6 Essential Tools for the Lean Web Developer

Free or open source apps for developers to help keep costs minimal, improve productivity and simplify workflow. You will find some old tools which are already in your favorites listed; however, you might discover some new tools as well.

1. Dropbox

Dropbox, as a cloud storage service gaining access to files both online and offline, has become highly important. Starting at 2GB for a free account, it should provide adequate space to get started. Dropbox can sync these (such as your XAMPP or MAMP root directories), meaning you will always have easy, fast access to your development files, freeing you up to work on more important tasks.

2. Droplr

Droplr helps you work faster, better, and smarter. With Droplr, you can swap screenshots and share files in seconds. You can record screencasts in minutes and distribute them instantly. It runs in the background, becomes a streamlined part of your workflow. It’s a simple, fast tool made for creative professionals.

As a developer, working with designers or co-workers often means sharing documents, images, and text. While signing up for a free account it allows uploads of up to 25MB files and up to 1GB of storage.

3. Xampp

XAMPP is a highly recommended open source, configurable web server. It contains Apache, MySQL, PHP, OpenSSL, FileZilla FTP server and more, bundled together for a smooth configuration.

4. Git

Git is an open source revision control and source code management system that tracks the history of your project in a data structure called a repository. Git is a decentralized system that allows for multiple backup repositories.

5. JS Bin

JS Bin was one of the first public paste bins that rendered output live in your browser, allowing users to collaborate on and debug Javascript, HTML and CSS code snippets. It's open source and can work online, on your locally hosted environment or even live on your own site. It supports remote rendering, enabling you to check on multiple platforms while the output automatically refreshes as you edit the code. Once you start typing, JS Bin saves your work (shareable using a short URL). If you want to stop saving, just create a milestone and live saving will apply to the new revision.

6. Dabblet

Dabblet is an open source interactive playground for quickly testing snippets of CSS and HTML. An interesting feature is the -prefix-free option (meaning you don't have to add any prefixes in your code), along with multiple view modes and familiar keyboard shortcuts. It works in most modern web browsers, and the source code is available on GitHub if you would like to contribute or fork it for you own project.