Last week we wrote up a whole list of server side technologies that we use to build and maintain Exceptionless. This week, we're going to look at client side tools and services.
We're all about function around here, but we like to think that the app looks and feels pretty good, too! We hope you agree, and maybe you'll come across a thing or two you could use in the future to jazz up the user side of your projects.
Most of these are free services, so check them out!
Client Side Tech #
AngularJS #
JavaScript framework for building dynamic, awesome apps
AngularJS is a structural framework for dynamic web apps. It lets you use HTML as your UI language and lets you extend HTML's syntax to define your application’s structure efficiently. Angular's data binding and dependency injection eliminates much of the "fluff" code needed and does this all in the browser.
Bootstrap #
Mobile first front-end framework
Bootstrap is a free collection of tools for creating websites and web applications that was created by a developer and a designer at Twitter. It contains libraries of HTML,CSS, and JavaScript components to give your project a head start.
Font Awesome #
Scalable vector based icons via CSS
Font Awesome gives you scalable vector icons that can instantly and easily be customized and extended with the power of CSS.
Restangular #
AngularJS service for handling Restful Resource
Restangular is an AngularJS service that simplifies the most common GET, POST, DELETE, and UPDATE requests with a minimum amount of client code. It is a perfect fit for any application that uses data from a RESTful API.
AngularJS Batarang #
Debugging and inspecting Angular apps in Chrome
The AngularJS Batarang Chrome extension includes tools and utilities to assist in finding and addressing performance bottlenecks, and visualize and debug applications using AngularJS.
Emmet Re:View #
Easily test responsive layouts
Emmet Re:View is a small Google Chrome extension that finds responsive design breakpoints on your page and creates view for each breakpoint. This allows you to easily debug your code to perfect and create the perfect UI.
WebStorm #
Awesome JavaScript IDE for front end dev
JetBrains WebStorm is a commercial IDE for JavaScript, CSS & HTML. It includes JavaScript plugins (such as for Node.js) as well as provides automatic code completion, on-the-fly code analysis, refactoring support and VCS integration.
Grunt #
JavaScript task runner
Grunt provides an easy way of managing the large number of build tasks required to maintain a sophisticated web application. It also has a vast library of plugins to further extend its functionality.
npm / Bower #
Package managing
Npm is most commonly used for managing Node.js modules, but it works for the front-end too when combined with Browserify and/or $ npm dedupe.
Bower is created solely for the front-end and is optimized with that in mind. The biggest difference is that npm does nested dependency tree (size heavy) while Bower requires a flat dependency tree (puts the burden of dependency resolution on the user).