10 Essential Tools for the Lean Web Developer

It would not be surprising that the demand for web developers and web designers or graphic designers increase with the internet being predicted to be the major platform for learning and sharing both past and present ideas and information. Communication and transaction between business owners, partners and consumers and the emerging digital trends in businesses are also vital considerations in increased need for web masters. You can see here how graphic design as an occupation is.

In fact, within three to five years, businesses will have a digital counterpart. We started to see and experience businesses slowly transforming into everything digital. Today, businesses targets huge market of online users; all desktop, laptop, tablets, smartphone and other mobile devices that can be connected on the internet.

Therefore, it is essential that web developers update themselves with the latest available tools they can use in their development and design tasks to simplify their workflow with high productivity and without sacrificing the quality of their work.

The following are Ten Essential Tools Lean Web Developers will find Useful.

1. Dabblet. This open source and interactive CSS playground that offers real-time updates, saves all Dabblets to Gists account eliminating data loss, does not require page reloads even on saving, adds prefixes with -prefix-free automatically in order to speed up testing and it allows multiple view modes – split views, separate tabs, result behind code, etc. This app offers excellent web access and the source code can be accessed on GitHub.
2. JS Bin. This open source public paste bins app allows user to collaborate on and debug JavaScript, CSS and HTML code snippets. It can work online, on a locally hosted environment or even live on your own site. It allows checking on multiple platforms. JS Bins saves the work once the user starts typing and if saving is not wanted while working, creating a milestone will get live saving apply to the new version.
3. Evernote. Nothing can beat being systematic and organized whatever the task is. Web developers will benefit from this easy-to-use app that works across all devices as tasks, schedules, ideas and everything else properly and methodically organized and structured for convenience, productivity and efficiency. Capture, upload and sync are easily achievable from any device.
4. DiffChecker. This app allows checking of two files for any spelling error in an uncomplicated and rather straightforward interface. By simply uploading or pasting the contents of two files and clicking the button “Find Difference”, the output will highlight the differences detected.
5. Dropbox. This is a ‘project manager’ of some sort as the free app allows free cloud storage (beginning at 2GB free) to keep photos, docs, videos and access the same anywhere, online or offline from all shared devices. The free app is helpful in sharing with collaborators, big-sized files in a secure environment.
6. Git. This is an open source app that helps control revision through a source code management system that tracks the history of a project in a repository. It is a decentralized system that allows multiple backup repositories. Web collaborators will find this useful in merging works, comparing the merged versions and reverting to previous or original work editions without any data loss. Plus, Git is fully distributed and does not interrupt ongoing work – offline or online.
7. GitHub and Gist. This app is used in conjunction with Git. GitHub is where codes are securely stored while Gist is a simple way to share and paste snippets. GitHub provides a powerful way to collaborate, review and manage code in a safe and secure environment. Gist on the other hand is a great way to get your points across through a Gist repository where multiple code snippets can be stored.
8. Mou. It is appropriately described as “the missing Markdown editor for web developers” and not for general writers as it provides the ability for syntax highlighting, live preview, sync scroll, fullscreen mode, auto save, powerful actions, auto pair, custom themes and CSS, HTML and PDF export and enhanced CJK support. The split-screen window allows simultaneous editing and saving in real time.
9. Droplr. This free online file-sharing app allows sharing of documents, photos and text like any other file-sharing app, but unlike other file-sharing app, Droplr provides a quick action to launch in lightning speed and slick interface. Droplr provides excellent web access with a 1GB storage upon signing up. It’s another efficient way of organizing files and cloud-storing them.
10. Xampp. This is an easy-to-install Apache for Linux, Solaris, Windows and Mac OS X. being able to perform live testing is important for every web developer as this will help fine tune the design. Xampp contains MySQL, Apache, PHP, OpenSSL, FileZilla FTP server bundled together for a configurable server. The free release allows web developers to have an advanced server up and running quickly.

Apart from organized and productive, we all know that cross-browser compatibility is essential in web design and development. You can check here some of the most useful cross-browser compatibility checker which will be very useful in creating and developing websites.

I am sure you have your ways to be more productive and organized in creating websites, which were based from your experience. If you can suggest other tools that would be helpful for starting and even experienced web designers and web developers, please feel free to leave a comment below.

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