10 sites developers should have in their bookmarks

by Jean-Baptiste Jung. 73 Comments -

Over the millions of websites available, some are true tools for us web developers. In this article, I have compiled 10 extremely useful sites for web developers, that should definitely be added to your bookmarks.

Mysql Format Date

MySQL Format Date helps you to format your dates using the MySQL DATE_FORMAT function. Just select a common date format and then change it to your suit your needs. The MySQL DATE_FORMAT code will be generated at the bottom of the page which you can then copy into your query.
Visit site: http://www.mysqlformatdate.com

Script Src

Are you tired of hunting the Internet in order to find the script tag for the latest version of the Javascript library of your choice? ScriptSrc.net has compiled all the latest versions of jQuery, Mootools, Prototype and more in a single page which lets you copy it in your browser clipboard with a single click.

Visit site: http://scriptsrc.net

Em Chart

I never been a fan of ems in CSS files, but sometimes you have to deal with it. In that case, Em chart will translate ems to pixels so you’ll save time and hassle.

Visit site: http://aloestudios.com/tools/emchart

Twitter API Explorer

If you’re using the Twitter API in the site you build, you’ll for sure enjoy this very handy website which allow you to search through the Twitter API. Even better, the website can generate ready-to-use code snippets. A real time gain for you and your clients!

Visit site: http://twitapi.com/explore

Browser Sandbox

Cross browser compatibility is definitely one of the biggest problems a web developer has to face in his daily job. The browser sandbox lets you run any Windows browser from the web. The only bad thing is that you must run a Windows machine: The app does not work on Macs and GNU/Linux.

Visit site: http://spoon.net/browsers

PHP Forms

Web forms are one of the most important part of a website, but creating them is also very time-consuming. So, what about using a website that can speed up your form development for free?
PHP forms allows you to create advanced forms that can fit the needs of most websites.

Visit site: http://www.phpform.org

.htaccess editor

A .htaccess file is a must have for any website. Don’t know how to write one? No problem, just visit this site to create your .htaccess file using a wizard. It doesn’t allow very advanced stuff, but the results are great for 95% of the websites you’ll make.

Visit site: http://www.htaccesseditor.com/en.shtml

Smush it!

Images may be worth a thousand words, they’re also well known to use a lot of bandwidth. Images can be optimized for the web using programs like Photoshop; but if you don’t own a copy of this software or simply don’t have a clue how to do it, smush.it is what you need.
Brought to you by Yahoo developers network, Smush.it is an online tool that will reduce your image size without reducing their quality. For WordPress users, a very handy plugin for your favorite blogging engine is available here.

Visit site: http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/smushit/

CSS Compressor

Especially on site with many different page layouts, CSS files can become huge and use a lot of server bandwidth. This tool, named CSS Compressor, can consequently reduce the size of any CSS file by removing comments, indentation and more.
Even better, compression level can be configured to fit your needs.

Visit site: http://www.csscompressor.com

Test everything

This site is a definitive must-have for your bookmarks: As the name says, Test everything allows you to test lot of things such as XHTML and CSS markup, PageRank, back-links, and a lot more.

Visit site: http://tester.jonasjohn.de

Comments (73) - Leave yours

  11. fjpoblam said:

    Omitted but you need it to coordinate your colors. I learned of it on Lifehacker and have used it AT LEAST weekly since: http://colorschemedesigner.com/

  12. Erik said:

    Nice! I love the Em Chart (bookmarked it) and the Browser Sandbox (Cannot believe I’ve never found this)

    Thanks, cool post idea!

  16. Rodney Mullen said:

    Nice set of resources. Definitely bookmarked a few. I think the em list will be the handiest for me. I don’t know why, but something as simple as switching from pixels to em has been a pain for me.

  20. Metric Stormtrooper said:

    some other usefull tools:
    http://tools.pingdom.com – shows you what parts of your site take to long to load
    DustMe Selectors (FireFox AddOn) – finds unused css selectors declared in your css file, but not used anywhere on your page.

  26. Brandon - ScriptSrc said:

    Thanks for including ScriptSrc in your list! You can also follow @scriptsrc to get notified when google updates to a newer version of any of the javascript libraries we support.

  28. Linkjes voor May 11th - Boeiend dunkt me said:

    [...] 10 sites developers should have in their bookmarks [ development programming resources css ] Tags: css, development, programming, resources You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site. [...]

  32. Arun Agrawal said:

    Very useful post. We all know some of these resources but it is great to see them at one place. Well done and I look forward to see more such lists.

    Arun

  40. Dana said:

    Great post. I didn’t know about a few of those and will be checking them out. I also like this site:

    http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

    You can instantly create a Google sitemap.

  41. John Varan said:

    The Browser Sandbox is my favorite, but all of these are extremely useful. I’m going to post some of these to my blog so I don’t forget about them!

  44. Maan H said:

    I bookmarked 3 of those, very useful links!

    having trouble with browser sandbox though – was gonna use it to test Safari but I guess Chrome will do :P

  47. Steve Public said:

    I’ve been personally been using SmushIt for several months now for my websites. The image reduction size varies, sometimes it’s up to 100kb depending on size, of course.

    I highly recommend it if have have more than 300 images on your site.

    Regards,
    Steve Public

  52. Jamie said:

    Thank you so much for compiling this list. This will come very handy for future reference. Instead of looking it up on the web one by one, you have done it for us and chose the best one out there.

  55. Harry Klitza said:

    Excellent list, a few polished gems in there!

    I absolutely love Browser Sandbox and have used that many times in the past. Same goes for Smush It…damn useful!

  56. Jasmine said:

    Excellent sites… I love all of these sites, but my favorite is the htaccess editor. Well, I have been wishing it could be easier to edit my site’s htaccess file, now my wish is finally granted! :)

  57. Manuel said:

    Very good list – nice! Another definitely useful site is www.convert-unix-time.com. Im using the bookmarklet every day.. :-)

  58. David Hancock said:

    Nice list, knew of a few already but there are definitely some useful sites up there like the .htaccess editor. Cheers.

    P.S For anyone that has a bit of PHP knowledge I created a Smushit client class about a year ago which might be of some use: https://github.com/davgothic/SmushIt

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