Web Development Tools and Resources

First of all, I’m not a web developer, at least not professionally. But I spend a lot of my spare time digging into code. I do this for two reasons.

1) I work in the eCommerce industry with Conversion Rate Optimization, Analytics, SEO/SEM, WCM and other Marketing and Sales related tasks. This means that a lot of the decisions I make, most probably will affect a web developer in the end, so the least I can do is to understand their reality as much as possible, which hopefully leads to a more efficient process where we minimize the risk of misunderstanding each other.

2) It’s also really interesting and fun, which of course makes it easier to find the time for it.

With that said, I thought that a post with the most common resources that I use might be interesting.

Mozilla Developer Network
A wiki and great resource containing courses, demos, blog posts and more …

Codecademy
Interactive courses covering a lot of different languages. I’m currently going through the JavaScript parts which are educational and challenging.

StackOverflow
StackOverflow is a gamification based Q/A site for programmers. Whether you’re answering, asking or just browsing through the questions you’ll learn something new. My favorite resource!

Can I use
If (when) you need to know the browser support for a specific HTML5 or CSS3 feature caniuse.com has you covered. This is a great site and it’s always up to date.

CodePen
A web based text editor where you can share what you’ve created with others. It’s also a great website if you just want to get inspired. It’s packed with brilliant and amazing demos!

JSFiddle
This is also a web based text editor. I use it for building small code snippets and when I need to share code with others, in general when I need help figuring out a bug (or two).

Update 2013-10-20
ColorZilla
Realized I should add this site as well. A clever, useful and easy tool for generating gradients.

There are of course tons of other websites and resources out there, but these are the ones I use on a daily basis.

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