Free Downloads
Here are some free downloads you may find useful. Most of the applications or web sites listed below are things I find useful in my work as a web developer.
Web Browsers
Mozilla Firefox – The infamous open source, cross platform web browser that is Windows, Mac, and Linux compatible.
Google Chrome – The newest browser out there, best of all it’s Acid tested and produced by Google themselves. There’s even open source code available for Google Chrome.
Apple Safari – Claimed to be the fastest browser in the world. This web browser made my Apple is a great browser on Mac OS X and Windows Operating Systems.
Opera – An industry leader in Web browsers for the desktop, device and mobile markets. Opera has also received recognition for being faster, smaller and more standards-compliant.
Internet Explorer – The most common internet browser out there. It’s packaged with Windows, so if you are using Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 you most likely have it already.
Lynx – Linux / Unix terminal based browser. Great for double checking a web site for particular things like internal linking, and to double check that content is being displayed correctly.
Mozilla Thunderbird – Free email application from the same organization that develops the Mozilla Firefox web browser. Worth a shot if you don’t already have a favorite email app.
FTP
FileZilla – Great, free, cross platform FTP application. This application is constantly being updated and has all of the features you need to connect to your server through FTP. Server application available too.
Cyberduck – Free FTP client for Mac. If you need a standalone FTP application specifically built for Mac, this is the application for you.
FireFTP – FTP plug in for Mozilla Firefox. Very quick and easy way to connect to a web server via FTP.
Server Applications and Frameworks
Apache Web Server – With more than double the amount of web sites and web traffic than it’s closest competition, Microsoft IIS, Apache is the De Facto HTTP web server on the net.
MySQL – An extremely popular cross platform database server that a majority of web sites utilize.
PostgreSQL – Very powerful open source object-relational database system. A great choice if your web site or application requires a RDBMS.
PHP – The most common server side web scripting language out there. PHP is a good object oriented scripting language that allows you to build create great web sites and applications with a huge community to get help and inspiration from.
CakePHP – An incredibly powerful PHP framework that allows developers to create powerful and secure web sites and applications very quickly.
Ruby on Rails – An open-source web framework that’s optimized for programmer happiness and sustainable productivity.
osCommerce – A free, open source shopping cart system built on PHP and MySQL that can easily run on Windows and Linux Servers.
Wordpress – A free, open source blogging platform that is extremely popular and can be used as a content management system as well.
Joomla – An open source CMS built on PHP and MySQL.
Drupal – an open source content management platform. Equipped with a powerful blend of features, Drupal supports a variety of websites ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven websites.
Operating Systems
Ubuntu – A very stable Linux operating system that works well as a free desktop replacement. Also makes for a good web server test environment.
