In this article we’ll just set you up with a bare minimum — a text editor and some modern web browsers.
Installing a text editor
You probably already have a basic text editor on your computer. By default Windows includes Notepad and OS X comes with TextEdit. Linux distros vary; Ubuntu comes with gedit by default.
For Web development, you can probably do better than Notepad or TextEdit. We recommend starting out with Notepad++ for Windows or Text Wrangler for the Mac. They’re both free and more full-featured than Notepad and TextEdit.
Installing modern web browsers
For now, we’ll just install a couple of desktop web browsers to test our code in. Choose your operating system below and click the relevant links to download installers for your favorite browsers:
- Linux: Firefox, Chrome, Opera.
- Windows: Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Internet Explorer (If you have Windows 8 or above, you can install IE 10 or later; otherwise, you should install an alternative browser)
- Mac: Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari (Safari comes with iOS and OS X by default)
Before going on, you should install at least two of these browsers and have them available for testing.