Top 5 Open Source Tools for Web Developers
There are wide variety popular open source tools that are available for today’s web development world. Many have gravitated to open source tools that they find most effective. However, each of those source tools are favored by different web developers based on their area of specialty. Although there are thousands of open source to choose from, below is a list of those that we believe are the top five in the industry.
Node.js
Initially released May 27, 2009 by its original author Ryan Dahl, Node.js was built on Google Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine and is a JavaScript runtime. This tool is an open source cross-platform runtime environment that is designed for the developing server-side web application. It utilizes event-driven, non-blocking I/O models, which is designed to make it faster and much more efficient. –modern, open source text editor
AngularJS
The AngularJS was initially created by Google. It was open sourced under the MIT licenses. This AngularJS open source tool is a JavaScript framework designed for dynamic Web apps. It is best used for one-page Web applications. This particular open source tool supports filters and data-binding and also includes HTML attributes. It also has capabilities to support form validation, forms and DOM handling. The AngularJS was initially released in 2009 and developed by Brat Tech LLC, Google as well as by the community.
Brackets
One of the more popular source code editors for JavaScript, HTML and CSS is Brackets. Initially released November 4, 2014, Brackets was written in JavaScript, HTML and CSS itself. This source code editor has been known to make the development process a lot faster; primarily because it offers support of the live preview of the browser within your editor.
Bootstrap
Bootstrap is an open source tool that is free and best known for its quick development of its responsive design work. It contains its own set of multiple functionalities. The functionalities include the following:
- Classes and grids
- Navigation
- Forms
- Containers
- Buttons
- Media queries
- JavaScript extensions
Bootstrap contains more than 91,000 stars and over 38,000 forks. Bootstrap is also the most-starred project on the GitHub platform.
LESS
LESS, developed by Alexis Sellier, is known for its ability to support multiple features that are designed to increase the speed of your web development efforts. Since LESS is a CSS pre-processor, it’s syntax is similar to CSS. LESS consist of features that allow certain techniques, mixins, functions, and variables to enhance the functionality of CSS. It results in it being much more extendable, themeable and maintainable.
Please keep in mind that different developers have personal preferences based on what is most suitable for them to perform their jobs. However, we believe that the list above is a representation of what many developers are using on a worldwide basis.
