As a web designer, I would like to share with you some information about web development and shell out some suggestions for newbies.
Believe me, it is really hard if not impossible to find good and comprehensive resources and tutorials. So here I am, making an attempt to give you some kind of hand-holding for your web development project.
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code is one of the best and most demanding IDE in the Market. It is made by Microsoft Team which supports in Windows, Linux, Mac Operating System. Due to its awesome feature like syntax highlighter, Emmet Abbreviation, useful extensions, snippets, code refactor and user friendly environment it is the most using IDE near about 14 Million people daily use VS code.
VS Code: Download now
Visual Studio Code is an integrated development environment made by Microsoft for Windows, Linux and macOS. Features include support for debugging, syntax highlighting, intelligent code completion, snippets, code refactoring, and embedded Git. Users can change the theme, keyboard shortcuts, preferences, and install extensions that add additional functionality.View on Wikipedia
Atom
Atom is an open-source project as well as one of the best IDE for Web Development launched by Github. It is a cross-platform software supports for plugins written in JavaScript and embedded Git control means your can push, pull, commit etc for here easy as well as you write html, css, javascript code. But it has less plugins compare to vs code.
Atom: Download now
Atom is a free and open-source text and source code editor for macOS, Linux, and Microsoft Windows with support for plug-ins written in JavaScript, and embedded Git Control. Developed by GitHub, Atom is a desktop application built using web technologies. Most of the extending packages have free software licenses and are community-built and maintained. Atom is based on Electron, a framework that enables cross-platform desktop applications using Chromium and Node.js. Atom is written in CoffeeScript and Less, but much of it has been converted to JavaScript.View on Wikipedia
Sublime Text
Sublime text was built by Jon Skinner. It is a product of Sublime HQ Pty Ltd. It is a cross-platform software. It support HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python. It user interface is decent and attractive.
Well Sublime is a text editor but then also it famous due its features like Code auto-completion, quick file navigation, Command Palette, Auto indentation and etc…
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Sublime Text is a commercial source code editor. It natively supports many programming languages and markup languages. Users can expand its functionality with plugins, typically community-built and maintained under free-software licenses. To facilitate plugins, Sublime Text features a Python API.View on Wikipedia
Pycharm
Pycharm is a modern IDE used for python, Web Development, Data Science launched by jetbrains. It provides powerful features to easy your work with syntax highlighter, structure validation, auto completion. It support HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Node JS etc. The most important part is that it is awesome for beginners. You can write both front-end and backend in it…
Pycharm: Download now
PyCharm is an integrated development environment (IDE) used in computer programming, specifically for the Python language. It is developed by the Czech company JetBrains. It provides code analysis, a graphical debugger, an integrated unit tester, integration with version control systems (VCSes), and supports web development with Django as well as data science with Anaconda.View on Wikipedia
PHPStorm
PHPStorm is a product of Jetbrains it’s supports HTML 5, CSS, Sass, Less, Stylus, CoffeeScript, TypeScript, Emmet, and JavaScript, with refactorings, debugging, and unit testing available. All the features in WebStorm are included into PhpStorm, with full-fledged support for PHP and Databases/SQL support added on top.
Note: It is not free
PHPStorm: Download Now
Codeanywhere
Codeanywhere is a cloud-based integrated IDE that is essentially a cross-platform editor that enables developers to run web development projects and write and edit instantly. Codeanywhere is written in JavaScript. It provides a facility to run the code on your virtual machines through SSH and FTP from its environment.
Top Features:
- Integrated with Git, GitHub, and Bitbucket.
- Supports cloud services within its environment.
- In-built debugger to debug the code.
- Smart error recognition.
- In-built terminal to run the commands.
- Support for third-party servers available.
- Heroku deployment facility is available.
Codepen
Although Codepen is a web-based community of web developers providing their work online, this website’s main core is the Codepen web development IDE. Codepen is entirely cloud-based, and therefore the developers just need a browser and internet connection to work on it. Codepen is a very fast and popularly used IDE for web development. As an open-source IDE, it operates as an online code-editor and provides a learning environment for developers to create code snippets.
Top Features:
- Provides community support within.
- Capabilities to share the code with everyone easily.
- Allows live view and live sync of the website.
CKEditor
CKEditor is a WYSIWYG text editor that is developed in the JavaScript programming language. CKEditor allows writing the code directly inside the web page and developing the web application directly through it. CKEditor supports all the web programming languages for smoother web page development.
Top Features:
- In-built spell checker.
- Autocomplete and syntax checker.
- Supports @ mention for collaborative editing and development.
