Being a web developer has its advantages and disadvantages because the web is always evolving. This is fantastic, but it also means that web developers need to be proactive in always learning new skills or programming languages, being flexible in the face of change, and being ready to take on new challenges. This could involve things like modifying pre-existing frameworks to fit specific business needs, testing a website to find bugs, or scaling and optimizing it to operate better with the backend infrastructure. We decided to put together an extensive collection of web development tools and resources to help you improve as a developer, keep informed, and be more productive.
Web Development Tools and Resources
Many of the web development tools listed below are ones that we use on a regular basis at SystemSeeders Infotech LLP. Not all of them can fit in here, but these are some of our top picks along with several more that are frequently utilized. Ideally, you discover a fresh resource or tool to help you with your development process. There is no set order for the tools and resources listed here.
Websites to Learn Web Development
YouTube Channels to Learn Web Development
WebSites for HTML/CSS Templates
Color Resources WebSites for Your Projects
WebSites for Vectors, Images, and Illustrations
- Freepik: Discover free vectors, photos, PSDs, and icons.
- Vecteezy: Find high-quality vector art, graphics, and illustrations.
- Unsplash: Access over a million free high-resolution photos.
- Pixabay: Explore a vast library of free images and videos.
- Flaticon: Download free icons, SVG, PSD, PNG, EPS format, or as ICON FONT.
- Openclipart: Share and use free clipart and images.
- SVGRepo: Download SVGs for free.
- Vectorportal: Free vectors, clip art, and icons.
- SVGBackgrounds: Customizable SVG patterns and backgrounds.
- FreeDesignFile: High-quality graphic design resources.
- Pexels: Find free stock photos and videos shared by talented creators.
- Vectorian: Download royalty-free vector art, stock photos, and stock footage.
Icons WebSites for Your Projects
Fonts WebSites for Your Projects
JavaScript Libraries's WebSites
- jQuery: A fast, small, and feature-rich JavaScript library.
- BackBoneJS: Give your JS app some backbone with models, views, collections, & events.
- D3.js: A JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data.
- React: Facebook's JavaScript library developed for building user interfaces.
- jQuery UI: A curated set of user interface interactions, effects, widgets, and themes.
- jQuery Mobile: HTML5-based user interface system designed to make responsive websites.
- Underscore.js: Functional programming helpers without extending any built-in objects.
- Moment.js: Parse, validate, manipulate, and display dates in JavaScript.
- Lodash: A modern utility library delivering modularity, performance, & extras.
- Vue.js: An open-source JavaScript framework used for building user interfaces.
JavaScript Animation Libraries's WebSites
- Anime.js: Lightweight JavaScript animation library.
- ScrollReveal.js: Easily reveal elements as they enter the viewport.
- Popmotion: A functional, flexible JavaScript motion library.
- AniJS: Declarative handling library for CSS animations.
- Wow.js: Reveal CSS animation as you scroll down a page.
- Typed.js: A JavaScript library that types.
- Velocity.js: Accelerated JavaScript animation.
- GSAP: Professional-grade animation for the modern web.
Cheat Sheet Sites
Frontend Frameworks
- Bootstrap: HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile-first projects on the web.
- Foundation: Family of responsive frontend frameworks that make it easy to design beautiful responsive websites, apps, and emails that look amazing on any device.
- Semantic UI: Development framework that helps create beautiful, responsive layouts using human-friendly HTML.
- uikit: A lightweight and modular front-end framework for developing fast and powerful web interfaces.
Web application frameworks
- Ruby: Ruby on Rails is a web-application framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications, with the MVC pattern.
- AngularJS: This lets you extend HTML vocabulary for your web application. AngularJS is a framework, even though it's much more lightweight and sometimes referred to as a library.
- Ember.js: A framework for creating ambitious web applications.
- Express: Fast and minimalist web framework for Node.js.
- Meteor: Full-stack JavaScript app platform that assembles all the pieces you need to build modern web and mobile apps, with a single JavaScript codebase.
- Django: High-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.
- ASP.net: Free, fully supported Web application framework that helps you create standards-based Web solutions.
- Laravel: A free, open-source PHP web application framework to build web applications on MVC pattern.
- Zend Framework 2: An open-source framework for developing web applications and services using PHP.
- Phalcon: A full-stack PHP framework delivered as a C-extension.
- Symfony: A set of reusable PHP components and a web application framework.
- CakePHP: A popular PHP framework that makes building web applications simpler, and faster and requires less code.
- Flask: A microframework for Python based on Werkzeug and Jinja 2.
- CodeIgniter: Powerful and lightweight PHP framework built for developers who need a simple and elegant toolkit to create full-featured web applications.
Task runners / Package managers
- Grunt: JavaScript task runner is all about automation.
- Gulp: Keeps things simple and makes complex tasks manageable, while automating and enhancing your workflow.
- npm: Pack manager for JavaScript.
- Bower: A web package manager. Manage components that contain HTML, CSS, JavaScript, fonts, or even image files.
- webpack: A module bundler for modern JavaScript applications.
APIs for Your Projects
- OpenWeatherMap API: Access current weather data for any location.
