Over the years I have found many useful free tools to help me in my job as a Web Developer.
In this post, I share 10 of my favourite free tools with you so you can get the benefit of them too.
1. Link Sleuth
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html
Link Sleuth is a Windows application that lets you check all of the links on your site to make sure there are no broken links. You can customize the analysis and it generates a report in HTML for you.
2. HT Track
HT Track is a great tool for copying websites. You point it to the root of the site you want to copy and it downloads all of the HTML, CSS, scripts, images etc. This is great if you have a client who has a flat HTML site and wants you to put it into a Content Management System for them. It is also good if you are taking over a site for a client but you don't have the source code.
3. Trello
Trello is a great tool for organising your work or your processes. You create a board and in the board you have lists. In those lists you add cards. Where I work currently, we have a board for our web projects. We have lists for potential work, quoted for, quote accepted, work in progress, work completed, archive. The jobs start on the first list Potential work and they move into each list as they get to the next stage. You can also use it for planning your day. You can use it to plan out where you are going to use your pomodoros for the day and for the rest of the week. Read more about The Pomodoro Technique® in my other blog post.
4. Slack
Slack is a messaging app for teams to communicate about the projects they are working on. It is instant messaging with lots of extra features. Many other programs integrate with Slack, like bug trackers which send notifications to your team chat. Slack is avaliable as a desktop or mobile app and of course on the web.
5. Telerik converter
Telerik converter lets you convert code from C# to VB and from VB to C#. You just paste the code you want to convert and it converts it for you.
6. Built with
If you want to know what technology has been used to build a certain site, you can use this site to find out.
7. Can I use
"Can I use" provides up-to-date browser support tables for support of front-end web technologies on desktop and mobile web browsers. It is a very handy tool when you want to check if a certain html or CSS tag will be compatible for the browsers you need to support.
8. WebPageTest
WebPageTest is a free tool which checks the speed and performance of your site. It gives you ratings for different aspects and tells you what you need to do to improve.
9. LINQPad
LINQPad is ideal if you find some code on the internet that you want to quickly test, or if you want to play with the new features in C# 6 without having to set up a windows console/forms app or website. It is a windows application. Read more about LinqPad in my other blog post
10. Lorempixel
Lorempixel gives you real placeholder images to use in your site concepts or examples. It randomly picks an image each time the page loads. You can request the images at your own custom size. Read more about Lorempixel in my other blog post
Pluralsight
Pluralsight is another great tool. It has over 4500 online courses so you will find the developer training courses you need. For a free 10 day trial visit Pluralsight.