Visual C# 2008 How to Program, 3rd Edition

By Paul Deitel Published Sep 18, 2008 by Prentice Hall. Part of the Pearson Custom Computer Science series.
Copyright 2009
Dimensions: 7″ x 9-1/8″
Pages: 1600
Edition: 3rd
Book
ISBN-10: 0-13-605322-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-605322-4

In order to learn Visual C# I chose the book recommended in school called Visual C# 2008 How To Program.  I learn through experience and excellent notes!  This will allow me to update this blog and track my growth as I complete the book. If you have an opinion on anything written here, I welcome the discussion and in turn I am sure there’s always something new to learn. This first post will be an overview of the basic terms related to programming in C#.

Basic Object -Technology Concepts

Languages like C# are object oriented. Programming in such a language is called Object-Oriented Programming (OOP).

Objects: e.g. People, Animals, Plants, Cars etc..

• Objects are often divided into two categories – Animate and Inanimate
• Animate objects are “Alive”- They move around and do things.
• Inanimate objects do not move on their own.
• All objects have Attributes
• All objects exhibit Behaviors

Attributes: e.g. Size, Shape, Color and Weight

Behaviors: e.g. A Ball Rolls, Bounces, Inflates and Deflates

Object-Oriented Design (OOD): Encapsulates (i.e., wraps) attributes and operations (behaviors) into Objects.

Classes, Fields and Methods

C# programmers concentrate on creating their own user-defined types called classes.

• Each class contains data as well as the set of methods that manipulate the data and provide services to clients.
• The Data components of a class are called attributes or fields.
• The operation components of a class are called methods.

Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design (OOAD)

OOAD: is a software engineering approach that models a system as a group of interacting objects. Each object represents some entity of interest in the system being modeled, and is characterized by its class, its state (data elements), and its behavior. Various models can be created to show the static structure, dynamic behavior, and run-time deployment of these collaborating objects. There are a number of different notations for representing these models, such as the Unified Modeling Language (UML).

Important Definitions

Syntax: The syntax of a programming language specifies the rules for creating a proper application in that language.

Syntax Error: Occurs when the compiler encounters code that violates the programming language rules. Syntax errors are also called compiler errors, compile-time errors or compilation errors.

Using: A using directive tells the compiler where to look for a class that is used in an application.

Namespaces: Predefined classes that can be reused are organized under namespaces. .NET namespaces are referred to as the .NET Framework Class Library.  (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229335)

Class Declaration: Every application consists of at least one class declaration that is defined by the programmer. Know as User-Defined Classes.

C# is case sensitive.

ex. public class Welcome

Variable: Is a location in the computer’s memory where a value can be stored for use later in an application. ( Variables are typically declared with a name and a type before they are used.)

• A variable’s name enables the application to access the value of the variable in memory.
• A variable’s type specifies what kind of information is stored at the location in memory.
• Every variable has a name, a type, a size and a value.

ex. int number1; is a variable declaration statement. aka declaration. (See Below)



Expressions: Any portion of a statement that has a value associated with it.

Get Your Site Up and Running!

1. Step one should be to register a Domain Name. (More Details )

Call it a “dot-com name,” a URL, or a domain. Whatever you call it, it’s the cornerstone of your online presence, and we make getting one easy. Simply enter the name you want in the search field above, and we’ll tell you instantly whether the name is available. If it’s available, you pay a single fee that is renewable every year, and the name is yours.

2. Find a host for your Site.  Hosting Service (More Details )

A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their own website accessible via the World Wide Web.

3. Install WordPress  WordPress.org (More Details )

WordPress is an open source blog publishing application powered by PHP and MySQL which can also be used for content management. It has many features including a workflow, a plugin architecture and a templating system

How to install WordPress using QuickInstall (Available With NobleWebServices.com or HostGator Hosting)

Prerequisites: Email Address

1.       Login to your control panel.

a.       www.YourSite.com/cpanel or www.YourSite.com:2082

2.        Select QuickInstall under the Software/Services panel.

3.       Select WordPress under the Blog Software Group.

4.       On the WordPress Version Description select Continue.

5.       After you have selected Continue you will need to select where you would like to install WordPress. You will also need to enter an email address in order to have the admin login information sent to you.

6.       After you complete the information and select Install Now you should see the following screen.

7.       Check the email account that was entered above for the admin user name and password.

8.       Once you login to WordPress be sure to go to the Settings-General to update the email address. Then visit the Users options to change your admin password.

