Before diving into the world of Front End development with HTML, CSS and JavaScript, it is essential to have a suitable development environment installed and configured on your computer. This chapter of our e-book will guide you through the process of installing and configuring your development environment.
1. Installing a text editor
A text editor is a fundamental tool for any developer. It is used to write and edit code. There are many text editors available, but we recommend using Visual Studio Code (VS Code) because of its user-friendly interface and powerful features.
To install VS Code, visit the official website (https://code.visualstudio.com/) and follow the instructions for your specific operating system. After installation, you can customize VS Code by installing extensions to improve your coding experience. Some useful extensions include Live Server, for previewing your web pages in real time, and Prettier, for automatically formatting your code.
2. Installing a web browser
As a Front End developer, you will need a web browser to view and test your web pages. We recommend using Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox due to their excellent developer features.
To install Google Chrome, visit the official website (https://www.google.com/chrome/) and follow the installation instructions. To install Mozilla Firefox, visit the official website (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/) and follow the installation instructions.
Once installed, you can access your browser's developer tools by pressing F12 on your keyboard. These tools allow you to inspect and edit your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code in real time, as well as provide useful debugging features.
3. Installing Node.js and NPM
Node.js is a JavaScript runtime environment that allows you to run JavaScript code outside of a web browser. Node.js comes with NPM (Node Package Manager), which is a tool that allows you to install JavaScript libraries and packages to use in your projects.
To install Node.js and NPM, visit the official Node.js website (https://nodejs.org/) and download the LTS (Long Term Support) version. Follow the installation instructions and at the end you will be able to verify the installation by opening a terminal and typing "node -v" and "npm -v". If both statements return a version, then the installation was successful.
4. Configuring the development environment
With all the tools installed, you can now configure your development environment. First, organize your folder structure. Create a folder for your project and within that create separate folders for your HTML, CSS and JavaScript code.
In VS Code, you can open your project folder by clicking "File" -> "Open Folder" and selecting your project folder. Now, you can create HTML, CSS and JavaScript files within the respective folders by right-clicking the folder and selecting "New File".
Finally, you can launch the VS Code live server by right-clicking your HTML file and selecting "Open with Live Server." This will open your project in a web browser and any changes you make to your code will be reflected in real time.
With these steps complete, you are ready to start coding! Remember, practice makes perfect. So, start building simple projects and gradually work on more complex projects. You will soon become a proficient Front End developer.
