Aptana Studio Community Edition is an open source IDE for Web application development. It is based on the Eclipse IDE and can be installed as a stand-alone package or as an Eclipse plug-in. The stand-alone version of Aptana is available on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and the Eclipse plug-in version can be installed on any system that supports Eclipse.

Aptana's strength lies in its powerful JavaScript support that provides features, such as debugging (in Firefox only; Internet Explorer support is included in the commercial Professional Edition of Aptana), code assist, and code outlining. This support is also available for HTML and CSS code.

Aptana also features built-in support and code assistance for a host of JavaScript frameworks that empower developers who want to develop Web 2.0 applications. These frameworks, which include Ext, jQuery, Prototype, script.aculo.us, Dojo, Mootools, and others, can be added to any Aptana project easily.

Aptana can be extended to support technologies that are not available out of the box currently, such as PHP, Ruby on Rails, and, of course, AIR. There's even a plug-in available to help create Web applications for the Apple iPhone.

We will use Aptana to develop the sample application. We have chosen it over alternatives like Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 for a number of reasons, most notably because the Community Edition is available for download free of charge on an open source license and because Aptana has excellent support for Ext and AIR.

Installing this Plugin via Aptana or Eclipse

1. From the Help menu, select Install New Software... to open an Install pop-up window.
2. In the Work with: text box of the Install window, type the URL http://d1iwq2e2xrohf.cloudfront.net/tools/studio/plugin/install/studio3/3.4.2.201308081736/ for the update site, and hit the Enter key.
3. In the populated table below, check the box next to the name of the plug-in, and click the Next button.
4. Click the Next button to go to the license page.
5. Choose the option to accept the terms of the license agreement, and click the Finish button.

Manual Installation

1. Save the above file to an easy-to-find location.
2. Open Eclipse distribution, and go to Help -> Install New Software....
3. Click the Add... button to open the Add Site window.
4. Click the Archive... button, and select the file saved in step 1.
5. Select the appropriate plugins to install, and click Next -> Next.
6. Click the Finish button.
7.