These are exciting times in the IT industry.

Apple announced the unveiling of the iphone for June 7th, Android is taking the world by storm, Ubuntu released its newest version, 10.04 Lucid Linx with long term support, and Adobe CS5 has also arrived.

Some of those events are related to the open source industry, while others concern the proprietary world. The trend I see, however, is that more than ever, the open source philosophy is providing viable alternatives to the MS-Apple-Adobe clique.

In my own little world too, open source is taking a better foot hold on the way I do my job. I’ve set up a terminal to run solely on Ubuntu (Linux), in addition to my Windows and Mac terminals. On the Ubuntu-Linux terminal I have set up a resourceful collection of web development tools, and I am now experimentally building web projects without the use of a single proprietary program.

Below then, I want to share my tool kit–a sort of, “George’s Picks”, if you will, of open source development tools. Since there are so many out there, making a choice can be overwhelming, but these are my preferred choice.

Languages (the essential selection):

XHTML

Every web site needs HTML, but open source is generally better at helping you adhere to standards, so you might as well make sure your HTML is XHTML.

CSS

Dito. You can write it adhering to standards more effectively with the aid of open source tools.

PHP

Open source, powerful, free. Love php. Love it.  I mean… we all know what happened to…. Cold Fusion trying to charge for itself…

Javascript / Jquery / Ajax

Flash is proprietary, and although Ubuntu’s “Wine” emulator can technically run it, I wouldn’t trust it or recommend it. Besides, since Flash is proprietary, that disqualifies it from open source web development anyway.

The trio above can cover most of what you need, if you know how to program them well. And in those areas where they come up short, good Project Management skills can convince your client that he doesn’t need that costly, flashy, Flash app anyway. And guess what? In most cases he doesn’t!

HTML Editor:

Aptana (mixed with Firefox Web Developer tools add on.)

Aptana is a bit wonky in usability, and it takes some getting used to (heck, I still haven’t gotten used to it!), but it does have a lot of features, and it is well integrated with technologies such as jquery and php. Where it lacks in Dreamweaver type capabilities, the Firefox “Web Developer” add on can pick up some of the slack as a good suppliment.

Grahpics program:

Gimp 2.6

Get over your “I-don’t-want-to-try-something-new-and-different” reservations, and learning Gimp will be a rewarding time investment as an alternative to Photoshop. It’s a powerful enough program, with compatibility of reading .psd and .png file formats. For the fairly meager photographic needs and depths of the web designer, it’s more than enough to fit the bill.

It’s also handy. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to fix an “emergency” graphic of a panicked client, at inopportune times, and Photoshop hasn’t been readily available.

You can even get Gimp as a portable app at portableapps.com, and run it straight off your USB key. In fact, that holds true for many of these programs.

Vector graphics program:

Inkscape

Though many will argue that Xaraxtreme is more powerful, and that is a very valid point, I found the learning curve on Inkscape to be easier and more “Adobe Illustrator-like”, and it was more than enough for what I needed to do in world of web development.

FTP:

Filezilla

There are tons of free ftp clients out there, and they all basically do the same thing. I tried a bunch, but this seemed to be the most comfortable for me. It’s also a sort of “trusted” name. I also recommend Coreftp. I’ve been using that one for years too without many hitches.

Browser:

Firefox

‘Nuff said. Don’t challenge the King. (Although between you and me, Chrome is a pretty damn good browser too! Shhh..)

Misc:

Google

An integral skill to open source is being able to google something and find the answer to it. Since open sources programs generally have no phone support, that means that internet forums, faqs, and wikis are your life line when you get stuck.

Aside from this, Google also has some cool little copy-and-paste API’s. Though Google is proprietary, it does act like a bit of hybrid some times, because it often let developers play around with code.

So there you have it. A digest or collection of a trusted set of open source alternatives to proprietary web development.

“Digest”? “Alternatives”? Does that then make me a sort of…. Web Dev vegan?