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Essential List of Web Development Tools

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Martech world is huge. It's hard to know all the products that will help improve marketing efforts in the modern fast progressing internet world without marketing technology stack lists like this.

Websites are the most important real estate on the internet.

That's why this essential list of web development tools will help you make informed decisions about your website's future or your future website.

1. Online IDEs and Web Editors

Codeanywhere – A collaboration platform for developers. Enabling them to share their files, folders, or entire development environments to collaborate in real-time.
CodePen – An HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code editor in your browser with instant previews. CodePen is a great tool for experiments and small sample code sharing.
Codio – A cloud coding & content platform for teaching computer science
Divshot – one platform for static web hosting and Bootstrap Builder for single-page apps.
ICEcoder – A browser-based code editor which provides a modern approach to building websites.
JS Bin – JS Bin is a tool that enables you to learn, experiment, and teach using web technologies.
JSFiddle – An online playground for your JavaScript, HTML, CSS. JSFiddle is another popular tool for sample code sharing.

2. Offline IDEs

Visual Studio Code – Provided by Microsoft, this is the tool of choice for many web developers. The application is lightweight and, by default, has only an essential set of features. At the same time, there are plenty of plugins that can advance the functionality in many ways. Every developer has a list of plugins. Once the plugins are set up, the software can become an advanced IDE.

Atom by GitHub – This is another popular lightweight text editor many frontend developers use for big projects. However, Atom has entered sunsetting mode, and Github suggests using other editors.

Sublime – Sublime is a popular text editor and supports many programming languages. It natively supports the frontend development languages by default. Thus, it is a good candidate to be in the toolset of a web developer or Martech developer.

WebStorm – A lightweight yet powerful IDE, perfectly equipped for complex client-side development and server-side development with Node.js.

PhpStorm – Enjoy productive PHP and web development with PhpStorm. Take advantage of deep code understanding, top-notch coding assistance, and support for all major tools and frameworks.

Other Jetbrains editors – WebStorm and PhpStorm are IDEs from Jetbrains made for Javascript and PHP development. JetBrains have IDEs for many other technologies and languages. For example, IntelliJ Idea is a popular IDE for Java backend developers, and Datagrip is an excellent tool for database and backend developers.

Brackets – A modern, open-source text editor that understands web design.

Dreamweaver – Adobe Dreamweaver was very popular in the earlier days of the internet. Many web developers might get nostalgic about it. The all-in-one web authoring toolset helps you build modern sites that adapt to fit any size screen, and you can make them look great with beautiful, high-quality images from the new Adobe Stock. Dreamweaver is provided as a part of Adobe Creative Cloud.

Rapid CSS – Rapid CSS editor makes creating, designing, and editing modern CSS-based websites easy.

Stylizer – helps you style websites in a fraction of the time.

3. Useful Browser Plugins

Now to the fun part. We will analyze the competition in this section. These tools, which are browser extensions, can be essential assets in the Martech HTML developers' arsenal. Since most Martech developers use Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, I will list the extensions only for these two browsers.

Google Chrome

Wappalyzer Technology profiler – Detect web applications and javascript libraries run on websites.

BuiltWith Technology Profiler – Find out what the website you are visiting is built with using this extension. Note that you can check any website by entering the address on the builtwith.com home page.

ColorZilla – Advanced Eyedropper, Color Picker, Gradient Generator, and other colorful goodies. Liked a color on a web page? Pick the color with ColorZilla.

EditThis Cookie – A cookie manager. You can add, delete, edit, search, protect and block cookies!

Font Finder – Select a text on a website and get font family, size, color, spacing, and more information.

IE Tab – Display web pages using Internet Explorer within Chrome. Supports ActiveX controls and Sharepoint.

iMacros for Chrome – Automate your web browser. Record and replay repetitious work. You can use this tool to test your web pages.

Postman – A web REST client that allows you to enter and monitor HTTP requests and responses. Build, test, and document your APIs faster.

Tampermonkey – The most popular userscript manager for Google Chrome. You can manage and edit all your userscripts, enable and disable your scripts with a couple of clicks, etc.

Proxy SwitchyOmega – Manage and switch between multiple proxies quickly & easily.

Mozilla Firefox

ColorZilla – Advanced Eyedropper, Color Picker, Gradient Generator, and other colorful goodies

FoxyProxy Standard – FoxyProxy is an advanced proxy management tool that completely replaces Firefox's limited proxying capabilities. For a simpler tool and less advanced configuration options, please use FoxyProxy Basic.

Greasemonkey – Customize the way a web page displays or behaves by using small bits of JavaScript.

iMacros for Firefox – Automate Firefox. Record and replay repetitious work. If you love the Firefox web browser but are tired of repetitive tasks like visiting the same sites every day, filling out forms, and remembering passwords, then iMacros for Firefox is the solution you’ve been dreaming of! Web Developers can use this tool for automated test purposes.

User Agent Switcher – The User Agent Switcher extension adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of a browser.

Web Developer – The Web Developer extension adds various web developer tools to the browser.

3. Testing & Diagnostics Tools

BrowserStack – an amazing cloud of virtual machines running dozens of browsers on as many operating systems.

Fiddler – a Web Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP(S) traffic between your computer and the internet. Fiddler allows you to inspect all HTTP(S) traffic, set breakpoints, and "fiddle" with incoming or outgoing data.

GTmetrix – gives you insight on how well your site loads and provides actionable recommendations on how to optimize it.

Dotcom-tools’s website speed test - a free website speed test tool where you can instantly test your website from 20+ locations around the world, utilizing real browsers just as an end-user experiences your website.

PageSpeed Insights – PageSpeed Insights analyzes the content of a web page, then generates suggestions to make that page faster.

Selenium – Selenium is a suite of tools to automate web browsers across many platforms.

Cypress - A widely popular alternative to Selenium.

TestCafe – Automates QA processes and tests your websites and apps across browsers, operating systems, and devices.

Site scan by Bing Webmaster Tools – Run a quick static code scan on any URL to check for out-of-date libraries, layout issues, and accessibility.

4. Web Optimization Tools

Image Optimization

  • TinyPNG – Smart WebP, PNG, and JPEG compression. Can compress a batch of images.
  • Image Compressor from WebsitePlanet - Compresses PNG and JPEG files by up to 80% and retains full transparency. Can compress a batch of images.
  • Optimizilla – Uses a smart combination of the best optimization and lossy compression algorithms to shrink JPEG, GIF, and PNG images. Can compress a batch of images.
  • Squoosh - Resize and compress images in one go.

Search Engine Optimization

  • Google Search Console – Check search queries, indexing status, crawling errors, and many other important metrics about your websites.
  • Bing Webmaster Tools – Same as Google Search Console (GSC) but for Bing search engine.
  • Copyscape – Plagiarism checker. Search for copies of your page on the web.
  • Keyword Tool – Keyword research tool for Google, Youtube, Bing, Amazon, eBay, App Store, Play Store, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. Perhaps the biggest selection of the platforms among the keyword research tools.

Conclusion

These are just a few important tools that will help you or your team with website development. There are so many useful tools that it's hard to mention them all. This list mentions some popular and useful website creation and optimization tools. The list is for web developers, Martech developers, SEOs, web designers, online business owners, and it can be helpful for anybody who works with websites. Hopefully, this guide helped you to add at least one tool to your toolbox.