For the purposes of completing the exercises in this book, you will need a text editor. Most PCs will come with one—usually Notepad on Microsoft Windows, or TextEdit on Mac OS X. There are literally thousands available for free or low cost, with varying degrees of features.
If you are an existing developer, you will likely have your editor of choice already; for those of you who are new to editing, it is a matter of trying a few, and seeing which you prefer. There are some features I would recommend you enable or use:
- View line numbers: This feature is handy during validating and debugging any scripts that you write. This can be of particular help when requesting assistance in the forums, as others can indicate any line(s) at fault, and help provide a fix or workaround.
- View syntax colors: Most editors will have this feature switched on by default. This feature displays code using different colors, which helps you to identify different syntax, or broken mark-up or CSS rules.
- Text wrapping: This allows the editor to wrap code lines around onto the next line, which reduces the need to scroll through long lines of code when editing. It makes it easier to scroll through a nice, correctly indented, block of code.
You may also want an editor which allows you to upload files using FTP, or view your local directories. This avoids the need to go hunting for files in your OS's file explorer, or using an external FTP application to get copies of files, and cuts down the time it takes to edit files. To view the results of the experiments and samples, you will need a browser—jQuery Tools uses CSS3 styling, so a modern browser will provide the most feature-rich and design-rich experience. This includes the following:
- Firefox 2.0+
- Internet Explorer 7+
- Safari 3+
- Opera 9+
- Chrome 1+
Any of these browsers can be downloaded for free from the Internet. If you are using Internet Explorer or Firefox and if you do not already have them installed, it is strongly recommended that you also install or activate the appropriate developer toolbar for your chosen browser:
- IE Developer Toolbar: It is available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=18359
- Firebug: Developer tool for Firefox, which can be downloaded from http://www.getfirebug.com
- Chrome: This is already built in, and can be activated by right-clicking an element and selecting Inspect element
- Safari: You can activate its developer toolbar under the Advanced tab in Safari Preferences
- Opera: You can download its developer toolbar from http://www.opera.com/dragonfly/
All will be very useful in helping you debug your scripts, when designing sites that use jQuery Tools.