- News API: Retrieve live news articles from various sources.
- REST Countries API: Get information about countries worldwide.
- Chuck Norris Jokes API: Lighten up your projects with Chuck Norris jokes.
- Open Food Facts API: Access food product information and ingredients.
- GitHub API: Integrate GitHub functionalities into your applications.
- Reddit API: Fetch Reddit data, including posts and comments.
- OneDrive API: Manage files and folders on Microsoft OneDrive.
- Dogs API: Bring adorable dog images and information to your projects.
- GIPHY API: Integrate GIFs and stickers into your applications.
- OMDb API: Access a database of movies and TV shows.
- VirusTotal API: Analyze suspicious files and URLs for malware.
- PokeAPI: Retrieve Pokémon data for your gaming-related projects.
- NASA API: Access a wealth of NASA data, including imagery and information.
Languages / Platforms
- PHP: Popular general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited to web development.
- NodeJS: Event-driven I/O server-side JavaScript environment based on V8.
- JavaScript: Programming language of HTML and the web
- .HTML5: Markup language, the latest version of HTML and XHTML
- .Python: A programming language that lets you work quickly and integrate systems more effectively
- .Ruby: A dynamic, open-source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity
- .Scala: Scala is a pure-bred object-oriented language allowing a gradual, easy migration to a more functional style
- .SQL: Stands for structured query language used with relational databases
- .Golang: Open source programming language that makes it easy to build simple, reliable, and efficient software
- .Rust: A systems programming language that runs blazingly fast, prevents segfaults, and guarantees thread safety
- .Elixir: Dynamic, functional language designed for building scalable and maintainable applications
- .TypeScript: Open source programming language that is a superset of JavaScript which compiles to plain JavaScript
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Databases
- MySQL: One of the world's most popular open-source databases.
- MariaDB: Made by the original developers of MySQL. MariaDB is also becoming very popular as an open-source database server.
- MongoDB: Next-generation database that lets you create applications never before possible.
- Redis: An open source, in-memory data structure store, used as a database, cache, and message broker.
- PostgreSQL: A powerful, open-source object-relational database system.
CSS preprocessors
- Sass: A very mature, stable, and powerful professional-grade CSS extension.
- Less: As an extension to CSS that is also backward compatible with CSS. This makes learning Less a breeze, and if in doubt, lets you fall back to vanilla CSS.
- Stylus: A new language, providing an efficient, dynamic, and expressive way to generate CSS. Supporting both an indented syntax and regular CSS style.
Text editors / Code editors
- Atom: A text editor that's modern, approachable, yet hackable to the core. One of our favorites!
- Sublime Text: A sophisticated text editor for code, markup, and prose with great performance.
- Notepad++: A free source code editor that supports several programming languages running under the MS Windows environment.
- Visual Studio Code: Code editing is redefined and optimized for building and debugging modern web and cloud applications.
- TextMate: A code and markup editor for OS X.
- Coda 2: A fast, clean, and powerful text editor for OS X.
- WebStorm: Lightweight yet powerful IDE, perfectly equipped for complex client-side development and server-side development with Node.js.
- Vim: A highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing.
- Brackets: A lightweight and powerful modern text editor; written in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.
- Emacs: An extensible, customizable text editor with built-in functions to aid in quick modifications of text and code.
- Dreamweaver: Not your typical code editor, however, Dreamweaver can be used to write code and build websites through a visual interface. Learn more in this simple Dreamweaver tutorial.
- SpaceMacs: A text editor designed to operate in both Emacs and Vim editor modes.
Markdown editors
- StackEdit: A free online rich markdown editor.
- Dillinger: An online cloud-enabled, HTML5, buzzword-filled Markdown editor.
- Mou: Markdown editor for developers on Mac OS X.
Git clients / Git services
- SourceTree: A free Git & Mercurial client for Windows or Mac. Atlassian also makes a pretty cool team Git client called Bitbucket.
- GitKraken (Beta): A free, intuitive, fast, and beautiful cross-platform Git client.
- Tower 2: Version control with Git - made easy in a beautiful, efficient, and powerful app.
- GitHub Client: A seamless way to contribute to projects on GitHub and GitHub Enterprise.
- Gogs: A painless self-hosted Git service based on the Go language.
- GitLab: Host your private and public software projects for free.
Web servers
- Nginx: An open-source and high-performant web server. Handles static content well and is lightweight.
- Apache: Currently powers almost 50% of all websites. Has a larger community around it and a great selection of modules.
- IIS: An extensible web server created by Microsoft. Offers excellent security and corporate support, therefore is not open source.
- Caddy: A relatively new web server. It is an open-source, HTTP/2 web server with automatic HTTPS.
API tools
- Runscope: An API performance testing, monitoring, and debugging solution.
- Zapier: Connect the APIs of various apps and services in order to automate workflows and enable automation.
- Postman: Complete API development environment. Everything from designing, testing, monitoring, and publishing.
- SoapUI: Advanced REST and SOAP testing tool. Ability to perform functional testing, security testing, performance testing, etc.
Local dev environments
- XAMPP: Completely free, easy-to-install Apache distribution containing MariaDB, PHP, and Perl.
