Web development is one of the most beautiful professions ever, but also one of the most demanding. Because you have to stay constantly on the ball, actively learn new things and can not rest on the laurels of yesterday. We have to adapt new technologies and tools every single day. There is a high demand for the basic of SEO, we have to optimize our projects based on the responsive design and so on. So for you to stay ahead of your competition, we have prepared a list of the best tools and resources for Web developers in 2016.
Lifelong Learning: Resources for web developers
Web developer newsletter
These newsletters offer the best articles on web development and performance and carefully edited. So you will only receive really useful things in your inbox.
- Web Development Reading List – appear once a week and brings you close to new resources and tools.
- Web Operations Weekly – The newsletter for web applications, performance, Web development, Server Technology and tips.
- WEEKLY WEB TOOLS – The newsletter for the latest tools for web developers and web designers. Mainly focus on front-end design.
- freshbrewed.co – Once a week Newsletter for front-end and UX design.
Communities for web developers
Sometimes every web developer stuck in their project and didn’t know what to do. So it is always good if other people from the same profession can help with those problems. Here, Some communities are specially designed to help web developers and web designers.
- StackOverflow: A community of 4.7 million programmers and developers to quickly help you with your projects.
- Front-end Front: A community specifically for front-end developers. Here you can ask questions and share important links with each other.
- Hashnode: A global community of software developers which helps to learn from each other.
- Refind: A community that gathers the best contents and shares it with friends.
- Google+ Web Developers Group: A Google Plus group for web development, web design, and web programming.
- Google+ Web Developers Group: Another Google Plus group for Java, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript and Python resources.
- Facebook WordPress Front-end Developers Group: This is a closed Facebook group for developers who want to ask questions, share their work with others and learn about new, emerging trends.
- LinkedIn Web Design and Development Professionals Group: A LinkedIn group for networking and sharing of information for web developers, web designers, and webmasters.
- LinkedIn Web Site Development Group: Another LinkedIn group for Website Design and Programming.
- LinkedIn PHP Developer Group: PHP, Mysql, Drupal, Joomla, Zend, Cake, MVC.
- LinkedIn WordPress Developers Group: WordPress Codex. The use of WordPress as a CMS and CMF.
- Webdeveloper.com: This is a forum for Web developers. It focuses on HTML, Java, and JavaScript.
- SitePoint Forum: Discussion group for web development.
- /r/webde : Reddit Subreddit for the latest news on Web design and development.
Tools for online and offline use: Resources for web developers
Website Speed Test Tools
The speed of a website is a critical factor in the ranking of your site in Google’s index. Fast loading times often mean better bounce rate, a better overall user experience, and higher conversion rates. So use these free tools for testing and optimizing the loading time of your site.
- Website Speed Test : Although this relatively new speed testing tool of KeyCDN with a “waterfall” display of results and a preview of the site. Highly Recommended.
- Google Page Speed Insights: Page Speed Insights analyzes your website and gives you a lot of useful tips on how you can improve the performance of your website.
- Google Chrome DevTools: This built-in Google Chrome Devtools will help you with debugging and examine a web page.
- WebPagetest: This tool gives you the opportunity to test the performance of your site from many places on earth in real browsers like Firefox, IE and Google Chrome.
- Pingdom: One of the best tools to test the loading time of a website. You can set different geographical location for testing your webpage.
- GTmetrix: It gives you an idea about the speed of your site and a lot of tips and how you can improve it.
You might be also interested in BEST FREE PINGDOM ALTERNATIVES FOR WORDPRESS-SITE MONITORING.
Collaboration Tools
These tools facilitate the collaboration of teams working together on a job. Because many teams now have employees who live scattered all over the World. Keeping in touch and coordinate with each other is, therefore, crucial. With these tools, you can make significantly more efficient collaboration and workflow.
- Slack: A messaging application for teams working on projects together. This app promises to make your work life easier and more productive.
- Trello: Trello is a flexible and visual way to organize team work together. The software is based on “cards” that you can add, comment on and sort by priorities. This tool is really easy to learn and flexible to work with.
