My Developer Toolkit

What's up, fellow devs and designers! We all know that having the right tools in your belt can be the difference between a frustrating afternoon and a productive flow state. Over the years, I've collected a bunch of little web apps and utilities that I find myself coming back to again and again. They're not all flashy, but they save me time, spark creativity, and just make my job easier. So, I figured I'd share a few of my favorites. Let's dive in.

Figma - https://www.figma.com/

Okay, let's get the big one out of the way first. If you're designing anything for the web, you're probably already using Figma. If not, you should be. It has completely changed the game for UI/UX design. It lives in the browser, so collaboration is seamless. You can work on the same file with your team in real-time, which is just magical. I use it for everything from rough wireframes to pixel-perfect mockups and interactive prototypes. The component system is powerful, and the community plugin ecosystem is massive. It's the undisputed champ for a reason.

Coolors - https://coolors.co/

Ever stared at a blank screen and thought, "What colors should I even use?" I've been there more times than I can count. Coolors is my secret weapon for breaking through that color-block. It's a super fast color palette generator. The best part? You just hit the spacebar, and it generates a beautiful, harmonious color palette for you. You can lock colors you like and keep rolling the dice on the others until you find the perfect combination. It's simple, fun, and incredibly effective for kicking off the visual direction of a project.

Squoosh - https://squoosh.app/

Website performance is non-negotiable, and oversized images are one of the biggest culprits of slow load times. Squoosh is a fantastic, powerful image compression tool from the Google Chrome Labs team. You can drag and drop your images, and then tweak the compression settings in real-time with a handy before-and-after slider. It supports a ton of formats (including modern ones like WebP and AVIF) and lets you see the quality vs. file size trade-offs instantly. It's a must-have for any frontend developer.

Invert Colors App - https://invertcolors.app/

Speaking of images, sometimes you need to do more than just resize or compress them. I recently found this gem of a tool for inverting image colors: https://invertcolors.app/. It does exactly what it says on the tin, and it does it beautifully. It's a dead-simple web app that lets you upload an image and instantly see its color-inverted version. This has been surprisingly clutch for me when working on dark mode themes. I can quickly upload a logo or an icon and see how it will look on a dark background. It's also just fun to play with to create some interesting, artsy effects for social media graphics. A simple tool, but one I've bookmarked for sure.

SVGOMG - https://jakearchibald.github.io/svgomg/

If you work with SVG files, you know they can sometimes come out of design tools like Illustrator or Figma with a lot of extra junk in the code. SVGOMG is a web-based GUI for SVGO, a powerful SVG optimization tool. It gives you a simple interface with a bunch of toggles to clean up your SVGs. You can remove editor metadata, comments, and hidden elements, and it can significantly reduce the file size of your vector graphics. It's the perfect last step before you embed an SVG into your project.

Conclusion

So there you have it—a peek into my digital toolbox. None of these are groundbreaking secrets, but they're all solid, reliable tools that help me build better websites. Having a go-to set of utilities, from a design powerhouse like Figma to a simple, single-purpose tool like https://invertcolors.app, streamlines the workflow and lets you focus on the creative parts of the job.

What are your can't-live-without tools? Drop 'em in the comments below!