Essential Web-Based tools for JavaScript Developers
Here is a list of extremely handy online tools that you can’t live without as a JavaScript developper. I found myself using them extensively over the last years while pesting about lack of clue about them before. Maybe you know a part or all the tools presented here, but if a single reader find a new tool I will consider my task completed.
I might not be aware of every tools around here, so if you know any online tools that you find handy or interesting please, I urge you to share it with us by leaving a comment on this post!
Javascript beautifier
by Einar Lielmanis
I rarely used this one. However John Resig made an interesting use of it to reverse engineer a Genetic split testing algorithm written in javascript.
Source :
JavaScript Regex Generator
by Tavs Dokkedahl
If you are not familiar with Regular Expressions the following tool is a good helper as well as an awesome way to learn them!
Source :
JSLint
by Douglas Crockford
“JSLint is a JavaScript program that looks for problems in JavaScript programs.”
This quote from the documentation say it all. This is the most complete online javascript “validator”. It comes with an heavy amount of options to satisfiy all you posible needs.
Source :
Javascript Compression Tools
The following site brought to us by Vance Lucas offers both, Minification and Packing for your javascript files. Those methods respectively created by Douglas Crockford and Dean Edwards are widely used now that the client side exprerience revolution as become more and more important, javascript libraries too, increased their weight. To save your bandwidth and your users one, please, compress your javascripts !
Update : This tool will also combine multiple uploaded files into one to save HTTP requests as well.
Sources :
To finish this article I would like to thank all these people for giving us such great applications!
I just discovered Scriptalizer which combines multiple javascript files into a single minified file (this works for CSS as well). This compresses your javascript and will cut down your http requests.
Sorry, forgot to post the link: http://scriptalizer.com/
(Author note: I edited you comment to protect your email from harvesters)
The protoype library stops lots of wheel reinventing: http://www.prototypejs.org/
@david Ziegler Nice site :D Extremely usefull to save some HTTP request too !
@Liam Yes frameworks are saving us a lot of time, but big web applications may requires huge javascript files, even if they makes use of popular frameworks.
On another hand for example, my blog engine : Typo, comes with unminified, unpacked javascript libraries. So I had to do it myself to prevent bandwidth waste.
Hey – thanks for the mention. My compression tool that you linked ( http://jscompress.com/ ) will also combine multiple uploaded files into one to save HTTP requests as well. So it has a copy/paste input box as well as file uploading options, while still letting you choose the compression method (Packer or JSMin).
@Vance Thank you for leting us know Vance, It’s a shame that I totally missed this feature !