Developing a website is easy but developing a website which gives you the competitive edge isn’t a cake walk. In this highly competitive world of web development there are hundreds of tools available to help you in your endeavor. You get the perfect website when you make wise choice of these tools. The right mix and match of these HTML, CSS and Java tools is what separates a good website from an average one. Here we take a look into some of the best HTML, CSS and Java tools which can give your website the much needed competitive edge.
HTML and CSS Tools
HTML Email Boilerplate – If you are facing rendering problems with email clients this tool will solve your woes. Its sample code creates a template which isn’t bound by any layout or design. This tool integrates the email client with your website seamlessly.
Initializr- With this you can create a change template based on HTML5 Boilerplate. The template cosists of some main points of Boilerplate where you can make choice between JavaScript and jQuery, and specify your compatibility and server configuration.
Mobile Boilerplate – Mobile Boilerplate template creates rich and performance oriented mobile Web apps which are cross-browser compatible among major smartphone platforms.
Layer Styles – This tool will assist you create CSS in an spontaneous way just like the way you would do it on a graphics editor. You can easily add drop shadows, backgrounds, border in cross-browser CSS code. This works in a very Photoshop like way.
LiveReload – The specialty of this tool is the fact that it redefines dynamism and applies CSS/JS changes to Safari or Chrome without a page reload, and reloads the page automatically once the HTML changes. TheLive.js library makes sure that you’re always looking at the latest version of the page you’re working on, be it in HTML, CSS or JavaScript.
Vogue – One of the best tools for websites which post content at brisk pace. This tool reloads the style sheet (not the HTML) of a page in all browsers. Not only that, it can be configured to reload a page automatically in multiple browsers simultaneously at any given point of time. Vogue doesn’t host a website rather runs the website’s local server. You need to install NodeJS and npm to make use of this tool.
Normalize.css – This is one of the most unique CSS resets available in the market. It doesn’t do away with all the browser defaults like most other reset tools do. It keeps bits and pieces of the code which is helpful in designing your website. This saves your time as a designer, while also providing consistent results.
Kotatsu – This is a uncomplicated HTML table generator which assists you to create a table and throw in row as well as column classes quickly. This tool also comes in handy in generating lists for which you can make use of the li maker.
Sprite-Mapper – A useful CSS tool that unifies multiple images into one and generates CSS positioning for the corresponding slices. This assists in the reduction of the number of images in your website thereby employ the connection better. With this tool you can reduce the page load time of your website substantially.
Holmes – As the name suggests this tool is a diagnostic CSS style sheet which highlights possibly invalid or erroneous mark-up. Create a single class and Holmes points out the errors with a red border. It also creates a yellow border around warnings and a gray border around denounced styles. You will be able to apply holmes.css to any webpage within the browser using the bookmarklet.
The list doesn’t end here as there are a lot of other HTML and CSS tools which you can make use of such as css-x-fire, Ffffallback, Less-Boilerplate, Needle v0.1a1, inuit.css, Zen Coding, CSS Crush, CSSPrefixer and PCSS among others.
JavaScript Tools
Modernizr 2 – One of the most popular open-source JavaScript libraries, Modernizr 2 helps build HTML5 and CSS3-powered websites. With Modernizr 2 developers can now combine feature detection with media queries and conditional resource loading. Modernizr 2 helps in optimizing the website just the way one requires.
FitText – This jQuery plug-in is ideal for responsive and fluid layouts which resize display text to fit the parent element. This is the perfect solution for creating headlines which look good on devices of all display sizes ranging from large desktops to small smartphones.
Crossroads.js – This JS routing library is inspired by URL Route/Dispatch utilities which are present on frameworks like Rails, Pyramid, Django, CakePHP, CodeIgniter, etc. This tool helps in analyzing a string input and decides which action should be executed by matching the string against multiple patterns. This is a must-have for websites which have to process a number of requests simultaneously.
JavaScript Garden – This tool comes in handy in avoiding common mistakes and usual bugs in a JS project. It helps in optimizing the performance of the website and does away with bad practices that JavaScript programmers might run into. Developers can explore the depth of JavaScript Garden without making common errors while coding.
Doctor JS – Like a doctor it takes care of all the malfunctioning things within your JavaScript code. This tool offers you a complete analysis in JSON, whether you’re dealing with polymorphism, prototypes, exceptions or callbacks. You can rest be assured your code will have no errors when you are making use of the Doctor JS.
StronglyTyped – StronglyTyped is a popular JS library using which one can specify strongly typed properties of various types such as Boolean, Number, String, etc. and constants such as final properties in Java. This is powered by ES5 getters and setters and falls back to regular, loosely typed properties in non-supporting browsers. It helps in improving the performance of your website.
Susy – This is a rails framework and with this you will be able to create a completely custom grid based on your mark-up and designs. With this tool in hand you don’t have to compromise with the grid framework you’re working. At the same time this tool will do away with hours of tweaking to get the things right.
You can also try other JavaScript tools such as yepnope.js, jQuery Waypoints, ligature-js, HEAD.js and many others which have become very popular with web developers in getting customized solution for their websites.
Hivelogic – If you are tired of receiving spam mails in your inbox and looking a way to get out of it you can make use of this awesome tool which has an anti-spam email address encoder which protect email addresses by converting them into encrypted JavaScript code. This ensures that only real people using real browsers will see them and no program can read them.
These tools will help you stay ahead of your competitors but to make the most out of these tools you need to hire the services of a web development firm which has expertise in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. There is lot of web development firms making tall claims in the market and unless you are choosy while selecting them you may hand over your business web development in the hands of an amateur web developer.
Jeniffer Gilbert is a emarketer at MarkupBox.com. Jeniffer is an expert in writing about the markups like PSD to HTML, PSD to CSS, PSD to Drupal ,PSD to Magento, PSD to WordPress etc