Actually, the tools you need to start making web pages are really simple.

All you need are:

  • a computer
  • a good web browser (e.g. Google Chrome)
  • a plain text editor

Computer

The computer you use to make web pages doesn’t have to be great. As long as it can run the latest version of a good web browser such as Chrome, that’s fine!

It doesn’t matter whether you have Windows, OSX or Linux. Web doesn’t care! As long as you’ve got the web browser you can use any operating system!

A good web browser

chrome

There are many different web browsers available. They all behave differently and have different features. Some are better than others for doing specific jobs.

In my opinion, Google Chrome is the best browser when I’m making web pages. It seems to be the most stable and it also has in-built web developer tools that are really useful.

Plain text editor

Atom.io

When you’re making web pages from scratch, you’re just working with code. Code is just plain text.

You could use a plain text editor like Notepad that comes with Windows, but Notepad doesn’t have any useful features.

There are loads of text editors out there made specifically for coding.

The editor I use is Atom (http://atom.io). It’s free. It works on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Atom is also really helpful for coding. It provides colour-coding to help differentiate between your content and code and it also auto-completes  HTML tags for you.

There are other editors, such as Notepad++ and Textwrangler, but Atom beats these hands down!

Online editors

There are also tools that allow you to develop web pages and content right in your browser. These tools are really good for learning to code and experimenting as they are quick to use.

The two most useful online editors I’ve found are: