Sveinbjorn Thordarson's Website

Local Testing

- Local Web Server

Whether you're testing HTML documents or CGI applications, it is always helpful to run a webserver locally for testing purposes. Luckily, Mac OS X ships with the popular, powerful and open-source Apache webserver. Enabling it is merely a question of checking the correct checkbox in the System Preferences, and then you can access your HTML files or CGI programs via the localhost domain.

- Local W3C Validator

The W3C Validator is an indispensable tool for any serious web developer. However, submitting a website repeatedly to an external CGI program can be a tiresome and time-consuming process. Fortunately, FireFox offers the excellent Web Developer Toolbar, which makes submission very easy. However, if you are developing on a fairly slow internet connection, or the W3C servers are bogged down, you'll run into trouble. It is therefore best to set up a local W3C validator with the sources provided by the World Wide Web Consortium. This is fairly simple if you know how to configure the Apache webserver.

- Checking for accessibility and layout elegance

Lynx or Links.

Cross-Platform Testing

Aside from the abundance of native browsers, Mac OS X has quite good tools for emulating or running other platforms and browsing environments. Within the confines of a single machine you can run browsers designed for Linux, Windows, Mac OS 9 and (of course) Mac OS X without dual-booting or abandoning the customary interface.

• Windows

  • VirtualPC
    While VirtualPC may be expensive and not very fast (depending on the speed of your computer), it is a powerful tool for web development. Within the confines of the Virtual PC application, you can run complete installations of any member of the Windows family, and any Linux distributions.
  • Microsoft Remote Desktop
    Assuming you have access to a Windows server machine, you can log in via Microsoft's (amazingly enough, fairly decent) Remote Desktop tool, and preview web pages in Internet Explorer.

• Mac OS 9

  • Classic Environment
    The Classic Environment, which is part of Mac OS X, allows you to run applications designed for Mac OS 9 or earlier. This can be helpful for testing antique software such as the Netscape 4.x series and earlier, or old versions of Mac IE.

• Linux

  • Virtual PC
    See above.
  • X-Windows
    Apple ships its own version of the X-Windows environment, which makes it possible to compile a lot of Linux software. With the assistance of package managers such as Fink, you can even build KDE to run on top of Mac OS X, with browsers such as Konqueror running natively.

Text Editors

A plethora of oustanding text editors compete aggressively on the platform. For those accustomed to working in the command line, a default installation of Mac OS X comes with vim and emacs, the major pro editors in the UNIX world. However, the true strength of Mac OS X lies in its high quality GUI software, and text editors are no exceptions. My personal recommendation is SubEthaEdit (formerly known as Hydra), from CodingMonkeys. It's a unique and original text editor with a killer-features such as live rendered preview of HTML as you type it in. The following text editors are also good, depending on your needs and wants:

• Smultron - poweful, multi-document open-source editor
• BBEdit - an old killer form the Classic days

Native Mac OS X Browsers

• WebKit-based

  • Safari
  • Shiira
  • OmniWeb

• Gecko-based

  • FireFox
  • Camino(formerly Chimera)
  • Mozilla
  • Netscape

• Tasman-based

  • Internet Explorer 5 (Mac) -- no longer under development

• Miscellaneous

  • iCab
  • Opera
  • Omniweb 4.5 or older

• Text-only

  • Lynx
  • Links