5 Development Tools Our Web Developers Love

A lot of developers have their own personalised toolkit of must use software and resources that they use day in day out when working on projects.

So while each of us here at Team Valley Web has our own way of working there are a few things in our toolkits that we all enjoy using.  This is why we decided to compile a list of the 5 development tools that we all love:

1. Brackets

Brackets is a lightweight open-source editor created by Adobe Systems. What makes it different from other editors is that it is written using HTML, CSS and JavaScript, with the idea that it can be extended to suit the needs of the user instead of being prepackaged with a lot of features that may never be used.

The dedicated community around Brackets is also a plus, as with a lot of people building and sharing extensions, it means that it is easy to tailor the editor to suit each of our own individual needs.

2. PrePros

Prepros is our compiler of choice and while we use it to compile our Sass files it works with many other preprocessing languages such as Less, Markdown & Stylus.

One of the main reasons we love this compiler is its ability to also minify and optimise CSS, JavaScript and images with one click. It also has the ability to automatically reload the browser every time we save a file, meaning that we can see any changes we make without having to manually refresh, also with its network preview option we are able to easily test a website on multiple devices like mobiles and tablets without the need of uploading them to a test server.

3. Advanced Custom Fields (WordPress Plugin)

While we have mentioned this in one of our other blog posts, Our must use WordPress Plugins,  ACF Pro is one of those tools we cannot mention enough.  When it comes to developing custom themes for WordPress, ACF gives developers full control over the editor and also allows for admin sections to be created for site wide editing.

The end result is an easy to use customised CMS that makes editing and maintaining content a lot more intuitive than the basic WordPress editor.

4. WampServer

WampServer is a Windows-based development environment that allows us to create data-driven web applications locally.

While there are many different ways to set up a local environment, the out of the box solution that Wamp provides enables us to tailor it to our own needs and work habits.

5. Browser Consoles

Sometimes a website just doesn’t want to play nice, this is where the built-in browser consoles come in handy.

Using the browser console allows us to diagnose the issue with a website and locate the problem quickly as it will show any errors that the browser has had while trying to execute scripts within the site.