Working as a web developer can be a time consuming endeavor, especially if the project involves a new challenge. If you find yourself in unknown territory, it is important not to waste too much time getting the project completed. Since time is a key factor in productivity, working efficiently enables you to deliver better value at a competitive price. By implementing a set of tried and true productivity tools to your plan, you’ll find a lot of unnecessary stress simply melts away. The following is a list of the top 10 productivity tools that every web developer shoulder consider using.
1. Firebug
Firebug is an Mozilla Firefox add-on. It is many developer’s number one development and debugging tool, and there are many developers who swear by its effectiveness.
It features great, on the fly, CSS manipulations, has an excellent JavaScript debugger, and also a network traffic analyzer. It’s also got the ability to work well with extensions, and many Firefox users can attest to this.
2. Chrome Developer Tools
Chrome Developer Tools are similar to Firebug and have many of the same great features. However, Chrome Developer Tools have some advantages over Firebug. For one, Chrome Developer Tools allows you to edit JavaScript or CSS and immediately save it. This is nice because you eliminate the need to go into your IDE and replicate changes that you made. What’s more, Chrome Developer Tools has a better JavaScript debugger, with the ability to create DOM Breakpoints and profile your JavaScript execution time. You might want to try using Chrome developer Tools alongside Firebug and see what kind of results you receive. Chrome Developer Tools are available on every Chrome installation by pressing F12 key on your keyboard.
3. Evernote
If you want to be a successful web developer, then you need to be organized and productive. Many developers claim that Evernote really does “Remember Everything” and many have written reviews that attest to its capabilities. It has cross-platform support for desktop, web and mobile devices, which most developers will find convenient. You also have the ability to capture, upload and sync from anywhere to keep your online information effectively organized. For example, you can create lists and schedules. Many people like using it for bookmarks, notetaking, and brainstorming. As a developer, you can even utilize the web clipper in Evernote for documenting pieces of code. With Evernote, it’s simple to search and find any stored data.
4. Dropbox
If you’ve ever snapped a picture or taken a video, then you know that Dropbox is one of the most popular cloud service storages. With Dropbox, you have access to both online and offline files. It offers a 2GB account for free, and for most people, this is more than enough space to start with. Dropbox can essentially function as a project manager, organizing files, modifying, and then sharing. It is also considered a secure environment. Since most developers work across many platforms, this is important because it takes time to copy your system files from place to place. You can use Dropbox to store your files, and then access them easily later. Let Dropbox do the work for you.
5. JS Bin
Released in 2008, JS Bin was one of the first public paste bins that rendered output live in your browser. This meant that users could now collaborate on and debug Javascript, HTML and CSS code snippets. It’s open source and it can work online, on your locally hosted environment, or even live on your own site. JS Bin supports remote rendering. This means that you have the ability to check on multiple platforms while the output automatically refreshes as you edit the code. Once you start typing, JS Bin saves your work. If you want to stop saving, all you need to do is create a milestone and live saving will apply to the new revision.
6. Git
Any developer knows how agonizing it is to overwrite a critical file. With Git, overwriting your important work is now a hassle of the past. Git is an open source revision control and source code management system that tracks the history of all your projects. What many developers like about Git is that you can perform multiple backups with its system. You can work on new features in a separate branch, and when stabilized, you can merge. Basically, this equates to being able to experiment with both safety and efficiency which is important if you’re working with other people because you have the ability to share the history of the project and merge between work histories. You can then compare and revert to previous versions of individual project files, as well.
7. Mou
Mou is an editor that works with Mac OS X, and is a simple text editor that parses Markdown syntax. There is a split-screen window that shows what you’ve typed on the left-hand side, and all work is saved and updated with the HTML conversion on the right-hand side. Most developers find that this works amazingly well on their projects. Mou has a default setup that gives syntax in HTML format, but you can import your CSS if you want a better idea at how the end result is going to fare.
8. Pexels
Pexels is a large collection of royalty-free images that you can use as placeholders until photographs are provided by the client.
9. Font Combinator
This tool allows you to choose any web font and see how it pairs with other fonts. You can easily choose your H1, H2, and paragraph text fonts. You can even adjust line-height and background color.
10. Fontello
Fontello makes it simple to embed vector graphics into a page. Instead of looking for separate social icons, arrows and icons on multiple sites, you can choose from various icons on Fontello and it quickly inserts these vector icons into web fonts. Fontello is also easy to use and it’s free.
Leave a reply