- MAMP: Local server environment in a matter of seconds on OS X or Windows.
- WampServer: Windows web development environment. It allows you to create web applications with Apache2, PHP, and a MySQL database.
- Vagrant: Create and configure lightweight, reproducible, and portable development environments.
- Laragon: A great fast and easy way to create an isolated dev environment on Windows. Includes Mysql, PHP Memcached, Redis, Apache, and awesome for working with your Laravel projects.
Diff checkers
- Diffchecker: Online diff tool to compare text differences between two text files. Great if you are on the go and quickly need to compare something.
- Beyond Compare: A program to compare files and folders using simple, powerful commands that focus on the differences you're interested in and ignore those you're not.
Code sharing / Code experimenting
- JS Bin: Tool for experimenting with web languages. In particular HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, Markdown, Jade, and Sass.
- JSfiddle: Custom environment to test your JavaScript, HTML, and CSS code right inside your browser.
- codeshare: Share code in real-time with other developers.
- Dabblet: Interactive playground for quickly testing snippets of CSS and HTML code.
Collaboration tools
- Slack: Messaging app for teams that is on a mission to make your working life simpler, more pleasant, and more productive.
- Trello: Flexible and visual way to organize anything with anyone.
- Glip: Real-time messaging with integrated task management, video conferencing, shared calendars, and more.
- Asana: Team collaboration tool for teams to track their work and results.
- Jira: Built for every member of your software team to plan, track, and release great software or web applications.
Inspiration
- CodePen: Show off your latest creation and get feedback. Build a test case for that pesky bug. Find example design patterns and inspiration for your projects.
- Dribble: A community of designers sharing screenshots of their work, processes, and projects.
- Behance: Another community-driven resource where users can showcase and discover creative work.
Website speed test tools
- Website Speed Test: A page speed test that includes a waterfall breakdown and the website preview.
- Google PageSpeed Insights: PageSpeed Insights analyzes the content of a web page, and then generates suggestions to make that page faster.
- Google Chrome DevTools: Set of web authoring and debugging tools built into Google Chrome.
- Dotcom-Tools Speed Test: Test the speed of your website in real browsers from 25 locations worldwide.
- WebPageTest: Run a free website speed test from multiple locations around the globe using real browsers (IE and Chrome) and at real consumer connection speeds.
- Pingdom: Test the load time of that page, analyze it, and find bottlenecks.
- GTmetrix: Gives you insight on how well your site loads and provides actionable recommendations on how to optimize it.
Web development communities
- Stack Overflow: Community of 4.7 million programmers, just like you, helping each other.
- Frontend Front: A place where frontend developers can ask questions, share interesting links, and show their work to the rest of the community.
- Hashnode: A global community for software developers to connect and learn programming from each other.
- Refind: Community of founders, hackers, and designers who collect and share the best links on the web.
- Facebook WordPress Front End Developers Group: WordPress Front End Developers is a group for devs to ask questions, share their work, discuss emerging trends, and collaborate.
- LinkedIn Web Design and Development Professionals Group: Networking and information-sharing resource for professional Web Designers, Web Developers, and Web Masters.
- LinkedIn Web Site Development Group: Website design & programming.
- LinkedIn PHP Developer Group: PHP, Mysql, Drupal, Joomla, Zend, Cake, MVC.
- Webdeveloper.com: Where web developers and designers learn how to build websites, programs in HTML, Java, and JavaScript.
- Sitepoint Forums: Web development discussion.
- /r/perfmatters: The #1 subreddit about web performance and web development.
- /r/webdev: What's new for web developers?
FREE Hosting Platforms for Your Websites
- Netlify: Deploy your web projects with ease.
- Render: Host web applications and static sites effortlessly.
- GitHub Pages: Host your static websites directly from your GitHub repository.
- Firebase Hosting: Scale your web apps effortlessly with Firebase.
- Vercel: Deploy websites and applications with automatic deployments.
- Cyclic.sh: Host your static sites with zero configuration.
- Appwrite: Open-source backend server for web and mobile developers.
- Supabase: Build modern apps with a scalable backend.
- InfinityFree: Free and unlimited web hosting with PHP, MySQL, and more.
- Surge: Static web publishing for front-end developers.
Web development newsletters
- wdrl.info: A handcrafted, carefully selected list of web development-related resources. Curated and published usually every week.
- webopsweekly.com: A weekly newsletter for Web developers focusing on web operations, infrastructure, deployment of apps, performance, and tooling, from the browser down to the metal.
- webtoolsweekly.com: A frontend development and web design newsletter with a focus on tools. Each issue features a brief tip or tutorial, followed by a weekly round-up of various apps, scripts, plugins, and other resources.
- smashingmagazine.com: Smashing Magazine is an online magazine for professional web designers and developers. Useful tips and valuable resources are sent out every second Tuesday.
- fridayfrontend.com: Frontend development links are tweeted daily, and emailed weekly.
- /dev tips: Receive a developer tip, in the form of a gif, in your inbox each week.
Summary
As you can see, there are countless web development tools and resources at your disposal to assist you in improving your workflow and, ideally, increasing your productivity.