9.       Enjoy Your WordPress blog by going over to the appearance panel and installing new Themes to change the look of your site!!!

World Wide Web

• System of interlinked, hypertext documents accessed via the InternetNavigate from page to page via hyperlinks.
• Al Gore really did invent it. Kind of. Al Gore created legislation (Gore Bill) which funded the High-Performance Computing and Communications Initiative and lead to Mosaic, the first graphical web browser.
• It’s all very hyper.Hyper. HyperCard. HyperText. HyperLink. HyperText Markup Language. HyperText Transfer Protocol. Here, hyper does not refer to the frantic pace of the web. Rather, it simply means “linked”
• It’s ginormous
  • Terabyte = 1,000 gigabytes = 1,000,000 megabytes
  • Library of Congress: 11 terabytes
  • Indexed web: 167 terabytes
  • “Deep web”: 7,500 – 91,000 terabytes

  The indexed web is the web that the search engines know about, that you’re capable of finding via google.  The deep web is the web that is not easily accessible. It could be not indexed because it’s not linked from any other page. It could also be hidden because it’s generated from a dynamic web page that requires input

• World Wide Web
• Deep Web
• Hyper Prefix

About HTTP Requests

• HyperText Transfer ProtocolAll requests made for web pages are made via HTTP. HTTP is the “language” that computers use to talk each other.
• Client/ServerThe client is the party making the request for content. It’s typically a web browser, though it could be a spider or programming language. The server is the computer that has what the client wants.Spiders: Spiders are automated programs, or bots, that crawl the web looking for things. The most common example is Google. Another more malicious example are spiders looking for e-mail addresses to spam. They are called spiders because of the way they “crawl the web”
• Stateless modelThis has nothing to do with political boundaries. In this case state means “the way something is with respect to its main attributes; “the current state of knowledge”; “his state of health”; “in a weak financial state”. When we say HTTP is stateless we mean each request stands by itself.
• Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) and their partsURLs consist of a scheme and address. http is the scheme for most web requests.
• Domain NamesDomain names are the name that identifies a computer on the Internet. A Top Level Domain (TLD) is the (usually 3 letter) suffix on a web site, such as .com, .edu, or .co.uk. Domain names, the part just to the left of the TLD (‘scc-fl’) are typically purchased through Domain Registrars. Subdomains are the to the left of the domain name and are used to further specify which computer on the network you want (‘www’).
• HeadersThey define various characteristics of the data that is requested or the data that has been provided. They are the “action” words of the HTTP request.
• Get RequestRequests a representation of the specified resource. By far the most common method used on the Web today.
• Post RequestSubmits data to be processed (e.g. from an HTML form) to the identified resource. The data is included in the body of the request.
• Sample http request:

  GET /tward/week_1.htm HTTP/1.1
  Host: www2.cccc.edu
  User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) ...
  Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9, ...
  Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
  Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
  Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
  Keep-Alive: 300
  Connection: keep-alive
  Referer: http://www2.ccc.edu/scssule.htm
  Cookie: [private cookies go here]

• Sample http response headers:

  HTTP/1.x 200 OK
  Content-Length: 1457
  Content-Type: text/html
  Last-Modified: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 03:05:43 GMT
  Accept-Ranges: bytes
  Etag: "28f1fdd8b558c81:d0bd"
  Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
  X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
  IISExport: This web site was exported using IIS Export v4.2
  MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Pub
  Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 03:08:23 GMT

• HTTP
• Web crawler
• Domain Names

HTTPS

• HTTP over SSL – Secure Socket LayerTechnically not its own protocol. It is the same HTTP protocol, but with encryption to keep the data secure between the client and server. Once the data has been decrypted there is no difference between HTTP and HTTPs
• How secure?It’s very secure in protecting the data while it’s in transit, but once data arrives at its destination, it’s only as safe as the computer it’s on. Gene Spafford states that it is like “using an armored truck to transport rolls of pennies between someone on a park bench and someone doing business from a cardboard box.”

