Developer Toolkit - Essentials

I've made a post before about developer toolkits and stuff to add to them, but I haven't really mentioned the essentials.  In today's post, I'm going to go over items that I use almost on a daily basis.  Sometimes, I don't even realize I am using them because they are part of my boilerplate.  Let's get started:

1. HTML5 Boilerplate

This is basically an HTML5 ready template to get started with your projects.  It includes a lot of stuff that I'm going to go over, but I have just started using this boilerplate. Before, I had to download everything separately.

2. Normalize.css / Reset.css

These stylesheets reset CSS so that your document is pretty much clean from styling.  It's a great way to start projects because you don't have to tackle with any predefined CSS styles.  These stylesheets are also great for browser compatibility.  For example, a line height might look different across several computers.

3. HTML5 Shiv

This makes older versions of IE understand HTML5 tags.  Very useful, but it looks like the days of supporting XP are numbered.

4. jQuery

Download the full or minified versions and slap them on your <head> tag. This is the most popular Javascript library out there.

5. Modernizr

Another Javascript library.  This one checks to see if your browser has certain features.

6. Adobe Kuler

This tool is more for a designer, but I have really grown to enjoy the application.  It comes in both a desktop and mobile version.  It basically helps you choose color palettes.  You can also take pictures with your phone and it will auto detect the color palette of the picture.

That's about it for my toolkit.  Again, these are my most-used tools.  There are plenty of tools out there and I ocassionally I will use them, but these are a must-have.

Take care and stay tuned for more updates!

Twitter: Who to Follow?

Twitter is inescapable.  With 200 million active users, Twitter is one of the most successful start-up companies of all time.  Twitter also just recently joined the NY Stock Exchange.  With that many heads talking, Twitter can provide a great wealth of knowledge and resources for any subject. With that said, Twitter should be a part of every web developers toolkit and should be treated as a resource.

Informative websites and founding developers can both be found on Twitter, but for this week, we will target some important people to follow so that you can get up to date information straight from the people developing the future.  In a sense, you’ll get to see history be written in the development community.  Ok, let’s not get too geeky here.

Developer Twitter Accounts:

John Resig - @jeresig

John is the founder of jQuery, which is by far the most popular Javascript library.  John currently lives in Brooklyn, NY and is working at the Khan Academy.  Previously, he worked for Mozilla.

Eric A. Meyer - @meyerweb

Eric Meyer is best known for his writings on web standards and cascading style sheets (CSS).  He is an active writer and has published several books.  He is also extremely active on Twitter with over 23,000 tweets.

Jeffrey Way - @jeffrey_way

Jeffrey Way is an extremely active voice within the developing community.  He frequently writes at Nettuts+, where he breaks down concepts into easy to digest tutorials. He is the founder of Laracasts.

Paul Irish - @paul_irish

Paul was previously on the jQuery team for a few years, but has switched to the Google Chrome Developer relations team.  He created the HTML5 boilerplate and also created the familiar Modernizr tool.

That’s it for now, but keep it mind there are hundreds of developers actively tweeting!  On top of developers, there are also website gathering resources on Twitter such as Nettuts+.