8 Tools for The Modern Front End Developers

Web development has seen some great changes over the past couple of years. Technological advancements have introduced better ways of developing sites for various operating systems and platforms. Better frameworks and tools have been discovered which altogether ease the role of web developers. With a simple framework, a newbie developer can design a better site/ mobile app than it would have taken an expert a few couple of years back. This is simply because these frameworks exist online and they function as templates in which a developer can use. These libraries make the workflow easier and yield better responsive designs. Frameworks comprise of pure CSS, HTML or JavaScript. We have talked to a number of experts, conducted some research and compiled a list of the latest tools to help you through your development job.

Chrome developer tools usually referred to Chrome Dev tools are a set of tools that allows developers conduct various activities such as real-time monitoring and debugging as they happen. Pretty amazing, right? The chrome and safari built in tools are available for every developer’s use. You just have to open the chrome browser, click on the menu at the top right hand corner, tools then go to developer tools. Combinations of control+ shift+ I/j/ c or cmd+ opt+ i/j/c can turn out as really helpful shortcuts to make your workflow easier. Basically, chrome developer tools are grouped into 8 categories of task-oriented tools arranged in the tool bar at the top of the window. With such organization, you can work with a specific app information or page. They are 8 groups of the task-oriented categories which include but not limited to elements, networks, profiles, audits and console. When optimizing your network performance, you simply click on the network panel that allows you to internally control the on-going downloads. Identifying the slow ones can go a long way into helping you as a developer optimize the page functionality.

Github is a community of over 10million experts in web development. This is the most exclusive way of web development that allows interaction, teamwork and sharing of ideas about various web development queries. Regardless of where you’re located in the entire globe, you can learn what others are doing, share thoughts and contribute to over 26million open source projects. If you’re working on a project then realise you made a mistake along the way, you don’t have to stress so much about where to start looking for the flaws. You can easily run the code on a version control system in which Github is the best. Github allows you to manage and run any project from the start to its completion. Upon completion, you have the choice of sharing it for everyone to access or make it private for your access only. Github brings passionate hobbyists, professional developers, communities and businesses together.

JavaScript is popularly known as the absolute language for front-end developers despite its few issues with most of these developers. Its heavy, complex code that results in inconsistencies that developers are never happy about. Good news is, jQuery is here with us. It’s defined as a fast, simple, feature-rich JavaScript library. It simplifies such tasks as HTML transversal, animation and manipulation across various platforms such as Chrome, Safari, iOS, Android and Edge. Its acceptance into the world of development can be seen by the number of downloads and installations it had by the end of 2015. The acceptance can be attributed to its ability to ease the JavaScript language.

This is a pretty simple and basic text editor. Sublime text is best known for a friendly user interface, high efficiency and an ultra-fast UI. It features some of the most exclusive, most vital processes of text editing that would have otherwise taken you more than required time to complete. The framework incorporates lots of shortcuts that enables you to run multiple selections by clicking Ctrl + Shift+ l to split the required lines, then Ctrl+ d to select the next appearance of the word selected for. Sublime text is equally preferred for such features as its command palette, split editing, plugin API and instant project switches.

This feature-rich framework enables you to create mobile-first responsive sites that can run on any device with much ease and speed. In terms of competition, it ranks among other world-class frameworks such as bootstraps. With foundation, everything is semantic, fully-customizable and professionally ran. Among the best of its features are interchange, off-canvas navigation and fastclick.js.

Sass is a CSS pre-processor that greatly reduces the amount of time spent on coding thus making the whole experience enjoyable and non-redundant. This open-source tool has been in existence for over 8 years and has proved to be a crucial part of modern-day CSS coding. An extension of CSS language, sass features a combination of variables, mixins and nesting that will make the documentation readable and non-redundant.

These are the cutting edge technologies of modern day front-end development. Choose wisely on which ones to put your money on for better return on investment.