Web Developer Tools & Resources
The Closure Library, from Google, is a well-tested, broad, cross-browser JavaScript library that lets you pull only what you need from a set of reusable UI widgets and controls. It also lets you pull from a variety of lower-level utilities for server communication, unit testing, rich-text editing, animation, DOM manipulation, and more.
Snap.svg is a JavaScript SVG library for the modern web that allows you to more easily control your interactive, resolution-independent vector graphics. It supports the newest SVG features, including masking, full gradients, patterns, and more.
Code Beautify makes it easier to read a variety of programming languages in a more human-friendly format. It works with CSS, JSON, RSS, XML, HTML, and more.
Happy Rhino is a complete build system for creating large client-side web applications in a structured way. It has a rich API similar to Backbone.js, and is an open source component of FriendCode.
Prediction.io is a machine learning server that makes it easier to create predictive features in your software. You can predict user behavior with just a few lines of code, and of course it’s open source and scalable.
Dnsyo is a simple tool for monitoring DNS propagation across hundreds of servers. It will tell you what IP address these servers are using for the specified domain, as well as any that are returning errors.
SoundManager 2 uses HTML5 and Flash to provide consistent cross-browser and cross-platform audio support with a single JavaScript API. It’s self-contained, with no external dependencies, and can be as little as 11kb when properly compressed and optimized.
Socialite v2 makes it simple to add asynchronous social sharing links to your website. Links can be triggered by a variety of actions, including page scrolling, hovering over a particular area, and more.
Want to know how complex your JavaScript code really is? Run it through Analysis and see for yourself. The more complexity that exists in your code, the more chances for bugs to appear, so anything you can do to simplify your code can greatly improve performance and reliability.
Brunch is an assembler for building elegant HTML5 applications, with a simple but powerful build process and pipeline. Use whatever frameworks, libraries, programming, stylesheet and templating engines, and backend technology you like—it’s completely agnostic to all of them.
If you develop PHP and use Chrome, then check out the Clockwork Chrome extension. It provides a new panel with all kinds of useful debugging and profiling information, including info on GET and POST data, cookies, request, headers, session data, and much more.
Guzzle is a framework and PHP HTTP client for building RESTful web service clients. It includes service descriptions for quickly building clients, batching for sending a large number of requests as efficiently as possible, and persistent connections and parallel requests, among other features.
Behat is a behavior-driven development (BDD) framework that lets you write human-readable story-driven code that describes how your application should function. It’s quick and easy to get started with, and easy to learn.
Odometer is a handy JS script that lets you create smoothly-transitioning numbers, similar to an odometer. Just specify any element as “odometer” and it will be automatically converted, then update it as you normally would.
DocPad bridges the gap between expert and beginner in the creation of new websites. It’s language-agnostic, and allows designers and developers to get new sites up and running in no time via pre-built skeletons.
Background Check will automatically change the colors of various elements based on the color of the background. It’s an invaluable tool for responsive designs where text must float over images, or for things like sliders where images may alternate between light and dark backgrounds.
Swagger is a framework and spec for building, implementing, and visualizing RESTful web services. It’s overall goal is to enable documentation (and clients) to update at the same frequency as the server.
Responsive Elements is a small JavaScript library that lets you easily make any element respond and adapt to the area it occupies. It’s not a simple matter of resizing, though, the elements change completely to best fit the available space (including moving to different positions and disappearing all together).
Chance.js will generate random strings, numbers, and other types of data, to help speed up the writing of automated tests. It can easily be used with Bower, Node.js, and more.
phpspec is a PHP development tool for test-first development, otherwise known as (spec) behavior driven development. You end up writing code in small iterative steps, guided by the emerging design.
Want to display a time-based update in people-friendly language? TidyTime.js is a jQuery plugin that does just that, converting standard time formats into personable declarations of time.
SecurityHeaders.com checks your website’s headers to see just how secure they are. Then it tells you where you can make improvements based on the recommendations of security experts.
Prerender makes it possible for search engines to perfectly crawl your JavaScript apps. There are Node.js, PHP, and Ruby on Rails versions available, and it’s fairly simple and straightforward to use, with thorough documentation.
If you need to create interactive time-series graphs for your website or app, then check out Rickshaw. It includes renderers, legends, hovers, range selectors, and more, and is built on d3.js so graphs are drawn in standard SVG with CSS styling.
Need a quick boilerplate or workflow for your front-end? FireShell includes JavaScript task running and build processes, and is all wrapped up in an enhanced HTML5 framework.
jQuery.Pin makes it simple to pin text to your pages, so that it stays put as you scroll. It also works with other elements, like navigation, and can be set to stick only to certain parts of the page.
Need some awesome data to test your sites with? Then check out GenerateData.com. Just enter the parameters your data should follow and it will generate whatever you need.
Need git to ignore certain files in your project? There are a few ways to do that, one of which is to use .gitignore files. .Gitignore.io makes is super simple to create those files, either with a GUI or through the command line.
Recline.js is a powerful library for building data apps in pure HTML and JavaScript. It provides components and structure to data-heavy apps by providing models and views.
PhysicsJS is a modular, easy-to-use physics engine for JavaScript. It can be extended and customized to suit your needs.
Bookmarkify makes it super simple to create your own bookmarklets. Just name your bookmarklet, enter the JavaScript for it, include it, and you’re ready to go.