Starting web development project on the “right foot” is essential for completing it in time. As well as communication with customers might become easier.
In this article, I will list some popular tools that are directly and indirectly related to successful web project development.
DIA
Diagram software (freeware) that is available for all major operating systems – Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It is an excellent alternative of Microsoft's Visio. DIA is very powerful and easy to work with. Without a doubt can help you with diagrams, flow charts and mindmaps which on the other hand can be also useful for presentations and making project goals more clear.
Google Docs
Excellent tool, again provided by Google. Easy way to share and prepare content, before publishing on a website. Excellent features, including WYSIWYG editor, permission settings, etc... You can create and edit Excel spreadsheets, documents, presentations, etc...Free version is sufficient enough, but there is also paid version available.
Google Drive
Popular cloud-based storage provided by Google. In addition to file sharing between you, customers and team members, it can be used as backup of important files and even the complete project. It depends on personal preferences, many developers used Dropbox, but nothing stop you from using both. I personally prefer Ubuntu One, as most of my web projects are developed under Ubuntu.
Google Web Fonts
I doubt that nowadays, modern web development project can be complete without using advanced typography techniques and Google Web Fonts. Of course majority of the fonts are very fancy, but it is not so difficult to find excellent font combinations to emphasize brand and improve readability.
Adobe Kuler
A cool free tool by Adobe, the perfect way to generate different kinds of color schemes. Additionally Adobe Kuler integrates with rest design tools of Adobe.
Evernote
Most bloggers will say that they can't live without Evernote, well actually Evernote can be used to save snippets, design projects, bookmarks, practically everything that you don't want to forget. Unfortunately, I can't suggest any similar application, if you work on Linux. Our Evernote review is very much outdated, but you might want to take a look, if you are not familiar with Evernote.
Git
Open source distributed version control software. Suitable for project of any size, easy to learn and available for many operating systems, easy to integrate with favorite web development tools. Combination with GitHub online repository is simply unbeatable.
Bootstrap
RAD tool that will save a lot of time, building new web or mobile project, it provide optimized responsive code together with Boilerplate functionality together with JavaScript, CSS and LESS. There are also series of useful templates with advanced CSS, JavaScript, typography oriented features, etc..
Previously we have reviewed some of the most popular Bootstrap editors.
HTML5 and CSS3 Tools
Without a doubt a web project can't be done without HTML, JavaScript and CSS, luckily we have previous write articles regarding top CSS3 tools and top HTML5 tools (though HTML5 article is from 2011).
Responsive Web Design Tools
Coding in browser is not so new trend as well as RWD. We've recently reviewed some of the most popular browser based RWD applications
The list is simply huge, but without a doubt modern web development require a lot in terms of software. Though, if you want to save some money on software, we've also covered free web development applications for Ubuntu as well as coding with tablets.
Hope you like the list! Did we missed something or did we forget to add a tool? Please leave your comment below.
