Whether it’s the unique look, brand matching, website scalability, or several unique features, businesses enjoy a lot of benefits from custom web development. However, as the business and digital tech landscapes keep evolving, custom web developers face a lot of new requests.
To stay on top of their game, developers always seek out various tools that make the process faster and more productive. These tools help the developer to create better designs, implement the right strategies, collaborate effectively, and manage the project efficiently. Here are some essential tools that custom web developers rely on to deliver top-notch web development services.
Table of Contents
GitHub
GitHub is a popular Git repository hosting service that provides a web-based graphical interface. It is an open-source, cloud-based platform allowing developers to host code for version control and collaboration with others.
Developers can improve their productivity using the platform. For instance, it features an AI tool, GitHub Copilot, that suggests code completions, auto-fills, and enables unit tests. GitHub also makes code review and progress tracking easier. In addition, developers can automate tasks like onboarding, testing, and project management.
The platform features flexible project management tools suitable for different teams, projects, and workflows. With over 100 million developers and over 370 million repositories, GitHub is a great place to grow your network and establish an influence as a custom web developer.
Chrome Developer Tools
These web editing tools are available to web developers right on the Google Chrome browser. Chrome Developer Tools lets users view and apply page styles, debug JavaScript code, optimize website speed, and more.
An interesting component of Chrome Developer Tools is the lighthouse tool used to audit website pages and generates reports. Lighthouse evaluates the performance, accessibility, search engine optimization, and progressive web apps (PWA) of the web page.
Another component, Google Task Manager, lets the developer view the memory usage of a web page and note areas of memory leak or bloat that affect performance. The tools also allow web designers to inspect web elements, page designs, colors, and layouts.
Dreamweaver
Dreamweaver is a proprietary application provided by Adobe that offers great tools and various web design and development features. The application, available on Windows and Mac OS, allows users to create a website from scratch using its visual editor with a drag-and-drop feature and powerful code editor. In addition, it allows unlimited customization and the most advanced site design.
Some helpful features are smart code hinting, syntax highlighting, live code preview, and an in-built FTP client. It also features flexible workflow and project management options and integrates well with other Adobe products like Photoshop.
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code or VSCode is an open-source and lightweight code editor available on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It was voted the most popular integrated development environment among developers as it supports the most common programming languages, including C++, JavaScript, and Python.
Some features of VSCode are syntax highlighting, intelligent code completion, snippets, debugging, and code refactoring. More features are accessible through extensions available in its marketplace. Developers can create extensions that add support for new languages, themes, debuggers, and more using the Language Server Protocol. Furthermore, its Git integration allows users to perform several Git commands and highlight changes to the Git repository.
Firefox Developer Edition
Firefox Developer Edition is a special version of the Firefox app for use in web development. The app offers several custom web development features that allow developers to design custom websites from scratch. Some tools available to the developer are the style editor, HTML editor, and CSS grid design tool. It also features tools for analyzing and debugging codes.
Bootstrap
Bootstrap is an open-source front-end development framework for creating responsive web applications. It has predefined HTML, CSS, and JavaScript-based templates for web design and functions. This saves developers time spent coding aspects like typography, form, buttons, and navigation manually. In addition, its predefined grid system enables developers to maintain consistency and replicate web elements.
Bootstrap is also a mobile-first framework. It is compatible with all modern browsers and automatically resizes images based on the users’ screen size. It is also highly customizable, allowing developers to change existing styles like colors and fonts as well as add new custom classes.
Grunt
Grunt is a JavaScript task runner used for automating repetitive tasks such as compilation, minification, unit testing, and linting. A task runner like this saves the developers a lot of time that would have been spent on routine tasks, thereby improving project efficiency. It makes it easier to implement coding style guides throughout the code base of your project, ensuring consistency, repeatability, and readability.
It supports thousands of plugins that can be used to handle commonly used tasks. Furthermore, the tool can be customized. Developers can create new custom tasks or modify existing tasks to suit their development needs. Users can easily create and publish their Grunt plugins on npm.
Sketch
This is a great tool for designing website graphics, albeit exclusive to macOS. It ranks among the best tools for user interface and user experience (UI/UX) design of websites and mobile apps.
The main features of sketch include its design toolkit, flexible editing and export capabilities, collaboration, and prototyping. Custom web developers leverage Sketch’s vector-based design toolkit and drag-and-drop features to create several interfaces and prototypes. They can also carry out non-destructive vector editing, and export presets and codes.
Sketch supports several third-party plugins and integrations that enhance its functionalities. It also offers real-time collaboration, which lets web designers and web developers work on the same project simultaneously.
Summary
Custom web development needs will continue to evolve, but so will the tools and techniques needed to match newer requests. These tools are often being upgraded even as new favorites emerge. A good development team adopts the perfect cocktail of tools for each project.
