Web Development Tools And Resources For Designers

By Author: olivia cuthbert
Total Articles: 12
Comment this article

Web development isn’t just about HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — it’s also about the design and usability of your website or app. Design and development go hand in hand, and while one might be more technically challenging than the other, they can both make or break your site or app if you don’t know what you’re doing. If you’re looking to learn web development online, here are the best web development tools and resources for designers that I highly recommend.

| Web Developer Tools

Web development tools are an integral part of a developer’s workflow. Web designers use a multitude of apps, software, plugins, and extensions to create interfaces that their clients want to use. These web development tools make web design faster, more efficient, or simply make it possible for designers to do what they love – creating beautiful websites! Here are some of our favorite web developer tools.

| Frontend frameworks

JavaScript frameworks that help developers build web apps. Typically, these frameworks are very feature-rich, providing pre-built interaction elements, along with things like animation libraries. ...
... They're also designed to be modular—this means developers can swap in their own styles or override certain aspects of a framework when needed. Think of frontend frameworks as building blocks that make it easy to create high-quality web apps fast. You can find a detailed list of JavaScript frontend frameworks on Tuts+.

| Web application frameworks

Ruby on Rails, Django, Express.js, Meteor, Dart: Web application frameworks are foundational technologies that let developers quickly create applications that run in a web browser. By abstracting away low-level details such as connecting to databases or formatting dates, frameworks allow designers to focus more on developing an intuitive user experience rather than getting bogged down with code. The sheer number of available frameworks can be overwhelming. To make things easier, we've rounded up a few notable web app frameworks along with a brief description of what they're best at and who should use them. If you've got questions about specific features or tools included in any of these frameworks or want advice about which one to pick next, reach out via Twitter—we're always happy to help!

| Task runners / Package managers

Task runners are a necessity when it comes to a JavaScript project. Without a task runner, it can be a nightmare to keep your project up-to-date. There are several task runners out there but two popular choices include Gulp and Grunt. Task runners help you to define tasks in code, much like using MSBuild from Visual Studio when building .NET applications. In addition to that, package managers allow you to easily add modules or libraries into your project that you use often throughout development. There are tons of options when it comes to picking a package manager with NPM being one of them along with Bower, Jam, etc.

| Languages / Platforms

Ruby on Rails is an open-source web application framework written in Ruby. It follows the model–view–controller (MVC) pattern, providing default structures for a database, a web service, and web pages. First developed in 2004 by David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), Ruby on Rails was derived from MERB by adding convention over configuration. It uses the Web Server Gateway Interface (WSGI) protocol to communicate with servers that then transfer either HTML or JSON back to be rendered by browsers into web pages.

| Databases

There are several different databases that can be used to store web development resources. Some, like MySQL, are free. Others, like Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle Database, might cost hundreds of dollars per month depending on how much memory is allocated. Generally speaking, you'll need at least 2GB of RAM to support a decent-sized database. Databases come in three basic flavors: relational database management systems (RDBMS), hierarchical storage management (HSM) database management systems, and online transaction processing (OLTP) database management systems.

| CSS preprocessors

If you’re a designer who writes code, then it’s likely that you use CSS. But CSS isn’t perfect: The specifications are hard to follow at times, so instead of writing vanilla CSS, some developers prefer to write in a preprocessor such as Sass or Less. Preprocessors add features such as variables and functions to plain ol' CSS. All preprocessors do these things but vary slightly in how they work.

| Text editors / Code editors

There are so many text editors to choose from, it can be hard to pick one. Even experienced developers tend to have their own preferences, which is why you should check out these seven great code editors that will make your life easier before choosing your own. Some of them aren’t even free! So explore these options if you’re looking for an upgrade over what comes on your computer.

| Markdown editors

Markdown is a simple, lightweight markup language that’s easy to learn. Most developers use it to write code without learning or installing any new software. If you want to write code on your own system instead of working within a website builder, make sure you get an editor with Markdown support. Our favorites are Typora (OS X) and MarkMyWords (Windows). Both are available in free versions with more advanced options available through purchase.

| Git clients / Git services

At some point, you’ll be working with Git on a remote server, which means you’ll need to use a Git client. GitHub for Mac is my favorite because it provides some user interface improvements over the command line, but many prefer Tower or SourceTree. But there are other tools out there, too—I found GitKraken interesting enough to do some research on, but ultimately decided against trying it. Do some research on your own to see what might work best for you!

| Web servers

The best web development tools require a web server. Running your own web server isn’t technically difficult, but it does take some time to set up and manage, which is why many developers use hosting services like Heroku. If you're planning on using third-party apps such as Google Drive or Dropbox (and you will), then you'll need to think about moving that data into your development environment later on.

| Local dev environments

Having a local dev environment can make your workflow much more efficient. For example, I personally like using MAMP (along with XAMPP) to quickly set up local web server installs. You can learn about my local dev environment in The Complete Guide to Front-End Web Development Environments. A few other tools that might help you create better websites are listed below: Firebug - Firebug is one of my favorite development tools because it helps me debug all of my CSS in real-time. It’s really simple, too—Firebug works in any web browser so there’s no need to download anything extra when you want to use it. There are also some handy add-ons available if you want even more control.

| Diff checkers

In HTML, every opening tag needs a closing tag. This is as true as it gets in life, as well as in your code. However, sometimes you make a mistake and forget to close a tag—or even worse, close an element with another element’s name. Both of these errors will cause problems in your browser that could range from blank pages to complete crashes. There are a number of free tools that you can use to quickly check all of your HTML elements to ensure they have valid syntax

| Conclusion

Now that you know what tools are available, it’s time to decide which ones are right for you. The important thing is not to get so excited about all of these cool new tools that you can’t see straight. There are lots of great tools out there—but they won’t help if you don’t have a vision or plan for your project. A hammer is a good tool, but it doesn’t turn wood into furniture on its own. No matter how many cool new tools designers keep learning about, nothing will replace imagination, insight, and hard work when it comes to great design. If you are looking for a web developer there are many web developments companies that can help in developing web applications.