10 Best Front End Tools Web Developers Must Use to Save Tons of Time
Front end tools for web development are in plenty. But choosing the right one is a little tricky. The right tools can boost performance, improve efficiency, and save a ton of development time.
This blog has listed 10 super-efficient front end tools, especially for front end developers, that can save time and achieve accelerated web development goals while optimizing their project ROI. All these factors play an important role in enhancing business visibility, project success, and achieving site efficiency.
Front-end development is a constantly evolving field making it an exciting career option. If laying your hands on new tools and skills and experiencing innovative changes is your passion, front-end development is for you. Many businesses hire experienced front-end developers with expertise in ReactJS, AngularJS, NodeJS, Vue JS, JQuery, JavaScript, etc., and with a thoughtful eye on UI and UX. Bridge Global provides teams of developers with extensive knowledge of front-end and back-end technologies to build the digital product of your needs. Our team of web developers skillfully uses the best front-end tools to deliver smart digital solutions.
Now, let's dive in and find out the top 10 front end web development tools available in the current market, which save your time.
1. Chrome DevTools
Chrome developer tools are front end tools designed to assist front end developers in quickly accessing the Google Chrome browser. Chrome developer tools can make troubleshooting easy and time-saving by revealing to you the errors in the code instantly. Every six weeks, the Google browser updates, so you can continue developing at an advanced level and keeping up-to-date with the all-new features. With chrome dev tools, you can easily make changes without a text editor. Chrome DevTools are debugging, and web authoring tools developed right into the Chrome browser. It is very easy to navigate and use as it is organized, saving development time.
These smart front end tools allow you to perform a wide variety of tests in your browser, saving a massive amount of time along with the process. Using "Device mode," you can continue coding and test your site. The Chrome Developer Tools are a unique set of built-in to Chrome for debugging. The "sources panel" feature allows JavaScript debugging with breakpoints. Additionally, "Timeline assists" helps you find performance concerns during run-time.
Chrome developer tools can support you inspect pages and their components easily without operating back to the IDE. This feature of these tools can expedite the development as well as the debugging process. Debugging is critical, with these tools, you can investigate CSS rules, memory usage, network activity, and page load times.
These front end tools enable you to implement changes in the page style and the Document Object Model (DOM). Chrome DevTools is a mix goody bag of multiple panels such as Safety Panel, Performance Panel, Device Mode, Application Panel, etc. Each panel is assigned with specific functions with the singular goal to save development with efficiency.
2. TypeScript
TypeScript is an open-source front end scripting language. It is a rigid syntactical superset of JavaScript that adds to the static typing. It is designed for the front end development of large applications for JavaScript compilation. TypeScript is a very modern front end development tool that allows many tools to integrate and blend in easily. The best feature of using TypeScript for your front-end development is that you can run on any environment supported by JavaScript. It is portable across all operating systems, devices, and browsers.
Say, you too are a fan of status typing while coding like me, then you must experience the marvel of TypeScript. In case you haven't still tried it, I highly recommend using this superset of JavaScript; it is a life-saver and time-saver. Due to its static typing, you can grab errors while writing the code, saving time, resources, and it's cost-effective. Furthermore, TypeScript compiles to JavaScript. Hence, you can use the latest features from the updated newer versions like ES7 and collect it to the current version of your code.
3. GitHub
GitHub is a unique and very much recommended and respected development platform with project management features; it inspires the way front end developers work. This front end tool allows developers to analyze code, build software applications, and manage projects. GitHub allows you to perform the review process for your code, which fits correctly into your workflow. It can be integrated with multiple tools that you are using now. GitHub can be used to deploy your projects as a cloud-hosted solution or even as a self-hosted solution.
Enterprise-specific functionalities and features such as advanced auditing, code review, unified search and contribution, even invoice billing are available. Additionally, GitHub also is mindful of the security aspect with built-in functions like two-factor authentication and security incident response. Over the years, GitHub has become immensely popular and gained an enormous reputation amongst the community for providing developers a place to use tools that inspire their projects with efficiency and performance. Its massive pool of ready-to-use codes, registries, modules, and libraries save a ton of time during front end web development.
4. AngularJS
AngularJS is one more must-have front end tool for web development. It simplifies the front-end development process by building an accessible, readable, and expressive environment. It assists in stretching the HTML syntax for web applications. AngularJS will help you to extend HTML that is suitable for static documents, not with dynamic views. AngularJS gives you a readable environment and fast to develop. It presents the toolset that will let you develop the framework for your web development.
Angular gives you the liberty to alter or replace the feature as per your development workflow. Angular is an open-source JavaScript framework built by Google and free. Its principal purpose is to simplify the development and testing for client-side MVC architectures and many more compelling features. Angular interprets the main objections developers encounter while developing. As AngularJS is the direct JavaScript object, your code can be reusable and straightforward to test and sustain.
