Hi there! Are you looking for the best web development tools that can help you to increase your development workflow. Then you’ve landed on the right page.
It takes a lot of effort and time to build a professional and responsive website. As a web developer we always shortcuts to maximize our time spent while coding. There are tons of web development tools in the marketplace that you can use to maximize your work time. But choosing the right tools is a little bit difficult.
Therefore, I’m going to share the top 5 best web development tools to become a pro web developer with you in this article. Well, these tools also will help you increase your productivity.
So, let’s get started without any further ado.
Table of Contents
- What is Web Development Exactly?
- Web design vs. Web development
- 5 Best Web Development Tools I Use as a Developer
- Conclusion About the Best Web Development Tools
What is Web Development Exactly?
Web development refers to the process of designing and building websites with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and related technologies. The term Web development can refer to both the front-end (client side) and back-end (server side) activities involved in building websites and applications that are accessible via the World Wide Web, as well as those used for distributing Internet content (publishing).
Web development should not be confused with web design, which is the art of creating websites and web pages visually, i.e., in terms of layout, color, graphics, etc.
Web design vs. Web development
As a web designer, you don’t need to know much about web development. However, some knowledge of HTML and CSS is useful for making sense of those big walls of code. Web developers (who are also often referred to as front-end developers) are in charge of building websites from scratch using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other programming languages like PHP or Ruby on Rails.
Web design focuses on designing a good-looking website for users. The primary goal of web design is to provide and guide users through a coherent, meaningful experience. Web development covers a broader spectrum of techniques and technology. There are many different paths that can be taken while developing websites, each with its own pros and cons.
5 Best Web Development Tools I Use as a Developer
#1. Chrome DevTools
Chrome DevTools is a set of web developer tools built directly into the Google Chrome browser. These tools let you inspect the rendered HTML (DOM) and network activity of your pages. You can use DevTools to check live preview changes on the Website. Also, DevTools lets you run JavaScript into the Console panel.
We always use this tool to check the preview of a web page on how it looks on Desktop, tablet and mobile.
Also, we use this tool to edit any code of HTML and CSS and then implement it on the code editor tools. So, if you’re a web developer then you must use chrome DevTools.
How to open the elements panel to inspect the HTML or CSS Code
When you want to inspect HTML (DOM) attributes, or CSS attributes, right-click on those elements and select Inspect.
Either, you can use chrome developer tools shortcut to inspect the DOM or CSS. To do this press Command+Option+C (On Mac) or Ctrl+Shift+C (On Windows, Linux, Chrome OS).
On the other hand, you can open DevTools from Chrome’s main menu.
Click three horizontal dots on the top right corner of Chrome browser and then select > More Tools > Developer Tools
#2. Icons
As web developers, we always need different types of icons for websites such as social icons, home icon, service icon, or other icons. Icons play an important role in the overall outlook of any website because they allow the website to communicate with the user effectively.
But creating icons from scratch by using CSS takes a lot of time and effort. Therefore it is necessary to use shortcuts that can provide us with ready-made icons that can save our time as well as effort.
Well, say thank you! Because, I’ve shortlisted some awesome websites for you that you can use to get high-quality icons for free.
Material icons are modern, simple and awesome websites for downloading icons for free. In this site, you can find different categories of icons such as Facebook, Instagram, home, maps, telephone, etc.
As you can see, you can search for different categories of icons in the below image.
Along with, Icons category, you can choose types of icons such as outlined, filled, rounded, sharp and Two tone.
You can also sort icons on the basis of popularity and name as shown in the below image.
Step to Use Material Icons:
- Search your desired icons by filter category, types and popularity.
- Choose your fav icon.
- Select the desired device such as Android, Web, iOS, or flutter.
- Select the appropriate color.
- Download the icon in the format of SVG or PNG.
Feather icons are another popular and best website where you can find high-quality icons for free. It is very easy to use. To download icons, simply search the name of the icon, select size, and color and click on the icons that you want to download.
Steps to Use Feather Icons:
- Search name of the icons on the search bar.
- Select the size and stroke width of the icon.
- Choose your desired color.
- Click on the icon to download it.
Note: You can change the attribute of icons using CSS code such as color, size, and width.
#3. Image:
Images also play a vital role as users visit your website. It helps to enhance user experience by using high-quality images. But, finding HD images without infringing any copyright issues is a challenging task.
But, challenging tasks can be easy if you know the right source. Well, if you already know the best website to download a copyright free image then skip this section.
Here are the top two stock images sources that I use as a web developer.
Pexels is one of the popular websites to download high-quality copyright free images and videos. Some images on this site are not free. But it is enough to download 4k free images.
To download the images, simply search the name on the search bar and hit search. You will see tons of images related to your search. Just select your desired images and choose the size of image and hit download.
Unsplash is another popular website to download high-quality images. You can bookmark this site for future uses.
#4. Squoosh.app
Smaller images means faster load times. Squoosh is one of my favorite sites to reduce image file size without losing image quality. As a developer, to maintain the speed load time of websites we use smaller size images.
Here, you can see my website performance. It’s awesome.
Steps to Use Squoosh.app
- Select or drop your image.
- Reduce the image file size and see the differences.
- Download the resize image.
Here, I reduced the 1.30MB file size to 82.9KB and you can see the difference between both images.
#5. Lighthouse
A pro developer is someone who creates a fast loading website. When you create any website, always check the speed performance and fix it if we find any problem. Thankful to Lighthouse, because these tools help to identify and fix problems that affect the site’s performance, accessibility and user experience.
With the help of lighthouse, you can audit the performance of your website, such as accessibility, progressive web apps, SEO and more.
#6. VS Code (Code Editing Tool)
As a developer, you must use VS Code. It is a source code editor made by Microsoft. It is available for Windows, Linux and macOS. I personally use this visual studio code editor for coding websites.
I love this code editor because it is very easy to use and has lots of features available. It’s extension lets you add languages, debuggers, and tools to increase your development workflow.
Click here to download the VS Code.
Conclusion About the Best Web Development Tools
I hope you liked these Web Development Tools. If I find any other best tools for web developer then I will update this time to time. So, remember our site name (urpn.org) or just bookmark it. Please share this post with your developer friends. You can also share different tools that you use in the comment section.