Web Development Tools
Web development tools anyone can use
Which are the best free web development tools
Web development tools used to be pieces of software that only developers could get a hold of and generally they cost quite a bit of money. But with a more sophisticated audience for computers today with many even casual users learning bits of HTML and CSS, web development tools are things that are now accessible to almost everyone. Many tools are free and are often supplied as plug-ins for certain browsers so they're easy to download and install. Even the most visual user who can create a website can use a variety of web development tools to help optimise the side and debug it.
With all the different web development tools out there, a few stand above the rest as the most easy to use and understand. One of the most popular web development tools is a plug-in for the Firefox browser, a browser that offers several plug-ins that can help someone creating a website. Firebug is a plug-in extension for Firefox that allows someone to look at any website page and see all of the code. You can inspect the code, edit it and search for specific problems. While this would be good for the casual website creator, even highly trained programming specialists have found Firebug to be a very useful tool.
Another very useful Firefox extension is called Yslow. It works with Firebug to determine why a webpage is loading too slowly and causing too many HTTP requests. It can look at a webpage and do an analysis to figure out where the problem might lie and how to fix it. Aardvark is another Firefox plug-in that can help the budding web developer. By hovering the mouse cursor over a certain part of a webpage, Aardvark displays the code that created that area. This is one of the web development tools that both programmers who are trying to dissect the page, and people who are trying to learn to make better web pages, can find very useful.
Getting the most out of web development tools
The best way to get the most you can out of these and other web development tools is by making an effort to learn as much as you can as you go. For instance, if you plan on creating websites you want web development tools that help you write large chunks of the coding. You don't want to have to write everything from scratch in Notepad. This is far too time-consuming. So choose an HTML/CSS editor that can plug in chunks of code for certain functions.
If you're new to HTML and CSS, you can choose a WYSIWYG editor, which is a What You See Is What You Get editor, that requires no knowledge of these things. But choose one of these pieces of editing software that also allows you to hand write this code. These types of web development tools can help you learn as you go so that you become more and more proficient and more skilled at creating quality websites and web features.
