Web development tools - Part 2

The World Wide Web has reached 1 billion web pages in September 2014 (awesome, right?!), but for this to happen web developers had to work hard and meet the increasing demands of web development. This would have been impossible without proper web development tools, some of which will be presented in this second part of the article:

1. BrowserStack

Every good web development project needs thorough testing and every web developer knows that, but how are you going to test your "next hit" web application when there are so many devices, browsers, operating systems, and so on?

The answer to this is BrowserStack, a great browser and platform simulator. Do you need IE 6 on Windows XP? The application can simulate this environment with ease, and this will surely make web development a breeze.

A great feature which many web developers will find useful is the possibility of testing local or internal websites. Another advantage is the Visual Studio integration, an important feature for web developers who are using this IDE.

A disadvantage of using BrowserStack is that simulating an environment may not bring the same results as using a real environment. For example, your website can work pretty well in BrowserStack, but opening it in a real environment can bring to surface undiscovered issues.

2. Sencha Touch

The touch experience improved greatly over the years, and some good tools emerged that helped web developers to create awesome websites and mobile applications, which can be tapped, double tapped, swiped, scrolled, and pinched.

One of these tools is Sencha Touch 2, a framework that enables web developers to create touch optimized user interfaces that are used in web applications (especially mobile). It supports a wide variety of platforms and browsers, such as: Android browser, Google Chrome for Android, Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 IE10, BlackBerry 10, Mobile Safari and others.

3. Bugherd

Developing a quality web application requires thorough testing, and a good bug tracking tool is a must. Bugheard is one of the best out there, because it's easy to use, bugs can be reported with ease (the owners "admit" that a bug should not take more than 5 seconds to be reported!), and the communication between the client and the web developer is very easy and intuitive.

Although Bugherd is not free, it has a good price, making it a top choice for every web developer.

4. Dabblet

Dabblet is an open source web application (its source code is available on GitHub) that allows web developers to quickly test snippets of HTML, JavaScript and CSS. Some of its features are real-time updates, it can be embedded in other websites, and the Dabblets can be saved to a GitHub Gists account.

It has a very simple and easy to use interface, the code is written in the bottom half of the screen and the visual results are immediately shown in the top half part.

Of course, these are only some of the available tools. There are many more tools on the market, that can assist web developers with creating quality web applications, for us to use and enjoy. What are your favorite tools for web development?


Other article in this series:

Web development tools - Part 1