20 of the Best Tools and Resources for Web Developers
Looking back 8 years it’s difficult to believe how much the Internet has changed in such a short period of time. Compared to webpages that used to take a good 5 minutes to completely load, today’s 3G reaches lightning speeds. The Internet has spread and developed incredibly fast, managing to attract billions of users over time.
You can find anything online these days. You can make your shopping online, pay your bills, order things from overseas and keep in touch with your friends from other continents. If you can think about it, it probably exists on the Internet already. Having an eye catching website is crucial and this has led to great pressure on web developers and designers who constantly have to be on top of their game, reinvent themselves and stay ahead of their competition. If you’re one of them, then this article is for you. We’ve put together a list of the 20 most helpful and interesting web development tools that will help you in your work and possibly get you out of a creative rut.
Having an attractive and memorable design for your website is essential if you want to keep your customers coming back. Animatron is the perfect application to use if you’re looking to add stunning animations to your website. With this tool, you can design HTML5 animations that will run seamlessly on any device and any operating system. Traditional software alternatives for creating animations are expensive and can be complex to use, but Animatron is the complete opposite: it’s not only fit to be used by web designers and developers regardless of their experience, it’s also affordable, with plans ranging from free to $20/month.
Animatron is the perfect tool to use if you’re working with a team, as well; its seamless collaborative editing allows you to work with multiple users simply by sending a link to your project’s URL. You and your team members can work on the same project at the same time, and you’ll be able to see how modifications are affecting your work in real time. All this is possible because Animatron is a browser-based tool, which means that all your work is saved in the cloud and is instantly accessible from any device with an Internet connection after you log in to the site. When you’re done with the designs, all you have to do is export them to HTML5 (or video, GIF, or SVG) and your animations are ready to go.
The WPJobBoard plugin was specially designed for WordPress and it allows anyone who does not know HTML, CSS, PHP or any other programming language to create their own job board website. This ingenious plugin can be effortlessly implemented into your existing WordPress site within minutes. WPJobBoard helps you by automatically sending email job alerts and RSS feeds to all your users. This way they are kept up to date and periodically reminded of potential jobs. Another cool feature of WPJobBoard is the user friendly drag & drop editor which gives you the possibility to add, delete or rearrange your fields just like you want them. Also, listing new jobs is almost child’s play with the intuitive editor which guides you through everything. By filling out the forms on the screen your new job post will be online in a second. And if you need help with anything, you’re guaranteed an answer from their support team in less than 24 hours.
Original Mockups is the website to visit for all your mockup creating needs. Whenever you are starting a new project and need to touch base with your client on the look and feel of their website, this is the place where you should go. Forget about investing time and money into printing and photography as you have before. Original Mockups offers you the possibility to create any mockup you might need, from fliers or labels, to mobile apps and websites. By using the services offered by Original Mockups you will be able to create an elegant and visually attractive mockup in no time. The Original Mockups editor relies on Adobe Photoshop to help you drag and drop your elements within your design and arrange them as you see fit. Original Mockups will take care of keeping your files organized and it will allow you to transform your previous flat dimensional designs into photo-realistic presentations.
As a freelancer or small business owner you have to handle everything from delegating tasks, keeping in touch with your clients to generating invoices and sending bills. Hiveage is here to help you manage your bills from one or more businesses. With Hiveage you can accept payments using PayPal Pro, Stripe, 2Checkout and a host of other payment gateways. This way you’re sure that anyone, anywhere can pay you for your goods and services. Creating expense reports and sending them off is easier than ever with Hiveage. It records all your outgoing payments, allows you to delegate billing responsibilities quickly and easily, and helps you edit your tax, discount and shipping options to comply with local regulations. What is more, Hiveage Free comes integrated with Paypal Standard payment gateway so it doesn’t take any commissions on the payments you receive from your customers. Hiveage is modular, which means you choose what you buy by selecting those tools you really need for your business.
If you’re looking for a way to create an elegant and attractive layout for a WordPress site, try Themify.me. Themify Builder is the perfect tool for creating a responsive layout without having to write one line of code. The Builder tool offers you a drag and drop feature that allows you to add objects (text, videos, galleries, shortcodes, sliders, photos, tabs, posts, maps, etc.) to the page and arrange them as you see fit. Also, you will benefit from a live preview in which you will be able to see how all the alterations you make affect the layout as a whole in real time. In addition to all of this, every aspect of your layout that you need to manage can be handled from this tools options panel, therefore, even the less tech savvy clients will find this tool easy to use. In addition to all of this, Themify.me will also take care of making your layout responsive. When you’re done designing your layout, the Builder will make sure that it is fully compatible with all devices from laptops to mobiles or tablets.
