Top 5 Tools for Front-End Developers in 2022

Introduction

In just a few years, web development tools have come a long way. As a result of this advancement, we can now use the power of well-tested libraries to improve our workflow and gain access to more responsive design options. Not only that, but thanks to ever-improving version control systems, we can build things together. There have never been more possibilities for creating awesome web applications, from browser add-ons and plugins to processors that streamline your code.

However, with the number of web development tools growing by the day, finding the best software to get the job done can be difficult. To assist you, we’ve compiled a list of essential front-end development tools to get you started.

Front End Development Tools (StarBox Technologies)

Why are these tools essential?

It’s all about the tools! Learning the tools of the trade can make your job easier and keep you up to date on the skills you’ll need to land a developer job or improve your current skills or team. They tend to make life easy for the user and make their work more efficient - Less time spent and better results.

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Five Essential Front-End Development Tools

Here, we’ll break it down for you and explain the tools that are critical to your success as a developer. Plus, we will recommend some of our favourites to get the job done so you can start using the most up-to-date front-end tools right away.

Visual Studio Code

1. Code Editor: This is where you write the code for your sites. You spend most of your day as a front-end developer in your code editor. The plain text format required for your code to be interpreted as a website is provided by all editors.

Visual Studio Code is a powerful code editor that includes IntelliSense for smart code auto-completion, a built-in debugger for fewer mistakes, and Live Code for collaborative development with other developers in the same editor. Unlike many other code editors, Visual Studio Code’s in-built debugger makes the development process faster and keeps the code and debugger in a single view. Bug tracking and code run-throughs become much easier and faster as a result of this. Another notable feature of the Visual Studio Code extension marketplace is that it is not limited to code. Custom debuggers, code linters, ssh-terminals, and DevOps pipeline connections are all available. Although the main feature of Visual Studio Code is that it is a code editor, it becomes more than that with the addition of extensions and can easily become an integrated development environment (IDE).

Atom is also a great alternative, it streamlines your work by allowing you to customise it with thousands of add-on features, functions, and themes, making the tool look and work exactly how you want it to.

Another popular editor is Sublime Text, which is known for its Go-to-Anything feature, which allows you to quickly navigate your code, multi-select to save keystrokes, and highlight to easily spot similar sections of code.

2. Version Control Systems: You need a reliable version control system to keep track of all the changes you make to your code over time even if you’re freelancing, but especially if you’re part of a team. You’ll need to check or even revert to an earlier version of your codebase at some point. For version control systems, we recommend Git. It is by far the most popular and widely supported system today.

Git is a decentralised version control system that allows everyone on your team to work on the same files in the same project at the same time without fear of overwriting each other’s work. Because everyone has a local copy of the code, it allows developers to work whenever and wherever they want.

GitHub makes version control and issue tracking with Git easier. Issue tracking features include labels, milestones, responsibility assignment, and a search engine. GitHub allows pull requests to propose changes to the source code for version control. Users who have the ability to review proposed changes can look at a difference in the changes and approve them.

3. JavaScript Libraries: JavaScript is one of the most in-demand skills for front-end developers these days, so learning the language’s fundamentals as well as how to use its libraries can put you ahead of the competition for entry-level front-end development jobs.

JavaScript libraries are collections of prewritten code snippets that can be used to perform common JavaScript functions. They help make your websites more interactive, improve browser support, add effects like animations, and form field validation and auto-completion. They add all these functionalities to your website while also saving time on development.

jQuery is a great JavaScript library to use. It’s simple to integrate with other libraries and comes with a large number of plug-ins that you can use to seamlessly integrate the features and tools you’ll need as a developer.

One of jQuery’s strengths that still makes it relevant today is its cross-browser support. While many users have switched to modern browsers, it would be naive to assume that everyone is using the most current and up-to-date software. As a result, we must ensure that our scripts are compatible with a variety of browser versions. Because we don’t have to write the fallback code ourselves, jQuery allows for a more streamlined approach because the jQuery library does it for us.

4. JavaScript Frameworks: JavaScript frameworks are another must-have for front-end developers when it comes to looking good. JS frameworks are collections of JavaScript code libraries that provide developers with pre-written JS code to help out with routine programming features and tasks. Hence the name, framework.

JavaScript frameworks give you a structure to build your project around. They provide you with templates used to create these structures with specific areas set aside for inserting your code.

React is a very popular example of a JavaScript framework. It was created by Facebook in 2011 to assist developers in creating user interfaces, or UIs. Not sure what UIs are, read our article on - UI vs UX. React can be used as a UI library to render elements without enforcing a specific project structure. The smallest building blocks of React apps are React Elements. Because the React DOM ensures that they are updated efficiently whenever something changes, they are more powerful than DOM elements. Components are larger building blocks that define self-contained, reusable pieces that can be used anywhere in the application. They take props as input and generate elements that are then displayed to the user.

Vue is more like React than Angular because it uses a virtual DOM and relies on functional paradigms because JavaScript is a functional language rather than an object-oriented one. The View layer is the sole focus of the Vue.js core library, It is called a progressive framework because you can turn it into an actual framework by extending its functionality with official and third-party packages like Vue Router or Vuex.

Angular is a Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework. However, because Angular 2.0 (now known as AngularJS) is component-based, there is no strict association with MV patterns. Modules, Components, and Services are used to organise Angular projects. There are at least one root component and one root module in every Angular application. Each component in Angular contains a Template, a Class that defines the application logic, and MetaData (Decorators). A component’s metadata tells Angular where to look for the building blocks it needs to create and present its view.

Svelte is a new approach to web application development. It converts your declarative components into efficient JavaScript that updates the DOM surgically. Unlike other frameworks, Svelte does not run the entire app in the browser. Rather, each request triggers the server’s compiler, which generates a page and sends it to the client. Svelte avoids the upfront cost of loading all JavaScript before the first page loads, unlike the other three. Svelte only sends you the parts you need when you need them.

React has the most community support and library selection of any of the four. It strikes a good balance between being easy to learn and being extremely popular.

Chrome is a popular web browser and its DevTool is well-organised and simple to use, It would be worthwhile to explore its capabilities.

5. Developer Tools: You’ll often want to make changes to your sites and test how they look in your browser before committing the changes. All of this is possible with developer tools, also known as dev tools.

Chrome DevTool is a feature built into modern web browsers that allows you to see the code behind each section of a website in the browser with a few clicks. (Hint: Devtools also let you see the code behind any website, so they’re a great way to pick up some tips from other programmers.)

Summary

In summary, the following are worth exploring when in search of new tools or skills to make you stand out in the world of front-end development:

• Code Editor - VS Code, Atom, Sublime Text
• Developer Tools - Chrome DevTools
• JavaScript Libraries - jQuery
• JavaScript Frameworks - ReactJS, VueJS, AngularJS, Svelte
• Version Control Systems - Git + GitHub

Closing

So there you have it, five essential tools for the front-end developer. Hopefully, this article will assist you in selecting the tools that are right for you. By including them in your skillset, you’ll be able to stay relevant as a front-end developer while also taking the next big career step you’ve always wanted to take!

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