Lab environment

This is the essential lab environment you need to start working with the course. It is an "exercise" you must perform to be able to start working with the course.

Computer and operating system

You need a computer with an operating system like Windows, MacOS or Linux. Use the latest version to avoid troubles.

The terminal

Get aquainted with your terminal and learn how to use it and navigate through it.

  • Windows - cmd, powershell, git bash, cygwin, wsl/wsl2
  • MacOS - terminal
  • Linux - any terminal application

When you see terminal commands in the example, then they are mainly written as bash-commands. Bash is the main shell in the terminals on Mac, Linux and WSL. You might need to adapt some commands if you choose to work with cmd or powershell when on Windows.

Git

Install Git and learn how to use it through the terminal.

GitLab

You will get access to the course GitLab environment. This will be used to distribute exercises, assignments, codesamples and you will use it to submit your assignments.

Node and npm

You need to install node which provides an enviroment to run JavaScript from your terminal. This will include the package manager npm. These will be used as development tools.

Web browser

Get a web browser, or three. It is useful to test out your website in different browsers since there are differences among them. Take the browser thats available on your computer and complement with Google Chrome and Firefox. Try to make your code work in all browsers.

Texteditor/IDE

Install a texteditor or IDE of your choice. Visual Studio Code is a good choices as a plain texteditor with plugin capabilities. Ensure you are using the following setup through out the course:

  • File format UTF-8 NOBOM
  • Unix style line endings LF \n
  • Soft tabs, length 2

Docker (optional)

As an extra utility you might want to get going with Docker. That is a useful tool for working with development that requires extra tools and specific versions of software. Docker allows that these development (and production) environments are executed in a virtual docker container that is built from a docker image.

Docker will be used as example environment all through the courses so it is strongly adviced that you get it up and running in your development environment.