- Highly customizable.
- Supports rich text features.
NetBeans
NetBeans is a free Integrated Development Environment which has support for a lot of programming languages. It has been used since 1997 and has since expanded in all directions. NetBeans is available in 28 languages, which makes it quite popular among non-English speaking countries. It can be used for C, C++, and Java in addition to the web development languages, and it subsequently runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Solaris. An added advantage of using this IDE is that third-party developers can also extend applications based on NetBeans.
Top Features:
- Rich plugin support.
- In-built source code highlighting.
- In-built code refactoring.
- Easy navigation of projects to work in multiple tasks simultaneously.
- Available in Windows, Linux, and macOS.
- Provides a drag-and-drop facility for rapid code development.
- In-built integrated debugger.
Light Table
Light Table is a reasonably new web development IDE compared to those that we saw on the list. Light Table is popularly known for its clutter-free code management, which lets you move the code around flawlessly. It is excellent in terms of the current requirements in the coding. Light Table is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS. Among its several useful features, Light Table enables real-time feedback that permits expeditious execution, removal of errors, and access to documentation.
Top Features:
- Easy to customize.
- In-build plugin manager to add the extensions quickly.
- Smart autocomplete feature.
- Feature to embed graphs and other visualizations into the project.
- Lightweight and faster in processing.
- An in-built debugger is available.
XCode
XCode is a tool-rich IDE for web development and other purposes available only for the Mac operating system. XCode can be fully integrated with Cocoa and Cocoa Touch, allowing users to create the operating system tools. Apple Inc. has recently launched its updated stable version of the IDE, 12.1, on October 20, 2020. The Command Line Tools (CLT), included in XCode, enables UNIX-style development via macOS’s Terminal app.
Top Features:
- Takes advantage of the LLVM compiler.
- It contains an interface builder.
- Smart analyzer to analyze the code.
- Includes a lot of tools for web development.
- The command-line tool is available for testing.
IntelliJ IDEA
Designed primarily for the Java programming language, IntelliJ is one of the best IDEs for web development. IntelliJ has excellent support for plugin and web development languages such as HTML, CSS, Ruby, Python, etc. IntelliJ is a robust, integrated development environment with in-built tools for developers’ assistance and comes with tremendous community support that helps whenever you get stuck.
Top Features:
- Integration with Git for better code development.
- Multiple build system support.
- Server deployment tools are integrated.
- Suggestion and auto-complete integrated in-built.
- Huge language and environment support.
- Maintains the program flow.
- In-built duplicate code analyzer.
- Comes with the database editor.
RJTextED
RJTextED is a Unicode text and source code editor that is very powerful. RJTextED is free to use and handles UTF-8 and ASCII files very quickly and easily. RJTextED supports all the major web development languages and comes with tons of features. Unicode supports this full-featured web development IDE extends way beyond text files and facilitates auto compilation, spell checking, and HTML validation, to mention a few. Given below is a visual representation of RJTextED running under Microsoft Windows:
Top Features:
- Contains document map feature.
- Enables smart sorting.
- Handles ASCII and binary files.
- Facility to handle FTP and SFTP clients with synchronization.
- Detects Unicode pages automatically and gets them ready for further processing.
- Equipped with excellent CSS features for CSS and HTML coding.
- Provides advanced color hints.
Code::Blocks
Code::Blocks are very lightweight, and it is a popular IDE used for web development and normal coding in C, C++, Fortran, etc. Code::Blocks come with a lot of compilers for the user and are very stable to be used on Windows, Linux, and Solaris.
Top Features:
- Equipped with a lot of compilers.
- Performs code refactoring.
- Smart auto-complete and suggestion enabled editor.
- Comes with very vast and customizable options.
- Performs code folding.
- Easy user interface.
- Supports a lot of plugins.
- Equipped with debuggers with breakpoint analysis.
- Supports multi-user development.
GNU Emacs
GNU Emacs is a text editor that comes with a basic user interface but with useful functionalities, belonging to the family of text editors identified by their extensibility. It is common among the people who are more familiar with the Vim editor and provides all the support to the web development languages into it. Although you might not be able to get a few features in it, it is often prescribed as a hard-core web development IDE for those who do not need help from the editor and like to code by themselves.
Top Features:
- Emacs Lisp code enables customization in the IDE.
- Well documented references available.
- Supports Unicode files.
- Capabilities to install and download the extensions.
Conclusion
Web development is quite an interesting field which is growing at a rapid pace with each passing day. A lot of tools and supporting frameworks are coming up in the industry which help developers in their work.