As a web developer it’s very important to have tools that will help you streamline your workflow and be as productive as possible.. all while saving precious RAM and coin by not having to purchase bulky application to help you do some of your daily tasks. Thanks to many communities and websites, we have online applications to lend us a hand. Here’s a list of great applications that will help you along:

Encode/Decode Tools

HTML Encoder / Decoder
This encoder makes quotes, ampersands, and other characters web friendly. With this encoder you can type or paste in the text you want to HTML encode, then press the button (or reverse the process with their decoder). Read a brief explanation of the process.

Text Encoder / Decoder
Base64 refers to a specific MIME content transfer encoding or as a generic term for similar encoding schemes that encode binary data translated into a base 64 representation. If you like this tool, you’ll also love the binary file to Base64 encoder which will help you embed files with markup: XHTML, CSS, XML and more.

Code Cleaners

Pretty Printer for PHP, Java, C++, C, Perl, JavaScript, CSS

CSS Tidy

Even advanced developers often needs to optimize their CSS code. CSS Tidy is a free, online application that will fix errors and optimize your CSS code. For example, it can automatically detect redundant styles, a very common problem of CSS codes.

Code Generation

webformfactory

Web Form Factory is an open source web form generator which automatically generates the necessary backend code to tie your form to a database. By generating the backend code for you, WFF saves you time… time you could spend doing more interesting stuff.

pForm

Create a php form in seconds with this free and easy to use tool. If you need a little more power you can check out its parent program MachForm or great alternatives wufoo and formspring (both of which offer limited free versions and paid premium versions).

Text Generators

We have all seen it and probably also used it… Lorem Ipsum text? This text is used by webdesigners worldwide to simulate the render of real text on a design. Lipsum.com allow you to create th desired number of paragraphs of Lorem Ipsum, quickly and simply.

LIpsum

HTML Ipsum

A useful little website created by Chris Coyier. It provides you with the standard Latin text already in HTML tags. Clicking on any of the blocks automatically copies the text to your clipboard!

blindtextgenerator

Browser Tests: Online-Services & Tools

Xenocode browsers

Tool for checking your website in different browsers. Xenocode Browsers allow you to lauch IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Google Chrome and Opera directly from the web. The only weak point: The service isn’t available for Macs and GNU/Linux powered PCs.

BrowserShots

BrowserShots is a free open source service that allows you to make screenshots of any web page available on the Internet (be aware that robots.txt can prevent this service). Most browser types (Firefox, Opera, IE and Safari, Dillo, Epiphany, Flock, Galeon, Konqueror, Seamonkey etc.) in relevant versions is available and you can also choose between the following Operating System: Linux, Windows, Mac OS and BSD.

You can adjust the width of the screen size (640 – 1600), color depth (8 – 32 bits per pixel) as well as the JavaScript-, Java- and Flash-support. BrowserShots rely on distributed computers that are run by volunteers and the most popular Browsers may be quite busy and it this means that getting your screenshot may take some time. As screenshots become ready they will be available for viewing individually or for download of the full package.

Crossbrowsertesting (free/commerical)

CrossBrowserTesting.com allows website designers to test the cross browser compatibility of their website across different browsers and operating systems. CrossBrowserTesting.com is a commercial service where users buy credits giveng 5 min usage each. Anyone can register and use the service for for free but the free service has a 5 min max length.

CrossBrowserTesting.com lets you log on to a remote session and take control of a operating system with a range of Browsers installed. This gives you the option to test your AJAX and Javascript as well as the layout.

Load Impact

Load Impact is a free tool which tests your site at different load levels and then displays your results in an easy to understand graph. Careful not to put your own site out of business!

Pingdom

Pingdom loads a complete HTML page including all objects (images, CSS, JavaScripts, RSS, Flash and frames/iframes). It mimics the way a page is loaded in a web browser and then displays how long each of those elements took to load using nice visual time bars. This can be very useful when you are trying to improve the efficiency of your site.

Test Everything

More than 100 online tools on one page.

JSUnit

JSUnit is a unit testing framework for JavaScript. Testing JavaScript manually is time-consuming and prone to errors, but JSUnit provides the developer a simpler, automated way of doing unit tests to ensure thorough testing at a fraction of the time it would take to test manually. JSUnit allows for the execution of automated tests for multiple browsers and operating systems. Test online

W3C Link Checker

Really handy tool for checking if all links on you web pages are valid.

Markup Validation Service

Markup that is not well formed may give your site serious presentation issues in some Browsers while they are barely visible on others. It is always recommended to validate your site with the W3C Markup Validator and fix all the errors it reports.

CSS Validation Service

Check Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and (X)HTML documents with style sheets

Character Lookup

HTML Entity Character Lookup

Need to know how to display the trademark symbol on one of your pages, this tool if just for you. The HTML Entity Lookup searches the html entities for matches to the searched character based on how the character looks. For instance, the letter “c” would match © and ¢ entity, because of the way they look. This is really a tool that you need to try to understand how useful it is (also available as a dashboard widget for you Mac users).

Domain Tools

Domainr

There are plenty of tools available that tell you whether a domain is taken or not. What sets Domainr apart is that it takes your query and then tries to create a more memorable name. Domainr helps you explore the entire domain name space beyond the ubiquitous and crowded .com, .net and .org.

Firefox addons

Firebug

Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. This is probably one of the most widely used web developer tools out there. If you don’t have it, get it now!

Web Developer Toolbar

An extremely useful Firefox plugin which provides many tools which web developers use on a daily basis. Great for quickly validating your XHTML or inspecting HTTP header information.