Web development tools
8th February 2011
When the first websites appeared in the early 1990s, the only web development tools available were text editors such as Windows Notepad or the Unix 'vi' command. In the few years that followed, a number of more sophisticated web development tools were created – Allaire's Homesite, Hotdog Pro and Macromedia Dreamweaver to name a few. All of these web development tools reduced the burden on the website developer by providing 'What You See Is What You Get' (WYSIWYG) visual environments, providing word processor-like functionality for website development.
These first web development tools provided a stepping stone for many, allowing websites to be created without the need for a user to understand the intricacies of the underlying HTML mark-up language. With time, these web development tools became increasingly complex – site-wide templates could be defined, from which each web page would inherit a common look and feel. However, in the wrong hands, these web developments tools would often create unusable websites with dead links, Javascript problems and accessibility problems. All but a few key web development tools lacked key features and quickly became unsupported or unavailable.
While recognising the power of these early web development tools, Thirdrock has always exercised caution and decided against using them widely to support mission-critical web developments. To us, the remit of web development tools goes far beyond HTML editors. When we talk about web development tools, we're talking about UML modelling tools that capture and model your company’s underlying business processes, database design tools, and Macromedia Flash. Our ultimate web development tool is our tried-and-tested web development framework, including our innovative AJAX framework to quickly build modern-looking websites. All of our web development tools help us to build solid, scalable websites quickly and with your future needs in-mind.
Thirdrock thinks...
- A new intranet for The Lighthouse Group - web development in action
- Off-the-shelf or bespoke development?
- Content management systems and you – one size never fits all
- Introduction to Accessibility
- Are you being served? A more technical view
- Are you being served? dotNET vs PHP vs Java vs Cold Fusion et al
- The Facebook generation
- Source control and configuration
- In-memory caching using memcache
- Web security built-in
- Covering the bases
- Web development tools
- Web development
- Web application development
