08/11/2016
7 Great Web Development Tools
Sublime Text
Letâs start with the basics: a first-rate code editor â one that features a well-designed, super efficient, and ultra speedy user interface. There are several that do this well, but arguably the best (and most popular) is Sublime Text.
Artfully run by a one-man development team, the secret to Sublimeâs success lies in the programâs vast array of keyboard shortcuts - such as the ability to perform simultaneous editing (making the same interactive changes to multiple selected areas) as well as quick navigation to files, symbols, and lines. And when youâre spending 8+ hours with your editor each day, those precious few seconds saved for each process really do add upâŠ
Chrome Developer Tools
Wouldnât it be great if you could edit your HTML and CSS in real-time, or debug your JavaScript, all while viewing a thorough performance analysis of your website?
Googleâs built-in Chrome Developer Tools let you do just that. Bundled and available in both Chrome and Safari, they allow developers access into the internals of their web application. On top of this, a palette of network tools can help optimize your loading flows, while a timeline gives you a deeper understanding of what the browser is doing at any given moment.
Google release an update every six weeks â so check out their website as well as the Google Developers YouTube channel to keep your skillset up-to date.
jQuery
JavaScript has long been considered an essential front-end language by developers, although itâs not without its problems: riddled with browser inconsistencies, its somewhat complicated and unapproachable syntax meant that functionality often suffered.
That was until 2006, when jQuery â a fast, small, cross-platform JavaScript library aimed at simplifying the front-end process â appeared on the scene. By abstracting a lot of the functionality usually left for developers to solve on their own, jQuery allowed greater scope for creating animations, adding plug-ins, or even just navigating documents.
And itâs clearly successful â jQuery was by far the most popular JavaScript library in existence in 2015, with installation on 65% of the top 10 million highest-trafficked sites on the Web.
GitHub
Itâs every developerâs worst nightmare â youâre working on a new project feature and you screw up. Enter version control systems (VCS) â and more specifically, GitHub.
By rolling out your project with the service, you can view any changes youâve made or even go back to your previous state (making pesky mistakes a thing of the past). The repository hosting service also boasts a rich open-source development community (making collaboration between teams as easy as pie), as well as providing several other components such as bug tracking, feature requests, task management, and wikis for every project.
Many employers will look for finely honed Git skills, so nowâs the perfect time to sign up â plus itâs a great way to get involved and learn from the best with a wide array of open-source projects to work on.
Twitter Bootstrap
Getting tired of typing in that same styling for a container? How about that button that keeps cropping up? Once you start building front-end applications regularly, youâll start to notice the same patterns emerging.
UI frameworks are an attempt to solve these problems by abstracting the common elements into reusable modules - meaning developers can scaffold the elements of new applications with speed and ease.
The most widely used of these frameworks is Bootstrap, a comprehensive UI package developed by the team at Twitter. Complete with tools to normalize stylesheets, build modal objects, add JavaScript plugins, and a plethora of other features, Bootstrap can dramatically cut down on the amount of code (and time) needed to build your project.
Angular.js
HTML is usually the cornerstone of any front-end developerâs toolbox, but it has what many perceive to be a serious flaw: it wasnât designed to manage dynamic views.
This is where AngularJS, an open-source web application framework, comes in. Developed by Google, AngularJS lets you extend your applicationâs HTML syntax, resulting in a more expressive, readable, and quick to develop environment that could otherwise not have been built with HTML alone.
The project is not without its critics: some feel that this sort of data binding makes for a messy, non-separated code, but we still think itâs an invaluable skill to have in your front-end kit.
Sass
One of the first things youâll learn about code is that it needs to be DRY (âDonât Repeat Yourselfâ). The second thing youâll probably learn is that CSS is usually not very DRY.
Enter the world of the CSS preprocessor, a tool that will help you write maintainable, future-proof code, all while reducing the amount of CSS you have to write (keeping it DRY).
Perhaps most popular among them is Sass, an eight-year-old open-source project which pretty much defined the genre of modern CSS preprocessors. Although a little tricky to get to grips with initially, Sassâs combination of variables, nesting, and mixins will render simple CSS when compiled, meaning your stylesheets will be more readable and (most importantly) DRY.
[Do you use any other developer tools that you think others should know about? Share your thoughts in the comments below.]
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