10 productivity tools every successful web developer relies on

As a web developer your job is to deliver high quality websites which can help users find what they are looking for, without being prevented by bugs or other types of malfunction. Delivering such a good site, which can function great and looks amazing, is not an easy task, so productivity tools are one of the best friends of a web developer.

These tools come in the form of apps, add-ons, software and even browsers, allowing you to adjust your product until it suits the high requirements of the current internet medium. Each developer has his own set of tools, so here is a roundup of the best productivity tools every successful web developer relies on. Try them and you will notice a significant difference in your workflow and the quality of your web sites.

1. High level tool: CSS Guidelines

CSS Guidelines are not for a beginner developer; they are designed to help expert developers. The Guidelines were created by a professional Front End Architect and they help you stay updated with the latest news on CSS syntax, formatting and everything you need to know to be able to deliver reliable, high quality websites.

2. Pictura

One of those horrible tasks you have to do is sourcing the images on your new website. You do it when you are using preset themes, you do it when you build a website from scratch, you do it all the time! The problem with sourcing images is the fact that it is time consuming; now you have Pictura to help you with this task.

It allows you to quickly search for the right images without even exiting the designing environment. When you found the perfect picture, Pictura allows you to turn it into a new layer and place it on your website.

3. Play Framework

Java is still ruling the web design medium and it has a friend named Scala: Play Framework allows you to work with both like a pro. With a browser and a text editor you can use PF to see the amends right away and test the website easier. If this doesn’t make PF one of the best productivity tools for successful developers, the fact that it was designed with mobile browsing in mind will definitely do it. Plus, you can easily build fast running apps with Play Framework.

4. Flynn

Flynn is the tool every successful developer relies on because it allows you to automatize scaling and app deployment. Without Flynn, you would have to do this yourself; with Flynn, you can speed up the process and manage the task easier. Flynn is designed on a pack of APIs, which allows you to customize it as needed.

5. Hack the designer’s PDF: Dimensions

Dimensions is a Chrome extension which allows you to measure all the elements in a PDF design. From buttons to images and more, Dimensions is going to show you their size and allow you to create shortcuts to enable and disable the tool easier.

6. The must have: Bug Muncher

If you don’t use Bug Muncher by now, you are really making your life miserable. This is the productivity tool which cuts down all the misunderstandings and endless chains of emails between you and the website users. How? Bug Muncher lets users highlight the errors and bugs on the website and then takes a screenshot of it. You also get the basic information about the user’s device, such as the OS, the browser and its version.

7. Haml

Haml stands for HTML abstraction markup language and its main goal is to make markup more friendly. As it is in this list, Haml does a great job. It cleans the code from redundant names, focusing on indentation. Haml replaces the PHP, ASP and ERB, so you don’t have to explicitly code in your template.

8. Delorean

This is not the old Delorean which could race with 100mph; this is a tool which helps successful developers to apply Flux concepts on the website interface. Delorean doesn’t depend on any framework, which is a big plus, and it makes your app logic simple, focused on an unidirectional data flow.

9. Rollerblade

The list of productivity tools every successful web developer relies on wouldn’t be complete without Rollerblade. This app allows users to see images in a 360 degree view, which makes it perfect for online shops. Given the bloom of online shopping, this is really a useful app. The smartphone user can slide the image and view a compelling picture, which gives them a real experience and can enhance their desire to buy a product.

Rollerblade can be easily added to the website with CSS and allows you to have multiple 360 degree images and can be customized to roll itself or to be rolled by the user.

10. Monit

As the name suggest, Monit is a monitoring tool which allows you to monitor the server. Monit automatically conducts maintenance tasks on the server and when it goes off, it starts it again and it sends you an alert, so you can act as fast as possible. You can also set Monit to take specific actions depending on the error type.

Many developers use this tool for daemon processes and other programs run on localhost. Monit can also be used to monitor network connections to the server, which comes in very useful when working in the cloud.

Featured photo credit: Flickr/jonrohan via flickr.com

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