• HTTPS
• Public Key
• Certificate Authority
• Life cycle of HTTPS

Terms Associated with HTTP requests

• CookiesA cookie is plain text sent by the web server to the web browser. The web browser saves the text to a file and sends back this text to the server each time it makes a request to that server only. It’s a way to work around the stateless nature of HTTP.Only the server which you visit can send you a cookie, and your browser will only send cookies back to the server which originally created the cookie. However, you can still get a lot of tracking cookies by the way of ads.
• CacheA way to store things locally to increase performance. While it can greatly speed up the speed of the web requests, it can lead to frustration by developers when users don’t see a new version of their page. There is more than one potential cache location for a web request.
• Content TypeThe way the server tells the browser what kind of data it’s sending and how it should handle the data
• Character encoding – bits and bytesA bit is the lowest level of data storage in computers. It can either be a 1 or 0. 8 bits is a byte. In early computing, a byte represented one character (a letter). With 8 bytes, you have a maximum of 256 different characters possible. For early computing (in English) that’s plenty. However, in many languages there are more than 256 letters. In addition, people wanted to be able to start typing different types of symbols. Now, more than one byte is typically used to represent one character. So, many different character maps appeared. Now, the computers need to know which encoding method is used so it knows whether 01010100… is a ‘d’ or a ^.If you see “funky” characters on the screen, or question marks where there should be something else, there are character encoding issues. The biggest culprit of this is people pasting text from Microsoft Word, which uses ISO-8859-1 (the Microsoft standard), into something meant for the web, which typically uses UTF-8.
• TCP/IP
  • Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol
  • Official Protocol of the Internet™
  • PacketsTCP/IP information is split up into packets. You do not receive the entire web site in one “blob”, rather it gets split into chunks, or packets. Each packet is self contained.Packets consist of a header and the payload. The header contains where the packet is going, where it came from, a sequence number that lets the server put the packets back in order, and a checksum that lets the server validate that the contents of the packet did not get corrupted.Packets allow traffic to be load balanced, sending half of the packets on one route to get there and the other half a different way.Time to download is more dependent on number of packets than the size of the file.Sometimes, one packet will be lost and will need to be resent.
  • Other common TCP/IP Protocols
    • FTP – File Transfer ProtocolA method of transferring files across the Internet. HTTP allows file downloads, but you cannot send files.
    • DNS – Domain Name SystemThe “phonebook” of the Internet. It is a specialized server that converts the domain names you enter into your browser and converts them into the numeric IP address where the computer is located.
    • IMAP and POP – e-mail Protocols
    • SSH – Secure ShellUsed as a way to get access to the server and execute commands on it.

• Cookie
• Cache
• Mime
• Multibyte Strings
• TCP/IP

Browsers

• Market shareNetscape won initially by being first to market. However, their lack of resources allowed them to be overtaken by Internet Explorer. Netscape released their code base to allow other browsers to get a working start. Browsers based off of Netscape’s code base are called “Gecko” based browsers. Mozilla, using this code base, has gained a great deal of ground on Internet Explorer but is unlikely to ever beat out Internet Explorer due to its integration with the Windows Operating System.
• Test in allYou never know which browser your visitor, customer, or instructor will be using to visit your site. Make sure it works in all browsers as best you can.
• The Browser WarIn the 90s, Netscape and IE were fighting for control of the market place. By doing so, they were both trying to push the market forward as fast as they could. They were able to push the technology forward at a very rapid pace, but there were significant growing pains.
• Browser differences – Standards ComplianceIn their rush to push technology forward, each browser developed proprietary elements that the other browser did not have. A number of these were good ideas and have stuck around. A good number of these were bad ideas and are no longer used (hopefully).The rapid development cycle and the rush to be different from each other caused many web sites that took advantage of these new features to only work in those browsers. The infamous “Best viewed in Internet Explorer 4.0″ image.Finally, the best interests of the web won out and standards were created. There are still many differences between the browsers, but for the most part they are minor and not in areas of HTML that are used frequently.
• Internet ExplorerThe most popular browser. The fact that it comes with every Windows computer and thus requires the least amount of effort to use has made it the most popular. However, its status as the most popular caused its development to lag. Features that were appearing in many browsers were absent from IE for a number of years until the release of IE7. In addition, IE is the least standards compliant of any of the browsers. They sometimes adopt the attitude that developers need to conform to their standards.
• FirefoxFirefox is based off of Netscape’s code. It’s an open source project. Open source means anyone in the world can contribute code to the project. This allows a program run by a very small team to add features at least as quickly as a large company like Microsoft. They’re essentially leveraging volunteer work from all around the world. What makes their browser stand out is the Extensions.
• SafariSafari was originally written for the Macintosh. However, as part of the iPhone launch they had to port Safari to Windows and so they released a Windows version of their browser. While Firefox is slightly faster than Internet Explorer, Safari is much faster than either.