If you are working as a web or mobile application developer you probably have to juggle with millions of screen shots every day. Luckily for you, ShrinkTheWeb is here to make your life easier and leave you more free time for the really important stuff. ShrinkTheWeb automatically captures, shrinks, crops, saves, uploads and displays screenshots with a single line of code. Or you can also do all of these by using an existing plugin. ShrinkTheWeb is the most reliable website screenshot platform available out there at the moment due to its unique features. It offers full-length previews, custom size previews, URL to PDF conversions, inside page previews and private label service. You have everything at your fingertips directly from the ShrinkTheWeb platform which guarantees its users unmatched reliability. Amongst its previous clients you’ll find Symantec, Technorati and Microsoft. ShrinkTheWeb’s unlimited scalability will make sure your links are more visually appealing for your readers with minimum of effort.
MotoPress Content Editor is a plugin that transforms the default WordPress editor into an intuitive composer that helps you customize your page with just a few mouse clicks. The plugin works with any WordPress theme and is very easy to install, so you’ll be ready to go in a matter of minutes. The drag and drop system makes it really easy for you to customize your design without having to write any code. MotoPress Content Editor also has built-in content elements such as sliders, buttons or videos that will help make your website look good. In addition to this with MotoPress Content Editor you can create responsive and mobile ready layouts and even customize the theme with your own shortcodes for a more personal and original design. Besides all these great features, the team at MotoPress offers professional customer support and regular updates. To find out how MotoPress Content Editor works and explore all of its other great features, check out their website right now.
If you want your projects to run smoothly and be a success, you know the key to this is communication. Framebench is a cloud-based online collaboration and feedback platform that will help you and your team as well as you and your clients get connected, share assets and receive feedback. Everything will be automatically documented for further access. “TableTop Sync” is a great feature Framebench offers that helps everyone online see every activity as it happens. In this way, any change you make will be seen in real time by others. Having everyone in sync will make sharing and reviewing videos a lot easier and less time consuming. Plus, Framebench has intuitive magazine page like flipping, which means anyone can quickly browse through ideas and immediately give you feedback. Another great feature Framebench provides is the Mail Markup in Gmail that allows you to annotate, markup, comment and send without the need to download any attachment.
Creating HTML and CSS without coding is now possible with Froont which helps you design responsive websites visually and speeds up website prototyping. This new platform is ready to beat the competition through its intuitive interface and user-friendly features. Cloning projects, copying different responsive layouts and filling them with your own content is just a few clicks away. Whether you decide to start your project from scratch or choose a design from other users, Froont enables you to browse through hundreds of fonts from Typekit System fonts or Google, rearrange or even delete the elements you may find useless, choose your own cover and edit the colour scheme of the header and sign up section. The useful library of Froont remembers what your favourite items are, so your job will be even easier on your following projects. At the end, Froont allows you to share your designs with your clients or collaborators just by sending them a link.
If you’re a freelancer or you have a small company and you’re looking to get organized, Cashboard is what you need. Cashboard is a cloud-based tool that helps you manage projects and bill your customers easily. What’s great is that you can track the entire process by listing tasks, assign them to the members of your team, setting deadlines and getting paid. Also, you can even make an estimate before you even get started by adding details such as the type of tax, bill by the hour or by prices and send it to your client. Cashboard is fully integrated with payment processors such as Stripe or PayPal. In this way, it enables your customers to pay invoices online. Furthermore, you have full control over every detail of your project and you can also let your employees have access to the project and generate estimates, invoices and reports, as all of these are very easy to do. To top it all off Cashboard offers a 14-day free trial with monthly or yearly plans so you can see for yourself how it works.
Track and graph performance metrics and statistics from your applications with this simple and infinitely useful tool. Metricfire provides you with all the information you might need about the performance of your applications. What’s more, the information Metricfire gathers is completely independent of your code, therefore, in case of a critical crash when everything stops working, you’ll be able to access metric and statistics within Metricfire nonetheless.
When it comes to web hosting, Hostoople has been voted the best Windows reseller hosting service of 2014. With its team of highly trained professionals who are at your disposal for technical support 24/7, Hostoople is the smartest decision you can make when choosing hosting for yourself or for your clients, due to the fact that Hostoople offers you the option to resell their services to your clients. Within this service, you will find anything you need regardless of the kind of website your are putting up. If you’re making an e-commerce website, Hostoople has tools like CubeCart, osCommerce or Zen Cart. If you’re currently designing a blog, you can make use of tools like WordPress or OpenBlog. Not to mention they will also offer your top notch content management tools like Joomla! or Moodle. And, all of this comes in addition to their core features that encompass unlimited MYSQL databases, free premium website builders and more.
