- [Instructor] To get started with this course,
I've provided exercise files, so you can work along with me.
I also have a few tips for you to set up your environment.
If you have access to the exercise files,
there's a directory for each chapter
and a subfolder for each video.
The app you'll be working with in this course
is professionally designed
and includes a number of asset files.
You'll be writing your code in the all.js file,
which is in the js folder in the site subfolder.
The main HTML file for the site, index.html,
is in the root folder.
If you are working on a computer,
you need three applications,
a web browser, a code editor, and an HTTP server.
You undoubtedly already have a web browser
installed in your machine, and any major modern browser,
Chrome, Firefox, or Microsoft Edge, is fine for this course.
I'll be using Chrome in these videos,
which is a popular choice among web developers
because of the extensive
and powerful developer tools it has built in.
Because we'll only be using the console though,
that really won't make a difference for this course.
Note that if you're on a Mac, and you want to use Safari,
you need to go into the Advanced tab in Preferences
and check the Show Develop menu in menu bar box
in order to be able to access developer tools
using the menu.
A number of great code editors are available,
both free and paid apps.
Any editor that lets you edit and save plain text
is fine for this course.
So if you have a code editor you like,
such as Sublime Text or Atom, it's fine to use it.
I use Visual Studio Code in these videos,
which is a version of Microsoft Visual Studio
created specifically for web development.
Visual Studio Code is free
and has Windows, Mac, and Linux releases.
The code is available on GitHub,
and users can submit issues there as well.
I've customized my editor with one extension.
Open in Browser, created by TechER,
lets you open the current HTML file
directly in your default browser using the Alt + B
or Option + B keyboard shortcut.
So this just saves a trip to the file manager
to open a file in the browser the first time.
An HTTP server is the final tool you need for this course.
As a web developer, this is an application
you'll need to have access to.
So if you don't have one installed at this point,
use this as your excuse to install it.
I'm using http-server,
which is a command line utility that runs under Node
and is installed through the Node Package Manager, or NPM.
You can install Node by downloading a GUI installer
from nodejs.org.
Then once that's installed, at the command line,
you simply type npm install
http-server -g,
where -g installs the package globally.
Now, if you run into errors,
you may need to use sudo to install this package.
To do so, you use the same command,
but you type sudo, S-U-D-O, at the start of it.
Then when you're prompted, you enter your password
for your current login on your computer.
Once that install is complete,
you can use the command http-server
that serves the files in the current directory.
Now, let's get started.