• Browser War
• Browser Speed Comparison

HyperText Markup Language – HTML

• HTML”Markup” – HTML was designed as a way to lightly style text. HTML was designed a long time ago when the reach of the web was not imagined. HTML was not designed to allow people to create documents and pages for presentation, as you see today. Originally, HTML was used to share scholarly papers and research. It had a very Spartan appearance.During the browser war of the 90s the focus shifted to creating presentation style web pages that looked pretty. As a result, a lot of new tags were introduced and a lot of bad ways of doing things were created.XHTML and CSS attempt to restore HTML to being a markup language and separate the style from the page content. XHTML gives very narrow definitions of what is valid markup. Perhaps too narrow.
• “Hello World” HTML

  <html>
  <head>
  <title>Hello World</title>
  </head>
  <body>
  <h2>Hello world!</h2>
  <p>Thank you for visiting</p>
  </body>
  </html>

• Any text editor can create HTML.Any word processor can create the markup for HTML. Once its saved to the hard drive, a web browser on that computer can read it and display it as a page.
• Valid XHTMLXHTML is a subset of HTML that’s much more strict about what is allowed and what is not allowed.XHTML defines what is a valid tag and whichs tags are allowed to have which attributes.

Life cycle of an HTTP request

1. Request to DNS ServerBrowser sends a request to the DNS server and asks for the IP address of the server it’s trying to connect to.
2. DNS server converts the domain name into IP addressThe DNS server looks up the IP address and sends it back to the client. The network of DNS servers rely on each other to keep an accurate record. DNS can sometimes take a long time to propagate depending on your ISP.
3. Request to web serverUsing the IP address found from the DNS server, the browser creates an HTTP request and sends it on to the web server.
4. Response of server, hopefully containing HTMLThe web server attempts to fill the request. Once completed, success or failure, the server sends a status code back to the browser. If it’s a successful request, it will also send the requested content.
5. Subsequent requests of additional mediaThe browser reads the HTML. As it encounters things it needs to display the page (images, etc) it makes additional requests to the web server. Remember, HTTP is stateless so each request goes through this life cycle and knows nothing of previous or future requests.The many requests needed to display a page are why “hits” are a bad way to view traffic to a web site. Each page may require a dozen or more hits to the server
6. Browser displays contentThe browser displays the HTML and additional media back to the user, dependent on the browser’s rules. This is where browser differences show.

]]> http://davidrbrown.com/2011/03/20/how-the-course-and-the-web-works/feed/ 0 http://davidrbrown.com/2011/03/19/meta-refresh-quick-tip-4-convenience/ http://davidrbrown.com/2011/03/19/meta-refresh-quick-tip-4-convenience/#comments Sat, 19 Mar 2011 00:51:44 +0000 David http://davidrbrown.com/?p=486 When working on sites I often prefer to view the pages within the browser as I make updates to ensure it renders the same as the preview within the editor. All of the updates are made on my local dev server and only uploaded to the production server once the site is completed. It becomes redundant to hit F5 after every save to refresh the browser so I use the meta tags to refresh the browser every 10 seconds or so. Just remember to remove the tag when you are finish working on the project. It’s also a good time to update all other SEO tags at the same time. Here’s a site that provides a few different options that some may find useful.

http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/document/index_tagsupp_4.html

META for Automatic Refreshing and Forwarding

You can use <META ...> to tell the web browser to automatically move to another web page, or refresh the current page, after a specified period of time.

To have the page automatically refresh itself every x seconds, use a tag like this:

This tells the browser to refresh the page (HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH"), and that it should do so every five seconds (CONTENT="5").

Suppose, however, that you want the page to refresh itself by going automatically to another page. This is common, for example, when someone has moved their home page to a new location, but want someone who goes to the old location to still find a pointer. You could put this <META ...> tag in the page at the old location:

<META
     HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh"
     CONTENT="5; URL=autoforward_target.html">

In this case the <META ...> tag works is like the first refresh example, only with a little added information. The first part is the same: CONTENT="5; URL=autoforward_target.html" tells the browser that the page should be refreshed. CONTENT="5; URL=autoforward_target.html" gives two pieces of information: that the page should refresh after five seconds, and that the new URL should be autoforward_target.html .

In a situation like this, you should also provide a regular link to the new page.

