Ten free Web front-end development tools

By Jake Rocheleau

Network technology develops rapidly, and some technologies are difficult to maintain

Every year, new tools appear, which means that many old tools fall into the way of new technologies.

Front-end development is a big part of the Web and has become a career path. If you’re looking at front-end development as your new technology or as a viable business, you need the right tools for the job.

I’m going to share my top 10 must-have modern front-end development tools. They’re all completely free and most of them can help you build amazing websites.

1. Grid Guide

Features: Fast grid generation

First up is Grid.Guide, a free web app that lets you generate grids online. This compact application allows you to create your own grid scheme with custom spacing and column count.

Enter your preferred width and total number of columns for your site, and Grid Guide will generate some options for you to choose from.

You can even download each grid scheme as a PNG image for importing into Photoshop or Illustrator. This makes it easier to create grids without having to calculate them manually or rely on grid libraries.

2. Foundation

Features: A framework similar to Bootstrap

I have to admit that most front-end developers prefer to use the Bootstrap framework. But after a recent comprehensive update of But Zurb’s Foundation, I think it deserves your attention.

The Foundation framework, like Bootstrap, has predefined CSS classes for grids, typography, buttons, and other dynamic elements. However, its design is much simpler, so it is much easier to customize the layout than a normal framework.

And the new Foundation also has a sister framework called Foundation for Email. This is a framework specifically designed for email interface development.

Both of these Foundation frameworks are excellent and they are maintained and updated by Zurb’s team.

3. CodePen

Features: Implement new creative code

Most developers know that using Cloud IDEs for front-end development is lightweight. It lets you write code on any computer, save your projects to the cloud and share them.

But even with all these options, I have to say CodePen is the best. It starts fast, it’s reliable, it’s easy to start and it updates automatically when you change the code.

Not to mention it supports almost every library you can think of. You can compile code using LESS or SASS by presetting HTML template languages such as Haml or Slim. And CodePen allows you to add external resources, so you can use sites like CDNJS to load other related libraries.

This is without a doubt the best development tool for writing code and implementing new ideas. There are several similar tools, but none better than CodePen in my opinion.

4. Unheap

Features: The latest jQuery plug-in library

It’s hard to find the latest JS plug-in on the curated list. For the most part, you can only browse popular plug-ins on Github or check out popular projects on Twitter.

However, with sites like Unheap, you can easily and quickly find the latest jQuery plug-ins. They have various types of plug-ins for navigation, forms, web media, and other categories.

It’s basically a repository of all the best jQuery plug-ins on the web, and it’s constantly updated, so you can always find new ones.

5. LivePage

Features: Automatically refresh the browser

Some browser plug-ins are the best tools you can use for development. LivePage is a free Google extension that automatically refreshes your page after you make changes to a local file.

This means you can edit your HTML/CSS/JS files locally and the browser will refresh them every time you save them. It usually takes you a second to refresh, but after doing this many times you’ll see how annoying it is.

LivePage also has the same plugin for Firefox called LiveReload.

6. Fullpage Screen Capture

Feature: Capture full screen

I use this extension all the time and it is one of my favorite tools for designing layouts. Fullpage Screen Capture lets you Capture entire web pages and save them as PNG images.

You simply click the button in the Chrome extension panel, and it automatically creates a full snapshot of the entire web page and stitches it together into an image. You can use it to study the overall design, which is very helpful when designing your website.

7. WhatFont

Features: Find the best fonts on the web

Typography is a huge challenge for web design, and it’s not always easy. Finding the right font can be exhausting, but using an extension like WhatFont can take the pain out of searching.

You just add WhatFont to your Browser, click on it and hover every time you see a font on a web page, and it will give you all the options including font style, size, and even a location to download it when it’s available (e.g. TypeKit or Webfonts).

8. Node/npm

Feature: Command line

Node has clearly changed the face of Web development. It passes JavaScript to the background and returns us to NPM, one of the fastest growing package managers.

This is almost inevitable, and for good reason. At the moment, all front-end developers should learn the command line, as it is now a necessary tool in the front-end workflow. And NPM is part of this process, which is also managed entirely from the command line.

You can use a new package or upgrade an old one. NPM Scripts also gives you an idea of what else you can do.

If you’ve never tried NPM before, I highly recommend you start dabbling in it and see what’s amazing about it.

9. Mobile Speed Tester

Features: Mobile phone monitoring

Google understands how to provide a great user experience, and they always try to help webmasters build better websites. One of Google’s best tools is called Mobile Speed Tester, which tests how quickly any website responds on a computer or phone.

It measures both access speed and user experience to determine if the site is mobile-friendly.

It does not generate detailed reports, and is not enough to replace Usability testing. But a free tool like this can give you good feedback and help you choose the right approach.

10. Responsive Test

Features: Tests site response speed

Last but certainly not least is a web app called Responsive Test. This is an open source project posted on GitHub that allows you to test whether any website is responding properly on your browser.

You simply enter a URL and drag the window to whatever width you want to test. And there are small buttons to switch to pre-defined size schemes for iphones, ipads and general-purpose computers.

There is another similar tool developed by Matt Kersley, but it does not scale. Instead, you can use only a few predefined size Windows for testing.

Both of these are great tools, and they’re much easier to use than dragging Windows back and forth.

That’s the end of my TOP10 list! I hope this list proves useful, and I certainly hope that there is at least one tool on this list that can help you.

Since the early days of development were so rapid, you can expect more and better tools to come.