Java is one of the most popular programming languages in the world, and it has a vast ecosystem of tools to help you design, develop, and test web apps. If you’re new to Java development—or if you’re a seasoned professional looking for some new tools to add to your toolkit—we’ve put together a list of some of our favorites.
Table of Contents
Java Web Design Tools
Java Programming is one of the most popular object-oriented programming languages. It is a set of software programs used for developing a software application and deploying it in various computing environments. One of the prominent features of Java is that it is platform-independent at both the source and binary levels. Moreover, writing network programs in Java is quite easy and Java is designed to make distributed computing a breeze. Today, Java language is used in an array of computing platforms, such as embedded devices, mobile phones, enterprise servers and supercomputers. Hence, a plethora of development tools are available in the market to simplify the application development process using Java. Moreover, a lot of Java tools are available to improve the efficiency of Java developers so that they can design products and Java applications with a better functionality. So, here I have compiled a list of some important development tools which are quite useful for Java developers. The list primarily contains some popular Java libraries and frameworks. Alright, so let us have a look at the 16 Development Tools for Java Developers.
1. Apache Log4j
Apache Log4j is a logging java library. It is useful for detecting application failures. A distinctive feature of Log4j is that it allows logging at runtime without modifying the application binary. Moreover, it also has a unique feature called as inheritance in loggers, which helps reduce the volume of logged output and the cost of logging.
2. Hibernate ORM
Java, being an object-oriented language, represents data in the form of graphs, which shows a network of objects linked with and connected to one another. When developers use a relational database (RDBMS) instead of an object database (ODBMS), it involves representing data in a tabular format. This causes a lot of problems to arise, such as defining identity, granularity, data navigation and more. Here, Hibernate ORM comes to the rescue.
Hibernate ORM is a library which allows mapping Java classes to database tables. It enables developers to develop persistent classes using idioms, such as polymorphism in java, inheritance and association. Hibernate ORM is used in any scenario which supports Java Persistence API (JPA) specification, including Java SE applications, Java EE application servers and more.
3. LWJGL 3
LWJGL 3 (Light-Weight Java Game Library) is a cross-platform library, which is used in conjunction with game development Java frameworks. It offers an access to major APIs which are useful in the development of graphic, (OpenGL), audio (OpenAL) and parallel computing (OpenCL) applications.
4. Akka
Akka is a complete toolkit and a java runtime for developing concurrent, distributed and message-driven applications on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). It offers features, such as asynchronous design, adaptive cluster management, load balancing, routing, abstractions in java and more. Akka is widely used by popular companies, including Cisco, Amazon, BBC and Groupon.
5. SWT
SWT or The Standard Widget Toolkit is an open-source widget library providing access to the user interface elements of the operating system on which it is implemented. It contains a range of widgets, such as button, calendar, list, link, progress bar, slider, table and toolbar.
6. Apache Pivot
Apache Pivot is an open-source platform for building installable internet applications (IIAs) in Java or any other JVM language, such as Scala, Groovy or JavaScript. It features a plethora of useful components, such as buttons, menu bars, sliders, accordions, viewports, table views and more.
7. Netty
Netty is a robust client-server framework for facilitating rapid development of high-performance protocol servers and clients. It is an asynchronous and an event-driven, network application framework for writing proxy servers, HTTP client and server, file server, chat server and more, which are based on various text, binary and other protocols.
8. Play
Play is a powerful web framework for developing web applications in Scale and Java. It is built on top of Akka and uses an asynchronous model. Play is real-time enabled and supports various third-party Java libraries. Moreover, it offers Java support for Big Data and NoSQL, testing and build tools, popular IDEs, cloud deployment and more.
9. Spark
Spark is a robust framework for developing web applications in Java 8. It serves as a viable alternative to other Java web application frameworks out there, such as Play or Spring MVC. Spark allows Java developers to create web applications efficiently and rapidly without having to bother too much about writing boilerplate code. It supports a range of template engines, like Handlebars, Jade, Pebble and more.
10. JProfiler
JProfiler is an intuitive Java profiler that monitors the various JVM-level parameters, including object creation, garbage collection, thread execution, memory leakage analysis and more. It supports profiling on various platforms, such as Windows, Linux, MAC OS X, Solaris and HP-UX. JProfiler also supports database and CPU profiling and performs quality analysis as well as supports a range of technologies and tools.
11. JDOM
JDOM is a Java-based DOM for representing XML files. It uses the default XML parser called as JAXP-selected parser, but integrates with Xerces, Crimson and other XML parsers easily. It has a simple java API documentation and also integrates with DOM and SAX.
