Web Developer Tools & Resources
The PHP-MCV Project is a set of scripts that encourage the use of Model-View-Control application structure. There’s an advanced version that also comes with automatic SASS compiling and additional Twig support.
Webix, released under the GNU GPLv3, is a JavaScript UI library and HTML5 widget framework for building applications. There are widgets for everything from calendars to data tables to toolbars and much more.
Kickoff is a lightweight front-end framework for building scalable, responsive websites. It’s built with Sass and Grunt, and released under the MIT License.
Unsemantic is a CSS framework that is a successor to the 960 Grid System. It relies on percentages rather than a fixed number of columns, and was built with extensibility in mind.
Source is a tool for documenting your web components. It combines front-end building with the documentation process, making it a great tool for team productivity, too.
The iOS Human Interface Guidelines is a free ebook from Apple that gives great insight into how Apple creates such a great user experience. It’s nearly 230 pages filled with info on Apple’s design principles and guidelines.
SVGO GUI is a Node-WebKit based GUI for SVGO. It uses a drag-and-drop interface that makes it incredibly easy and straightforward to use.
Apache Cordova is a set of device APIs that let you build native mobile apps using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Just combine it with a UI framework to create your apps.
Tuktuk is a lightweight object-oriented CSS framework for easily creating responsive and fully extensible websites. It includes layouts up to twelve columns, as well as forms, buttons, tables, typography, and more.
HTML-Now is a fast, open-source, online HTML template generator. Just add text, meta tags, and your script and CSS files, and it will output your HTML.
Famo.us is a free, open source JavaScript library for building smooth, complex UIs for any screen. They offer tons of free online courses for learning how to use the platform, a 3D layout engine, 3D physics engine, and much more.
Apy is a client-side library for making rest API ajax calls. It’s simple, well-documented, and easy to get started with.
Widgy is an open source, highly-customizable CMS built on Python/Django that lets you quickly add, remove, or modify widgets. It also features a page builder, review queue, optimized static assets, integration with Mezzanine CMS, and much more.
StyleStats makes it easy to collect data about the CSS styles used on any website. Just enter a URL (you can also upload a file or input the CSS directly) and StyleStats will parse things like font sizes, universal selectors, unique colors, and much more.
The Dimensions Toolkit offers useful tools for testing your responsive website designs, with custom and default break points, resizable dimensions, and more. It’s available as both a Chrome extension and a web app.
Framer.js is a toolkit for turning static mockups into interactive and animated prototypes. You can generate assets out of Photoshop, animate layers in 3D space, and more.
AniJS is a declarative handling library for CSS animations that makes development quicker and more eloquent. It’s fully documented and easy to get started with.
TryGit, from Code School, is a quick and free Git tutorial that will teach you the basics of using Git in just a few minutes. It’s fully interactive and straightforward.
Quill is an open source rich text editor that has an API to make it easy to customize for your own uses. It’s fast and lightweight, with an extensible architecture, semantic markup, and more.
Wad is a JavaScript library for manipulating audio using the HTML5 Web Audio API. It simplifies creating, playing, and manipulating audio files, with an interface much like a desktop DAW.
Shepherd is a JavaScript library that guides users through your app, using Tether to position all of its steps. All you have to do to get started is include Shepherd.js and a Shepherd theme file, and then create your steps with straight-forward syntax.
Barebones is a starting point for your projects, which includes an initial directory setup, pattern primer, and style guide. Its available for free and you can fork and adapt it to suit your needs.
Hologram is a Ruby gem, easy way to build and maintain beautiful style guides. It automatically parses all the comments in your CSS to do this, speeding up the whole process.
Font-To-Width is a script for fitting pieces of text snugly into a defined space by utilizing different fonts available in large type families. Rather than changing the font size, it will simply select a different weight or width in the same family to fill the available space.
HTML Entity Lookup lets you search for HTML entities based on what they look like, by entering similar characters. For example, if you wanted to find a square root symbol, you could type a “v” to find it. It’s also available as a Firefox plugin.
Sike is a node cli that you can set to remind you to get up from your desk and move around at set intervals, or certain times of day. Since it works right in the command line, it’s perfect for developers.
Beautons is an easy to use library for creating beautiful, simple buttons. You can apply a variety of styles, functions, and more to the buttons, including changing their sizes, making them positive or negative, and more.
CSS Vocabulary is an easy to use, interactive reference app that makes it simple to learn the various parts of CSS. It includes everything from Blocks and Comments to Type Selectors and Vendor Prefixes.
Pop, from Facebook, is an animation engine for iOS and OS X that supports both static animations and spring and decay dynamic animations. It can be quickly integrated with existing Objective-C codebases, and lets you animate any property on any object.
Huginn is a system for building agents that will do whatever you program them to do online, automatically. They can read content, watch for events, and then take actions on your behalf.
Belt is a collection of useful tools for PHP developers. It offers over 60 useful functions, and it’s fully tested.