🖥️ Desktop apps for Front-end development. My workspace.

Short intro….

The purpose of this article is to showcase some tools that really help me and people who I work with to develop front-end apps faster & easier.

This is going to be a guide for those, who still look how they can improve their workstation with must-have tools to create awesome solutions.

Atom

Available for Mac / Windows / Linux

A hackable text editor for the 21st Century_At GitHub, we're building the text editor we've always wanted: hackable to the core, but approachable on the first day…_atom.io

This awesome code editor has pretty everything I need… Syntax highlighting (yep, I know that’s common feature_😂)_, well… Package manager📦, Built-in hints❗️, and beautiful UI (as for me, it is important).

For using Atom like a pro, you need to install some plugins (but be careful, as some of them may slowdown Atom editor).

Here’s what I use and would definitely recommend to anyone:

1. antialiased_Very simple but really useful plugin. Must-have for MacOS users with Retina display._atom.io

2. editorconfig_If you work on multiple projects that require different code styles — this plugin will help you to switch editor preferences automatically._atom.io

3. highlight-selected_Another must-have, but this time for EVERYONE. “highlight-selected” helps you quickly find other appearances of the same highlighted word._atom.io

4. project-managerAbsolutely awesome plugin, that gives me full control over multiple projects. Switching between projects is as simple as pressing Ctrl-Cmd-P. atom.io

5. todo-showI usually leave some TODO comments that I forget after some time. This plugin helps me organize them and track project state. atom.io

Atom is nice, but some users say it has bad performance. As to me — it completely satisfies my needs, but if you face such issue, you can try Sublime Text 3 or VS Code.

GitKraken

Available for Mac / Windows / Linux

Git GUI for Windows, Mac & Linux | GitKraken_Unleash the Kraken! GitKraken is the legendary Git GUI client for Windows, Mac and Linux. Git beginners and advanced…_www.gitkraken.com

Awesome Git Client made by axosoft. GitKraken is absolutely free for everyone. I like mostly because of it’s modern design and futuristic UI-concepts.

Image from https://forum.unity.com/threads/gitkraken-com.393521/

And they always make simplistic cheatsheets & instructions for everything:

Note that as well as Atom, GitKraken is built on top of Electron platform using JS, HTML & CSS and the difference is that GitKraken is not Open Source:(

…and that’s because they also have a paid PRO version, which you can get for $49 per year OR if you own a GitHub Student Pack (free for 1 year).

Terminal.app

Available for Mac only

terminal.app

Yep… A built-in Mac app. But worth to mention, as it’s much better than what we have in Windows.

For Windows users. Please consider using one of the following:

• Cmder — I was using it as my main command line tool. It is highly customizable and powerful tool.
• Hyper — Yet another desktop app made with Electron. The advantage of this terminal is that you can easily customize it for your needs with some Javascript code.
• Git Bash — Also worth to mention. You get this bash console app after you install git. The advantage is that you have built-in bash commands. But I faced the problem that I get less runtime output then with other terminal apps (for example if you run a command like npm install — you won’t see the installation progress).

Other apps

These are apps that make development more social, …

Discord - Free Voice and Text Chat_Step up your game with a modern voice & text chat app. Crystal clear voice, multiple servers and channel support, mobile…_discordapp.com

Discord — Voice and Text chat app made originally for gamers, but either widely used by developers. There you can find communities like reactiflux and SpeakJS.

Slack. Where work happens_Slack is where work flows. It's where the people you need, the information you share, and the tools you use come…_slack.com

Slack — Chat app made for teamwork. Another popular chat client in developers world. Definitely worth to check out FrontEndDevelopers team.

Trello_Infinitely flexible. Incredibly easy to use. Great mobile apps. It's free. Trello keeps track of everything, from the…_trello.com

Trello — For my needs it is a powerful TODO task manager that helps me track my progress in learning things, assign tasks to other people and arrange work.

You can download their desktop app by this link: https://trello.com/platforms

Conclusion

No conclusion. These are just apps that I prefer for my needs 😎. Not an advertisement or something made for self-profit.

Feel free to showcase desktop apps you use every day for front-end development in comments!