For web engineers, keeping up with the ever-evolving web technologies is both crucial and challenging. This means that as a web developer, you need to continuously learn and adapt. Below is a list of valuable tools and resources that the author encountered during their development and learning journey, shared for everyone:
JavaScript Libraries
- jQuery: The most well-known JavaScript library.
- Backbone.js: Provides an MVP structure for complex web applications.
- D3.js: One of the most popular JavaScript visualization libraries.
- React: A JavaScript library developed by Facebook.
- jQuery UI: An open-source library for building user interfaces based on jQuery.
- jQuery Mobile: A component of the jQuery framework that provides a unified mobile UI framework.
- Underscore.js: A utility library that offers a full set of functional programming helpers without extending any built-in JavaScript objects.
- Moment.js: A JavaScript library for parsing, validating, manipulating, and displaying dates.
- Lodash: A JavaScript utility library with a consistent interface and modular design.
Front-End Frameworks
- Bootstrap: A well-known front-end toolkit for rapid development of responsive web applications.
- Foundation: An easy-to-use, powerful, and flexible front-end framework for building web applications on any device.
- Semantic UI: A fully semantic front-end development framework.
- UIkit: A lightweight and modular front-end framework.
Databases
- MySQL: The most popular relational database management system.
- MariaDB: A fork of MySQL developed by early MySQL employees.
- MongoDB: A distributed file storage database.
- Redis: An open-source, in-memory key-value store database.
- PostgreSQL: An open-source object-relational database management system, used early on by Uber.
Task Runners / Package Managers
- Grunt: A JavaScript task runner.
- Gulp: A streaming build system.
- Bower: A web package manager for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, fonts, and even images.
- NPM: Node package manager.
CSS Preprocessors
- Sass: A powerful, mature, and stable CSS extension.
- Less: A CSS extension with good compatibility and low learning curve.
- Stylus: Provides a more efficient and elegant way to generate CSS.
Markdown Editors
- StackEdit: An open-source, free Markdown editor based on PageDown.
- Dillinger: An online editor that offers cloud storage and supports various export formats like HTML5 and PDF.
- Mou: An excellent Markdown editor for Mac OS X.
- Texts: Supports both Windows and Mac OS X.
Icon Resources
Git Clients / Services
- SourceTree: A free and cool Git client for Windows and Mac.
- GitKraken: A free, intuitive, and beautiful cross-platform Git client (Beta).
- Tower 2: A beautiful app that requires payment.
- GitHub Client: The official GitHub client.
- Gogs: An easy-to-setup self-hosted Git service.
- GitLab: Free for private projects.
Local Development Environments
- Servbay: Highly recommended, a new tool in 2024 that outperforms Docker, XAMPP, and MAMP with a graphical interface for easy environment setup.
- XAMPP: A free, easy-to-install Apache distribution that includes MariaDB, PHP, and Perl.
- MAMP: Apache + MySQL + PHP + Python + Perl.
- WampServer: A web development environment for Windows that creates web applications based on Apache 2, PHP, and MySQL.
- Laragon: A quick and easy local development environment for Windows that includes MySQL, PHP, Redis, and Apache.
File Comparison
- Diffchecker: An online file comparison tool.
- Beyond Compare: A powerful software for quickly comparing files and folders.
Code Sharing / Experimenting
- codeshare: Share code with other developers in real-time.
- JS Bin: Allows you to save edited code locally or share a URL for collaborative debugging. Supports HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Markdown, Jade, and Sass.
- JSFiddle: Customize the environment to test your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code.
- Dabblet: A web playground with interactive features.
Team Collaboration
- Slack: A communication app designed for teams, highly recommended.
- Trello: Completely free, highly flexible, and visual for managing anything with anyone.
- Glip: Supports real-time messaging, video, video conferencing, and calendar sharing.
- Asana: Helps track and record team members' work.
- Jira: A well-known team collaboration application.
Inspiration
- CodePen: Share and discover outstanding designs, with feedback from other developers.
- Dribbble: A community for designers to share their work.
Website Performance Testing
- Website Speed Test: A free website debugging tool from KeyCDN.
- Google PageSpeed Insights: Tests your site and provides optimization suggestions.
- WebPageTest: Supports speed testing from various global locations and browsers.
- Pingdom: Tests page load speed and identifies performance bottlenecks.
- GTmetrix: Not only tests speed but also analyzes potential legal risks and provides optimization suggestions.
Web Developer Communities
- Stack Overflow: Over 4.7 million active developers helping each other.
- Hashnode: A global developer community with many experts.
- Refind: A community for entrepreneurs, developers, and designers to share web projects.
- Google+ Web Developers Group: A Google+ community for web developers.
- Facebook WordPress Front-end Developers Group: A Facebook group for WordPress front-end engineers to discuss development issues and trends.
- LinkedIn Web Design and Development Professionals Group: A professional group for web practitioners on LinkedIn.
- LinkedIn PHP Developer Group: A LinkedIn group for PHP developers.
- Sitepoint Forums: A forum for web developers.
- /r/perfmatters: A subreddit on Reddit focused on website performance optimization, initiated by KeyCDN.
- /r/webdev: A subreddit for discussing web development.
Web Development News
- wdrl.info: Weekly curated articles on web development.
- Web Tools Weekly: Primarily shares web development tools.
- WebOps Weekly: Weekly articles on web operations and deployment.
- /dev tips: Weekly sharing of development tips.
- Friday Front-end: Daily Twitter updates on development-related news, with weekly summaries via email.
- Front-end Dev Weekly: Handpicked web development, tools, and creative news sent weekly.
- Smashing Magazine: An online magazine for web designers and developers, known for high-quality content, published on the second Tuesday of every month.
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