Maybe a better way to go about this subject is how I arrived at my chosen framework. I used to be all about Mootools by default, maybe it was the name, maybe the fact I like beef, maybe that I really dug their web site. I eventually (after sporadically testing different frameworks) arrived at JQuery as my default. So what made me choose JQuery over the countless others? Plain and simple it was the community support. Having a great framework or script is all well and good, but when you have a great user base out there that shares their innovations and discoveries then it makes it all the better. It probably didn’t hurt that in my employment we write in .NET technology and in that technology Microsoft decided that it would embrace JQuery as it’s default framework for Javascript going forward, so for me that’s a Win/Win. I program in .NET at work but do a lot of PHP stuff in my offtime, so a framework that appeals to both androgynously really perked up my senses.

So what is your preferred framework, and why?

What exactly do these terms mean? The M and W stand for your working platform by way of Macintosh or Windows and the AMP stands for Apache, MySQL and PHP. These simple apps can start and stop the full suite of hosting tools at a moments notice without you having to muck around in your system and install all sorts of tools that require more in depth configuration. I’ve found that overall this can speed up programming and testing because you will not need to constantly upload files to an FTP server and check them that way, instead you would just save and refresh your browser.

And it would be sort of open-source blasphemy if I didn’t mention XAMPP mainly used for Linux, but also containing flavors of Mac OS X, Windows and even Solaris.

All of these software packages are free, or have a free (lite) version available for you to use in your programming endeavors so have at it!

*Windows & WAMP makes the assumption that you are developing a PHP/MySQL Web site and not a .NET Solution

Update: I have moved from MAMP to XAMPP for local development, it’s a little more flexible for my usage.

I came up with a quick down and dirty little trick to help overcome such an instance and I think you may find this useful.

Fire up your favorite text editor and open up create a .htaccess file (or modify the file that may be sitting in your root directory) and paste these lines in. Feel free to tweak them a bit to suit your needs, maybe you'll even find a better use for this method.

And that's it! Pretty URL's on the easy.