You can also use <META ...> tags to ensure that the browser does not cache the HTML document. Caching is the process of saving the HTML document locally, on the computer’s hard drive, for future use so the browser doesn’t have to download the document again. To ensure that the browser does not cache a particular page use the following code:

When making an attempt to add a new client to WHMCS and assign a domain name that was registered before with my existing ENOM account I would receive Registar Errors. When the cron job would run to synch up the expiration date it would return the first error below. Here is the steps I took to resolve the issue.

Resolutions:

First Error: Registrar Error Domain name not found
Resolution:
1. WHMCS Admin
2. Servers
3. Updated the IP of WHM to the new IP. (I was assigned a new IP for SSL and did not update WHMCS

Second Error: Registrar Error Invalid client IP: 22.22.222.222
Resolution:
1.Opened a ticket with Enom API Support to update their end with my new IP address.

Steps Taken Once The Above Was Resolved
http://wiki.whmcs.com/Importing_Data#Manual_Domain_Only_Entry

Manual Domain Only Entry

To add a domain on it’s own without a product, follow the steps below:

1. On the client summary page, click the “Add New Order” link in the Actions panel
2. The client will be preselected, so you should fill out the rest of the form – begin by choosing the payment gateway you want the client to pay with
3. Leave the Product/Service dropdown menu set at None
4. Leave the Billing Cycle dropdown menu set at Monthly
5. Enter the domain in the Domain text field and select Register as the Domain Registration Option (even though you aren’t intending to register it today)
6. Choose the number of years you next want the client to be invoiced for at the time of renewal and tick any addons the user has for their domain
7. Ensure both tick boxes for sending an order confirmation and generating an invoice are unchecked so the user is not emailed about the order you are adding
8. Finally, set the Order Status dropdown to Active and then click the submit button to add the order to WHMCS
9. You will now been shown the order screen summarising the details of the order you just added
10. Now as the final step, you must go to the domain’s information page to enter the correct next due and expiry dates aswell as selecting the registrar the domain is registered with if using one of the built in registrars. To do this, from the order screen, click on the link in the Type column of the items ordered – this will take you straight to the details screen.

You have now finished adding your client. By following the steps above, your client will have not been notified that you’ve added them and will now be invoiced by WHMCS prior to the next due date for the items you have added to their account.

mRemote is a full-featured, multi-tab remote connections manager.

It allows you to store all your remote connections in a simple yet powerful interface.

http://www.mremote.org/wiki/

The Development outline while working with TFS 2010 is as follows.

1. User Stories are entered in TFS with Estimates.
2. Tasks are created and linked to the User Stories.
3. Test Cases are created in TFS and linked to User Stories.
4. Bugs are filed and linked to the User Story.
5. Once all Tasks,Test Cases, and Bugs are completed the User Stories are mark as resolved.
6. Reports are created to ensure all items are resolved and the Project is complete before release.

Work Items and Workflow (Agile)

• Defining User Stories, Tasks, and Other Work Items
• Creating a User Story, a Task, or Another Type of Work Item
• Creating Many User Stories, Tasks, or Other Work Items at One Time
• Creating a Work Item that Automatically Links to Another Work Item
• Creating Test Cases and Test Plans By Using Test and Lab Manager
• Opening and Tracking Bugs By Using Test Runner and Test and Lab Manager
• Viewing Work Items Assigned to You
• Customizing Work Item Types and Related Tasks

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd997897(v=VS.100).aspx#CreatingManyWorkItems

Working with User Stories

• Defining a User Story
• Adding and Linking Tasks to a User Story
• Adding and Linking Test Cases to a User Story
• Adding a Bug to a User Story
• Adding an Issue to a User Story
• Adding Details, Attachments, or Hyperlinks to a User Stories
• Resolving and Closing a User Story

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd380634(VS.100).aspx#LinkBug

Working with Tasks

• Defining a Task
• Linking a Task to a User Story
• Linking a Task to a Bug
• Adding Details, Attachments, or Hyperlinks to a Task
• Closing Completed Tasks

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd380700(v=VS.100).aspx

Complete Process with Details on All Reports

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd997796(v=VS.100).aspx#TrackTheProject

Product Planning Workbook (Reports)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd380682(v=VS.100).aspx

MSF for Agile Software Development v5.0

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd380647(VS.100).aspx

Restore Recycle Bin icon to the Desktop

• Click Start, type Control desk.cpl,,@Web and press Enter
• In the Desktop Icon Settings dialog, enable the Recycle Bin checkbox
• Click OK

Another way to access the Desktop Icon Settings dialog is to right-click on the Desktop, click Personalize, and in the left pane, click Change desktop icons.

