Celebrity Interview: Rachel Andrew
Rachel Andrew is a UK web developer and Director of web development consultancy edgeofmyseat.com. When not writing code, she writes about writing code and is the co-author of several books promoting the practical usage of Web Standards alongside other everyday tools and technologies. Rachel takes a common sense, real world approach to web standards, with her writing and teaching being based on the experiences she has in her own company every day.
Recent books include HTML Utopia: Designing without Tables Using CSS (2nd edition), The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks and Hacks and Build Your Own Standards Compliant Website Using Dreamweaver 8 all published by Sitepoint.
1. What OS/platform do you primarily develop in?
In the office we run entirely on Linux machines, all Debian+KDE until recently, but I’ve started to use Kubuntu as a desktop. I only use Windows for testing purposes. I have a Mac Mini at home and also an iBook for when I’m out and about.
2. What’s your (X)HTML editor of choice for coding websites?
I use Zend Studio which is primarily a PHP IDE but I use it for most things.
3. How did you decide on this as your primary editor?
I do a lot of back-end development in PHP and so I like the features of Zend for PHP – when it comes to XHTML/CSS I just need a decent code editor with syntax highlighting really so whatever I have open will be what I use. When I moved from Windows to OS X at home I found it difficult to find anything I liked as much as Homesite + Topstyle. Zend reminds me in some ways of the Homesite environment when I’m just using it as an XHTML editor so it’s comfortable.
4. What’s the one (or more) feature of the software you couldn’t live without?
It’s cross platform, so I can use the same environment on my Mac at home and on my Linux desktop at work. That’s really important in terms of productivity as far as I’m concerned.
It also copes well with working over slower connections; when I’m working at home I am connected to my development server at work over ssh. Some software behaves really badly when you are working remotely like that.
5. If you were in charge of choosing new features for this piece of software, what feature(s) would you add?
I don’t know really! I’m not someone who uses a lot of features in software; as long as it is stable and I can use it on whichever machine I happen to be sat at I’m happy!
6. Bonus Unrelated Question: What’s the best book you’ve read in the last year?
I’m in the final year of a degree in Religious Studies with the Open University so the only books I get to read other than computer books are of the dusty academic variety! Where computer books are concerned probably my most frequently referred to book in the last year has to be the PHP Anthology [.com|.ca] from Sitepoint.
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