If you haven't installed Limesurvey yet, I would seriously recommend to go for Limesurvey 1.92. There is a lot that has changed and we can only give support for the latest versions.
Of course you can install limesurvey on your computer first, if you have a webserver installed locally (XAMPP for example). There you can adapt everything you need and upload it. However, keep in mind that changes might get overwritten everytime you do an update. So depending on the changes you want to make, you need to keep this in mind.