When you are making a web page, the easiest way of view a page stored in your hard disk is double-clicking in the file, which usually results in the page being opened in your default browser. Although this method (which I still use sometimes) it’s good enough for simple static pages, it’s not useful if you you are using server side languages (PHP, Perl, ASP…), or even for pages that are static but use links relative to the server root (like “/index.html” or “/css/styles.css”). In this situations the solution is either upload the files to the server of your web host (quite cumbersome, and not feasible or desirable if the site is already open to the public) or set up a test server in your local network/computer, which is the quick and safe way of testing your design changes.
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