- Glip: Glip motto is team productivity. It offers you real-time messaging with integrated task management, video conferencing, shared calendars, and more.
- Asana: This collaboration tool shows work in progress, and you can simultaneously manage different projects with it.
- Jira: This is a project tracking tool for software developers.
Code sharing and experiments
Sometimes you get an excellent conversation on Skype or via Google Hangouts with another developer. But sometimes you might need to share a piece of code with each other so that customers can take a look. Collaboration tools like Slack can do this work for the team. But if you are not a part of the team or just want to share your code with public then those tools might be handy:
- JS Bin: A tool to experiment with programming and markup languages. You can use HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Markdown, Jade and Sass. This tool is also good for Javascript debugging in collaboration.
- JSfiddle: You can test your JavaScript, HTML or CSS code on browsers and take feedback from others.
- codeshare : You can share your code in real time with other developers with this tool.
- Dabblet : An interactive “workspace” which allows you to quickly test CSS and HTML snippets.
Diff Checker Tools
The “Diff-Checker” will help you to visualize differences between file versions. Sometimes it can be helpful to see such a visual representation.
- Diffchecker : An online tool for a quick comparison of text based files. Useful if you are in the hurry, and you need a quick comparison between two files. You can also merge different files.
- Beyond Compare : A program for comparing files and folders using simple, powerful commands that put the focus on the area that interests you. You can ignore the things you don’t need. It is also useful for merging different files.
Markdown editors
Markdown is a markup language with a simple syntax, which can then be converted into HTML. Markdown editors can be used for typing simple code.
- Stackedit : A free-to-use online editor for Markdown.
- Dillinger: Dillinger is a cloud-ready HTML5 Markdown editor.
- Mou : Markdown editor for developers using Mac OS X.
- Text : A simple text editor for Markdown. Available for Windows and Mac OS X.
- MarkdownPad : MarkdownPad is probably the best Markdown editor for Windows. It shows live preview of your code.
- Byword : Byword is the clear favorite for WBD team when it comes to Mac.
- Sublime Text : This is a more than a markdown editor.
You might be also interested in 9 BEST FREE HTML EDITORS FOR WEB DEVELOPERS (WINDOWS EDITION)
CSS preprocessor
A CSS Preprocessor is a scripting language that extends CSS and can compile to regular CSS. CSS preprocessor makes it really easy to work with CSS and increase our productivity.
- Sass : A very mature, stable, and powerful professional CSS extension.
- Less: An extension to CSS, which also has backward compatibility. This makes learning a breeze.
- Stylus: A new CSS preprocessor, which gives you an efficient, dynamic and expressive way to generate CSS. Stylus supports both basic and advance CSS.
Front-end frameworks
Working with frameworks is becoming increasingly popular, because it can you get faster results with little work. The frameworks typically consist of several files and folders, such as JavaScript, CSS and HTML.Twitters Bootstrap framework is one of the most popular framework which is the foundation for many awesome web projects. But there are other really cool framework that you should check out.
- Bootstrap: An HTML, CSS, and JS based framework for developing responsive, mobile-first website.
- Foundation: is a family of responsive front-end frameworks to build responsive websites, apps, and emails.
- Semantic UI: A framework for developing responsive websites with semantic, human-friendly HTML.
- UIKit: A lightweight and modular framework for developing fast and powerful web interfaces.
Git: Clients and Services
Git is a source code management system for software and web development. It offers you a distributed version control. It has a great advantage when working in teams because it can track code changes and brought the development to the live stage. It is a way to minimize the chaos and make sure that nothing goes online without tested it first.
- SourceTree: A free Mercurial and Git client for Mac and Windows. This is a git client for teams. You can connect it with other Git services like Bitbucket, GitHub, and Kiln.
- GitKraken (Beta): A free and intuitive and faster Git client for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
- Tower 2: Version Control with Git – only for Mac.
- GitHub Client: A simple way to contribute to projects on GitHub and GitHub Enterprise.
- Gog: A simple Git client for self-hosting.
- GitLab: Here you can host your private and public projects for free…
Source: http://webuilddesign.com/discover-50-best-tools-resources-web-developers-2016/