off-line (at our development computers), and to check for
all
possible problems. We tried XAMPP, nice under Windows, but to
complicated to
adjust under MAC OS X conditions. Sorry Apachefriends, but maybe
sometimes you
fix that too, and with pleasure we return to XAMPP, as we used it with
great
satisfaction under Windows for many years. Then we tried and sticked
with MAMP.
Its also free, and it is easy to install, is easy to configure, and
using the
http alias instructions allows us to run different project on one
computer
without virtual hosting settings! (XAMPP does not allow that!) Nice,
easy, and
stable. Also as XAMPP has big problems under MAC OS X to setup Xdebug
for
debugging of script, MAMP has the same... Nu, we resolved it for MAMP,
more
later below.
Next n our list was a good PHP IDE, we tested
several, but
even if very powerfully, none did real satisfy us, as we expect from
such IDE
that xhtml, html, and PHP rules are proper handled. We found by chance
the
awesome Netbeens PHP
IDE, which was not willing to co-operate with
XAMPP, but
without any problem with MAMP! Having now installed this tools, we
faced an new
big problem, no debugger worked under MAC OS X well! We went back to
XAMPP, and
tried a lot, but no success. Posting our trouble at the XAMPP forum
caused that
a helpful person send us a compiled Xdebug.so for XAMPP. Trying now for
some
days to get XAMPP accepting it, we gave up, and one of our
co-workers did
use this xdebug.so under MAMP as test, and from the first second Netbeans and
MAMP
worked extremely fine with Xdebug! Installing instructions
below.
So, our next problem was to get any good browser
with fine webmaster tools as add-on, working well with Netbeans and MAMP.
Nu, also
not a big problem. Firefox
for MAC OS X with the add-ons like Web
Developer
1.1.6 and Total Validator 5.4 is doing the job fine. Not
forget NoScript and
WOT as
add-on! And you are done.
By the way, Total Validator offers an nice tool
download
for MAC OS X, allowing to validate any local web page in deep. Try it
out. Its
also free, but shows a lot of spelling errors for unknow words and
names, nice
way to encourage to buy the full version where you can correct the
spelling
database, but for us the basic version is enough!
Then we was set, but needed some extra tools to
make our
MAC's working more
smoothly. You
will find those
advises here!
If you have any question, feel free to
contact us at webmaster@askokonov.ru! If you like our article and
advise we
would appreciate any link to this page. In such case receive our
warmest
thank you. If you have and wish to publish here any comments, we will
add it, with your real
person
name, and your url! Linking is fine, and helps in ranking ;)
P.S. More tips and tricks you find here
regarding MAC OS X
and here
regarding HOW TO GET INTO GOOGLE WITHIN 2 weeks or less
without to pay
to much
for SEO specialists! Getting listed by Goggle is very easy and does not
need a
lot of SEO experiences. Click above and you will see its as easy as to
drink a
beer, or cup of coffee, or tea, if you wish!
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