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Info Program Faculty Students Creighton


Available Software

The Department of Computer Science at Creighton has partnered with Microsoft as part of its MSDN Academic Alliance program. If you are currently registered in a computer science course, you are eligible to receive a free copy of several Microsoft packages, including Visual Studio .NET, Windows XP/Vista, and Visio Professional (but NOT Microsoft Office). Visit msdn06.e-academy.com/creighton_cs and log in with your Creighton email address (e.g., abc12345@creighton.edu), or ask your instructor for more details.

Most of the computer science courses utilize free software, which can be downloaded and installed on your own computer. The most common software packages are described below:

HTML-Kit (Windows only)

HTML-Kit is a simple text editor for creating and modifying Web pages on a Windows machine. While any text editor (e.g., NotePad) is sufficient for creating HTML content, HTML-Kit has several nice features, including syntax highlighting, code completion, and browser integration.
  1. Go to the HTML-Kit Website: www.chami.com/html-kit
  2. Click on the "DOWLOAD" menu item at the top of the page.
  3. Click on one of the "Download HTML-Kit" buttons on the left side of the page, and save the installation file HKSetup.exe to your desktop.
  4. Double-click on the installation file and accept all of the defaults during installation.
  5. For beginning users, it is recommended that you turn off code completion. To do so, click on the "Edit" menu item at the top of the HTML-Kit window, and select "Preferences". Click on the "Auto Complete" tab and, on the resulting page, click on the "Enable Auto Complete" box to remove the check.

TextWrangler (Mac only)

TextWrangler is a simple text editor for creating and modifying Web pages on a Mac. TextWrangler has most of the same features as HTML-Kit including syntax highlighting and code completion. It does not have browser integration, however, so you will need to open a browser yourself to view an edited page.
  1. Go to the TextWrangler Website: www.barebones.com/products/TextWrangler/
  2. Click on the "Download Now" button at the right.
  3. Choose the version you want (the latest version is 2.3) and click the "Download" link corresponding to that version to download the .DMG installer.
  4. Run the installer and accept all of the defaults.

Scratch

Scratch is a fun and simple environment for creating 2-D animations. It was developed at MIT, and allows the user to create animation objects, control their behavior and interactions, and even integrate sound and video. Scratch is great for creating interactive cartoons and simple games. It has vast online resources and galleries of student-created animations.
  1. Go to the Scratch Website: scratch.mit.edu
  2. Click on the "Download Scratch 1.4" link.
  3. You will be given the option of entering personal information, then click on the link for your computer's operating system (Windows OR Mac OS X) and save the installation file to your desktop.
  4. Double-click on the installation file and accept all of the defaults during installation.

Alice

Alice is a fun and simple environment for creating 3-D animations. It was developed at Carnegie Melon University, and allows the user to select from a wide variety of prebuilt graphics objects and scenes. Since each graphics object has state (e.g., size, orientation) and methods (e.g., turn, move), Alice is ideal for exploring object-oriented concepts.
  1. Go to the Alice Website: www.alice.org
  2. Click on the "Download Alice v2.2" link.
  3. Click on the link for your computer's operating system (Windows OR Mac OS X), and save the zip file to your desktop.
  4. Extract the zip file to create a folder containing all of the Alice files, including the Alice.exe executable.

Java Development Kit

Java is one of the most popular object-oriented programming languages. The Java Development Kit (JDK) is a collection of software, distributed by Sun Microsystems, for compiling and executing Java programs. The JDK can be used by itself at the command line, but is typically combined with an Integrated Development Environment (such as BlueJ or NetBeans) to make the creation and maintenance of programs simpler.
  1. Go to Sun's Java download page: java.sun.com/javase/downloads
  2. Click on the "JDK 6 Update 16" Download button. Note: do not select one of the integrated versions (e.g., with NetBeans or Java EE).
  3. On the resulting page, click to accept the License Agreement, then click on the link for your computer's operating system. You can select either the offline or online version, although the online is usually faster to install. Save the installation file to your desktop.
  4. Double-click on the installation file and accept all of the defaults during installation.

BlueJ

BlueJ is a Java IDE (Integrated Development Environment), developed especially for beginning programmers. It has some powerful features, including syntax-highlighting for code and class/object visualization, but is very simple and intuitive to use. The fact that you can inspect the state of an object and call methods directly make it ideal for those new to object-oriented programming.
Note: The BlueJ IDE does not include a Java compiler/interpreter. Instead, it utilizes the Sun Java compiler/interpreter (described above). Before you can install BlueJ, you must first install the Java Development Kit on your computer.
  1. Go to the BlueJ Website: www.bluej.org
  2. Click on the "download" menu item at the left of the page.
  3. Click on the link for your computer's operating system (Windows OR Mac OS X), and save the installation file to your desktop.
  4. Double-click on the installation file and accept all of the defaults during installation. The BlueJ installer will automatically locate and link to the Java compiler during installation.

NetBeans IDE

NetBeans is an open source Java IDE (Integrated Development Environment) developed by Sun Microsystems. It is an industry-strength development tool, with facilities for creating, running, debugging, and managing Java projects. It includes a visual GUI-builder that enables the programmer to create GUI-based programs in a drag-and-drop mode. The NetBeans IDE also supports C, C++ and Ruby. Note: The NetBeans IDE does not include a Java compiler/interpreter. Instead, it utilizes the Sun Java compiler/interpreter (described above). Before you can install NetBeans, you must first install the Java Development Kit on your computer.
  1. Go to the NetBeans-BlueJ Website: www.netbeans.org
  2. Click on the link for your computer's operating system (Windows OR Mac OS X), and save the installation file to your desktop.
  3. Double-click on the installation file and accept all of the defaults during installation. The NetBeans installer will automatically locate and link to the Java compiler during installation.
  4. You can set many defaults and preferences under the Tools menu. To turn on code completion, open the "Tools" menu, select "Options", click on the "Editor" icon to the left, and click to check the box labeled "Auto Popup Completion Window".

Dr. Scheme

Dr. Scheme is an interactive, integrated, graphical programming environment for the Scheme programming language. The Dr. Scheme IDE provides source code highlighting for syntax and run-time errors, support for multiple language levels, and an extensive, hyper-linked help system called Help Desk, available from the Help menu. Versions exists for Windows (95 and up), Mac OS X (10.3 and up), and Unix/X.
  1. Go to the Dr. Scheme Website: www.drscheme.org
  2. Click on the "Download Dr. Scheme" link, then select your computer's operating system and click download. You will be presented with a list of download sites: click on one and save the installation file to your desktop.
  3. Double-click on the installation file and accept all of the defaults during installation.
  4. The first time you start up Dr. Scheme, you will be prompted to choose the language level. Select "Choose Language" under the "Language" menu, then highlight "Pretty Big" and click the "OK" button.