Magento Installation Guide

Installation

Once I completed the Installation the first thing I wanted to do was load a few images of the test store and see if it worked. Unfortunately you must crawl before you walk. Which means you must go through the Backend options of the site and modify the settings to meet your business.  But for starters it’s best to visit the Knowledge Base page to find answers for most of your questions. If you find the software appealing enough you can pay for the User Guide. It’s inexpensive for a refined application such as Magento. Later I will follow up with my Complete Site Setup but for now here’s a peek at the installation with a sample product.

Sample Product

Browsers

Opera – The forgotten of the top three browsers. Now available for free! This is the number one browser for cell phone users!

Firefox – Firefox is the best all around browser for Web development. It is also the fastest growing and second-most popular.

Safari – You already have this if you are a Mac user, but now Window’s users can also download for free!

FireFox -Add-ons

All of these utilities work from within the FireFox browser:

• ColorZilla – A collection of tools, including a Color Picker similar to the one found in Photoshop
• Edit Cookies – add, edit and delete session and saved cookies
• FireBug – Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any Web page – a must have.
• FireShot – a Firefox extension that creates screenshots of Web pages.
• HTML Validator – Adds HTML and XHTML validation to your browser
• IE View – adds “View this page in IE” to your FireFox Menus
• JS View - allows you to view the source code of external files.(Javascripts/CSS)
• Opera View – adds “View this page in Opera” to your FireFox Menus
• Safari View – adds “View this page in Safari” to your FireFox Menus
• Link Checker – Checks for valid links on any given page
• MeasureIt – a ruler to measure height/width for any page element
• Web Developer – assorted Web Developer tools for your browser – a must have.

XHTML authoring

HTML-Kit – Free full functioned editor with XHTML conversion utility/split screen viewing and the ability to load external plug-in utilities.

Jedit – A cross platform programmer’s text editor written in Java that is customizable with plugins (requires Java to be installed on your machine). Make sure to download the “stable version” not the “latest version” for best results.

HTML Validator Lite – The free lightweight version of the HTML Validator software.

TopStyle Lite – Free CSS editor

FTP

FileZilla – FileZilla is a fast and reliable FTP client with a “Windows Explorer” type of interface, lots of useful features, the ability to resume downloads and the SSH/SFTP.

FireFTP – a plug-in for FireFox which gives you instant access to FTP from within your browser.

Online Resources

Net Mechanic – Check HTML coding/load time (up to 20 pages with registration)

Net Tuts+ – Web Developer and Design Tutorials (Great Resource to have)

pForm - Quick and easy form creation. (This will save you a lot of time)

SitePoint - Fresh Thinking for Web Developers and Designers (Books and Useful Articles)

TAW (Web Accessibility Test) – A tool for the analysis of Web sites, based on the W3C – Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0).

WDVL – The Open Source Reference Library – JavaScript, Perl, HTML, PHP, Perl, Python Ruby, Rails, Soap and more!

Web Pages That Suck – Learn good web design by looking at bad web design

Server-side Downloads

Windows/Mac Users – install MySQL/PHP at once:

• XAMPP – XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use – just download, extract and start.
• AMPstart – You can use this with XAMPP to allow your environment to run on a USB key!

Windows Users – install the entire package at once:

• WampServer – WampServer is a Windows Web development environment. It allows you to create Web applications with Apache, PHP and the MySQL database. It also comes with PHPMyAdmin and SQLiteManager to easily manage your databases. WampServer installs automatically (installer), and its usage is very intuitive. You will be able to tune your server without even touching the setting files.

or install all of the services separately:

• Apache HTTP server – The number one Web server in the world. (open source)
• MySQL – MySQL database server.
• PHP – PHP programming language.
• PHPmyAdmin – Web Interface for MySQL. Eliminates the need to do command line administration.

Utilities

Zone Alarm – Personal firewall software. If you don’t have a firewall on your machine – you should!

Font Lister – Free font viewing and printing utility. You can view the fonts on your machine both installed or in a folder

Cliptrak – Multiple Clipboard Utility

CPUID – Is a freeware  app that gathers information on some of the main devices of your system. (Must Have)

WinDirStat - WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Microsoft Windows (all current variants). “Great Way to identify what’s eating up your disk space.”