5. NPM
NPM (Node Package Maid) is the world's largest software registry. It is a prevalent package library that contains millions of downloadable libraries and registries. Did you know? NPM is the most prized possession of the Node.js community. These massive libraries and ready-to-use codes and modules make it most recommended for web development. The time-to-market largely optimizes the quality and performance, enabling the developers the freedom to code, build, test, and maintain in less time.
NPM represents the Node package manager for JavaScript. In NPM, you can identify reusable code packages and gather them in robust and new ways. This web development tool is a utility for combining with a repository that supports the package. NPM has earned many stars on GitHub and is highly praised. Using these front end web development tools, developers can improve their skill set and build applications and websites for their clients while saving a lot of development time. It provides the features of security expertise, access control, and unrivaled support web development for an enterprise-grade solution.
With NPM, you can publish unlimited OSS packages and install public packages as it is free. NPM offers you essential support and automatic warnings for insecure code. It also looks after many businesses that rely on security expertise, access control, and unrivaled support. All of this combined the libraries, modules, repositories, packages, and ready-to-use codes together accelerate web development for any organization 5x times more than before.
6. Sass
Sass is the most stable, mature, and strong CSS extension language. This tool assists in extending a current CSS functionality such as variables, inheritance, and nesting with ease. Sass is an open-source project that draws updated CSS preprocessors. This tool supports writing a code and is easily maintained, which reduces the amount of CSS you need to code.
Sass allows you to nest CSS sectors using an appropriate technique that follows your HTML's visual hierarchy. Numerous applications will help you, Sass, for Linux, Mac, and Windows platforms. It is a tool that pre-processes for CSS. Sass has earned both industry community support and widespread recognition.
7. CodePen
CodePen is a very popular web development environment for front-end developers and designers. It is a front end tool that expedites smoother development and enables the development of website implementation. With CodePen, you can benefit from all the features of an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) in the browser.
CodePen is a customizable editor that helps you create components that can also be used for multiple projects. Its features, such as IDE, help front-end developers develop speedy and efficient web apps and websites. Additionally, its built-in API makes it feasible for you to add links, media files, demo pages, etc., without coding. CodePen features in a collaboration mode assist multiple developers who can write and edit code in real-time.
8. Sublime Text
Sublime Text is an elite cross-platform source code editor, a tool that is a life-saver and time-saver for front end developers. This front end web development tool allows working with several programming languages and markup languages. Sublime Text is a text editor used to code and prose, which saves a lot of development time. This smart tool supports split editing mode. With the tool's help feature, you can edit files side by side or even at two different locations. Sublime Text supports Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms. It provides features like customizing anything and instantly switching between projects.
Due to Sublime Text's simplicity and extensibility, it is one of the most preferred text editors popularly used by front-end developers. It also has cool features like bracket highlighter, color highlighter and supports CSS3, SCSS, and CSScomb. Furthermore, with its rich interface and fast performance, the capability to easily add extra functionality via 'packages' is also one of its most charming features.
9. Bootstrap
Bootstrap is an open-source tool-kit for faster web development of highly responsive web designs. Bootstrap also has a full design template based on CSS, HTML, Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets "SASS," Leaner Style Sheets "LESS," and JavaScript Extensions. The bootstrap library has a 12-column grid layout and is compatible with multiple platforms. With these bootstrap templates, you can incorporate several features in your applications, like progress bars, dropdowns, navigation, and many more. It is relatively simple to learn; many developers use these libraries for the projects, with just a basic understanding of CSS and HTML to start. Moreover, most developers find it very simple to customize.
Bootstrap is used to build responsive mobile-first projects on the web. Did you know? More than 18 million websites use Bootstrap! As its growing popularity, many developers discover the library in the initial stages of their web development careers. Bootstrap is useful for typography, navigation, forms, and other vital components of the user interface.
10. Grunt
Grunt is one of the best front end tools for task automation in web development. It is quite a famous task runner for Node.js. It is very flexible and widely adopted.
The tool offers alternatives to write code functions and allows you to automate repetitive tasks with more effort. It makes your workflow simple with a configuration file that includes functions in Javascript. It also consists of the functionality of scripts and plugins to accelerate the development process.
The projects with Grunt use command-line while performing repetitive tasks. Developers usually use it to automate and perform various unit compilation, testing, and minification. Grunt uses a command-line interface to run routine tasks. Also, this tool makes the developer's work-life more comfortable. It is flexible and widely embraced. It offers loads of bundled plugins.
Wrapping Up
Choosing the right front end development tools is no joke. It’s challenging, especially in this hyper-competitive market. Building web apps and websites with eye-pleasing design and UI/UX is essential, but time-to-market is no joke as well. That is the key to your project's success. I hope this blog will help you choose the right one, saving time and money, making your web development project a success.