I’m not a web developer. At all. I used to have a job maintaining a website, but had nothing to do with coding it at all. I’d just write copy and maybe produce some graphics, but the actual website was created by someone else. Still, I’ve always kind of liked the idea of learning html (more than the basics I’ve picked up), and so web creation tools are always interesting to me. I was browsing gnome-look.org, a website dedicated to different themes, styles and icons for GNOME Linux, when I stumbled on a program called Web Developer Tools. I’m still not sure why it was in a theme-centric website, but it’s an amazing tool, and is actually useful even for people who don’t create websites for a living.
Web Developer Tools has a ton of features, and while all of them can definitely be used for designing and creating websites, many of the tools will be useful for “normal” people as well.
The full list of available tools includes the following:
Task Manager
Gmail Interface (via built-in browser)
CSS Tools/Editors
Script amp; Code Compressors/Minifiers
Image Processors
WYSIWYG Editor amp; Text Encoder
HTML amp; CSS Validator
As the list shows, there are a lot of features. Some of them, however, may be interesting to the non-coder. The image tools, for instance, are pretty nice. You can create buttons out of images (both square images with rounded corners and circular buttons), or buttons with text. You can add watermarks to images, resize them and compress them for smaller sizes, or do all three at once with what Web Developer Tools calls the “3 in 1 Magic” tool.
The WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Editor is nice as well. I’m actually writing this article using it, although I’m not coming close to using it to its full potential. With the WYSIWYG Editor, you can use different fonts, styles and sizes, add images and tables, different colors and formatting elements, and more. When you’re done (again, what you are creating is how the ultimate web page will look), you can clean the HTML, which means HTML created in programs like Microsoft Word, which are often too big and contain non-essential formatting, can be cleaned up to be as sleek, small and speedy as possible.
In the Web Developer Tools, there is also an option to set different applications for use along with the main program. By default, only the screenshot utility is set, but by adding more programs, such as a dedicated text editor, FTP program or other tools useful to a web developer, the main program can be extended for extra use. I should note, however, that Web Developer Tools actually includes a built-in text editor and Terminal, so you may not need to add too many tools.
Okay… I’ll repeat it again: I’m not a web developer. But in my limited use, knowing what I know and needing the tools I want, even I could see the utility of this tool. It was fast to load up, quick to navigate and use, and the tools I tried out were quite useful. It’s probably not something for everyone, but if you need even a couple of tools offered here, I’d say it’s well worth it to give Web Developer Tools a try.
