So my education in all things web related continues at a pleasing pace. Some days I progress better than others, but on the whole I’m feeling ever more confident. The key for me to problem solving and the ability to think clearly when faced with a seemingly intractable hurdle.
What gives me the biggest thrill is coming across a resource or a tool which can simplify, speed up and improve my workflow. As mentioned before, the web community is full of people who are happy to share the fruits of their labour. Since I completed my course at General Assembly last year, I’ve often ploughed a lonely furrow in my eternal quest to master how to code. Though I do see myself as a team player generally, I guess I have been guilty at working too much alone on web projects. I’ve just got my head down and worked on a succession of web sites, numerous small projects and a whole host of online tutorials.
So stumbling across these tools and sources of information (and inspiration) have been priceless. I’ve picked out a few of the most useful. I fully concede that many of these resources are for novice developers but I’m sure even experienced developers still use these sites and tools.
Code Pen is an obvious starting point and sure many developers have used this site. You can quickly test out some code by quickly creating a pen and viewing others work can be an inspiration.
After a brief flirtation with Brackets, Sublime Text is now my choice of text editor and using Emmet has quickened up my coding immeasurably.
JS Bin is a great help to locate those morale sapping bugs and typos. This site has has been a life-saver for me.
The W3 Schools Validation services also serve as a guide and a reminder to keep your code clean and efficient.
The Pixels to Ems Conversion tool, also on the W3 Schools site has also been a valuable resource.
Patternizer can add interest and depth to your backgrounds. This is a super easy site to use.
Speeding up my page load has been a constant battle. ImageOptim is a quick, dirty and relatively efficient way of ensuring your images are reduced in size and load quicker (while ensuring there is not a significant degradation in quality).
As we constantly aim for cross browser compatibility, Can I Use is an essential tool.
Animate.css can be useful in introducing some subtle animations as you scroll down your page. It just adds a little movement which can enrich the user experience.
As an eternal source of support and enduring reassurance, you can hardly do better than bookmark CSS Tricks.
uiGradients offers inspiration for using a range of understated and elegant gradients.
Google fonts is an obvious one and the ease of use is fantastic.
Color Thief is a great site for people like myself who struggle at putting together a complementary and effective colour palette, often based on your chosen hero image.
A really useful tool is Place It, if only to impress clients who think you have gone that extra mile in putting together mock ups with impressive imagery.
I started using slack during my course at GA. It’s a great way to keep in touch with both tutors and students, well after the course has been completed. I start the working day by logging into slack and it’s a much quicker way to communicate than by email.
Honourable (if obvious mentions) for Bootstrap, Foundation, JS Fiddle, Github, Stack Overflow, SASS, jQuery and Font Awesome.
Finally, for me, using Lynda, CodeSchool, Udemy, Treehouse and TutsPlus has been invaluable, and a lot of fun, in giving me a sound introduction to the amazing field of web development.
So as you can see, I’ve used so many tools and resources to advance my web development education. But as I mentioned, I have been working largely alone. Working as a freelancer means you are often left to your own devices. I’m really looking forward to working closely with experience developers, whom I’m sure have used many more valuable tools for me to play with.
It goes without saying that I would love to hear of any other tools out there on the web which would make my life as a developer even more enjoyable. Please drop me an email. I’m sure there are many other tools out there.
Oh and there is another final resource. It’s a search engine called Google. You may just have heard of it.