WPHelpDesk promises efficiency in handling costumer tickets and lightning speed reply processing. This WordPress plugin allows you to effortlessly start your online help desk. Within seconds you’ll have user friendly tools at your fingertips that will enable you to sort your tickets and quickly reply to your customers. Since WPHelpDesk was especially created for WordPress, the platform’s users can incorporate it in their site themselves, without resorting to professional help. The clients contact the provider and submit their problems by only filling in some standard fields. This way the provider is able to immediately pinpoint what the issue is and address it accordingly. WPHelpDesk will send you notices if someone else from your company wrote a draft on a specific ticket you’re working on. You can also check who else from your team is viewing the ticket. Before storing emails, tickets and messages in the database WPHelpDesk applies special hooks and filters to keep your information safe.
Konstant Infosolutions offers a full range of eCommerce development services that help to boost your business and take your company to a next level. Being the image of your company, your eCommerce website must be one of a kind, memorable and work flawlessly. And when it comes to eCommerce development, Magento is one of the most popular choices because it has a large number of modules, components and SEO friendly features that developers should always use for greater functionality and versatility. The team at Konstant Infosolutions has a lot experience in the field of eCommerce and knows that the purpose of magento development is to aid your business’ growth. Konstant’s certified Magento developers create functional, SEO and user friendly eCommerce websites that also have beautiful designs and manage to offer competitive pricing at the same time; which is one of the reasons they manage to attract and keep so many happy clients. So why not check them out?
If you’ve ever had any issues with creating or managing email templates for yourself or for your clients, Stamplia is the tool that will make your life a lot easier. This tool is created to help you adjust your email templates in order to be assured that the result is both elegant and functional. By using Stamplia, developers will be able to create a diverse range of templates for their clients straight from within the tool’s editor and forget about all the hours they used to spend in order to give their clients options. In addition to this, by using Stamplia you are assured that your email templates will be compatible with a varied range of email providers like MailChimp, CampaignMonitor and SentGrid and that you’ll automatically be promoted to these provider’s clients. What’s more, Stamplia is now in Beta, which means that developers can acces it with 5 free templates right now.
Macaw is the tool that perfectly combines image editing and code generation. By using this elegant and intuitive tool, you will be able to manage your images in an environment similar to Adobe Photoshop and let Macaw generate all the HTML and CSS code you need. This tool could truly be the beginning of the end of coding.
Responsive Image Uploader (RIU) is a free WordPress plugin that solves one of the biggest challenges that developers and content administrators face these days: dealing with responsive images.
Making images scale and crop correctly for responsive web design can be a tedious task, dreaded by most front-end developers – or anyone who wants to have a fully responsive website. If layout and text are more flexible, images tend to be very “stubborn” when it comes to responsiveness. There are issues with size, aspect ratio, focus etc. Fixing everything takes a lot of time and effort, and the result won’t be perfect.
RIU is a quick and easy fix to this problem. With RIU, you upload a photo, choose an area and point of focus you want, and the plugin will always maintain that specific AOF and POF fluidly as the screen size changes. Download RIU from WordPress, install it, and you’re ready to go. It blends with your WordPress gallery and it’s very easy to use. Check out this short video tutorial to get a better idea of what RIU can do for you: http://bit.ly/1p8E838.
Launchlist is the perfect tool to help you make sure that all your code for a new website is clean and bug free before deploying it online. This tool is dedicated to pre-launch website testing and it knows how to make it as effective as possible. Among the features it offers you are: creating a launch list (where you’ll keep all the tests you want to run on your website), managing the project with Launchpad (where you’ll find all the recent active checklists), customizing the template of each of your projects, the possibility to collaborate with your team mates and more.
Flowdock is the tool any team of developers needs in order to make their collaboration as easy and fruitful as possible. This tool is available for desktop, mobile and web in order to make it as accessible as possible. While using Flowdock you can be assured that you will be able to easily manage the important points in your project, have your activities be completely transparent and communicate with teammates regardless of time-zone or tools employed differences.
Context.IO is an app that takes care of syncing email data across IMAP so you don’t have to build, scale and maintain the infrastructure yourself.It takes the pain out of syncing email data with your app so you can focus on what makes your product great. Context.IO makes email data accessible through a simple REST API, all you have to do is write code against this API and you’re ready to go.