For XP users, Tredsoft’s “Multi IE” (http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE) has been a godsend for a while now, although this solution still will not work on Windows Vista.

I stumbled accross something today, whilst searching for a solution to this Vista problem, and this solution will actually allow Vista users to preview web pages utilising a online rendering engine for IE5.5, IE6, IE7 and IE8beta2, all nicely packaged up into a single desktop application, which even allows you to view say a IE6 rendered page alongside a IE7 rendered version of the same page. This program is called “IE Tester” from www.my-debugbar.com, and it absolutely blew me away when as found it, as it does exactly what I need (viewing pages under different Internet Explorer rendering engines) IN WINDOWS VISTA!

If you are suffering the nightmare scenario of needing to test website pages in different versions of Internet Explorer, but cant install all the different versions you need onto the same PC, and especially if you are needing to do this in Windows Vista, then I recommend you give IE Tester a try – it works like a dream for me, and saves me having to run a seperate XP computer just for testing.

You can download MyDebugbar’s “IE Tester” from the following link: http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage

IE Tester Screenshot

To kick off my blog I’d like to share with you my IDE (Integrated Development Environment) of choice for writing and editing all of my website code.

Now I have used Dreamweaver in the past and it is a fantastic product, but comes with a very hefty price tag that most beginners simply cant afford. A little over a year ago, I was scanning the internet for a alternative to the industry-standard Dreamweaver, and after a few days of relentless searching and trying out many different programs, I came across Aptana Studio which ticked all the boxes of the features I needed in an IDE and appeared to be a suitable alternative to Dreamweaver, and best of all, it was (and still is) FREE.

I have used Aptana Studio ever since finding it, and very soon weened myself off Dreamweaver altogether. For writing and editing code and uploading it to your server it is an awesome program, and comes complete with syntax-highlighting (colorization of your code, so that you can more easily read it), FTP, plenty of pre-written code snippets for you to play with and learn from, code-assist (this is where the program actually helps you write your code by displaying tooltips as you type), as well as a browser preview view of your web page. All of that is built into the one program, and the whole thing is extremely customizable so you can tweak it to your own way of working.

Aptana Studio Preview

Aptana Studio will happily work with all of your website files and will provide all the suitable code-coloring and code-assist for your HTML, CSS, PHP and Javascript files, all in one program.

Now Aptana Studio doesn’t have the fancy WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors of Dreamweaver, but this is a feature I never used anyway as I always like to write my own code, so if that is a feature you rely on then Aptana Studio may not be for you, although you can still use if for editing your code and use something like Dreamweaver of NVU (free WYWSIWIG website editor program) when you really need to drag and drop things.

More recently I have totally uninstalled Dreamweaver, as I no longer have any need for it and Aptana Studio regularly release better and better updates and are constantly adding some excellent features (like the brand new Aptana Cloud and the Aptana Jaxer javascript server). I’d wholeheartedly recommend using Aptana Studio as a Dreamweaver alternative if you are serious about either learning to write websites, or building better websites.

I would give Aptana Studio 5 stars out of 5 for being the best IDE currently available…and its free (I know I’ve already told you it’s free, but it’s such an amazing program for free that it just needed repeating again).