JDOM is a Java representation of an XML document. It offers a complete Java-optimized solution for accessing, reading, writing, manipulating and outputting XML data from the Java code.
12. Jackson
Jackson is a standard JSON parser library for Java. It offers a range of data processing tools for JAVA and the JVM platform, such as JSON parser, data-binding library (POJOs to and from JSON) and other data format modules like BSON, AVRO, CBOR, CSV, XML and more.
13. Eclipse
Eclipse is an open-source integrated development environment) for Java. It is considered as the best java IDE by Java developers. Eclipse offers modern features and consists of a set of modelling tools, java testing tools and a development framework.
14. JFreeChart
JFreeChart is a Java chart library which allows displaying professional charts in an application. It can be used for displaying a range of chart types for both client-side and server-side applications. Moreover, the library supports various output formats, such as Swing, PNG, JPEG, PDF, SVG and more.
15. Google Guava
Google Guava is one of the most popular, open-source set of libraries for Java. It consists of basic utilities for implementing common java methods and behaviours as well as other utilities, which provide features like functional programming, caching, hashing and more. The important part of Google Guava is Google Collections Library, which is an extension to the Java collections framework (JCF).
16. Apache Commons
Apache Commons is a project of the Apache Software Foundation for developing and distributing open-source Java software products. The project consists of three parts, namely The Commons Proper (a repository of reusable Java components), The Commons Sandbox (a workspace for Java component development) and The Commons Dormant (a repository of inactive Java components).
web development tools
#1) Web.com
Best for Small and Medium Businesses.
Web.com Pricing: Offer Starter Package – $1.95/month, Full price of $10/month after the first month.
Web.com is a platform intended to make website creation as simple as possible. It allows you to customize your website’s CSS and HTML by employing programming languages like Ruby on Rails, Python, or PHP.
You get unlimited MySQL databases with the platform. It also supports most open-source scripts and facilitates single-click installations for platforms like Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress.
Top Features:
- Compatible with CSS
- Unlimited MySQL Databases
- FTP Accounts supported
- Automates Site restore and backup.
Verdict: Web.com allows you to customize your site as you wish and even offers you multiple built-in tools to make the process easier. Its customer support is something to rave about and earns it a spot on this list.=> Visit Web.com Website
#2) Angular.JS
Best for small to large businesses.
Price: Free and open source.
AngularJS will help you to extend HTML vocabulary. HTML is good for static documents, but it will not work with dynamic views. AngularJS will give you an environment that will be expressive, readable, and quick to develop. It provides the toolset that will let you build the framework for your application development.
This fully extensible toolset can work with other libraries. It gives you the freedom to modify or replace the feature according to your development workflow.
Features:
- AngularJS provides you the features of Data Binding, Controller, and Plain JavaScript. Data Binding will eliminate DOM manipulation.
- Directives, Reusable Components, and Localization are the important features that AngularJS provides for creating Components.
- It provides the features of Deep Linking, Form Validation, and Server Communication for Navigation, Forms, and Back ends.
- It also provides built-in Testability.
Verdict: AngularJS will allow you to express the behavior in a clean readable format. As AngularJS is the plain old JavaScript objects, your code will be reusable and easy to test and maintain. Indeed, the code will be free from boilerplate.
Website: Angular.JS
#3) Chrome DevTools
Best for small to large businesses.
Price: It is available for free of cost.
Chrome provides a set of tools for web developers. These tools are built into Google Chrome. It has the functionality to view and change the DOM and a Page’s Style. With Chrome DevTools, you will be able to view messages, run & debug JavaScript in the Console, edit the pages on-the-fly, diagnose the problem quickly, and optimize the website speed.
Features:
- You can inspect Network Activity with Chrome DevTools.
- With performance panel functionalities you will be able to Optimize speed, Analyze Runtime performance, and Diagnose forced synchronous layouts, etc.
- It has various functionalities for Security panels like understanding Security Issues and for Application panel, Memory panel, Network panel, Sources panel, Console panel, Elements panel, and the Device mode.
Verdict: These are the tools that can perform debugging of JavaScript, Applying styles to HTML elements, and Optimizing website speed, etc. You can get support from the active DevTools Community. Chrome DevTools can be used with one browser only.
Website: Chrome DevTools
#4) Sass
Price: Free
Sass is the CSS extension language that is most mature and stable. It will allow you to use variables, nested rules, mixing, and functions. Sass will help you with sharing design within and across projects.
Features:
- You will be able to organize large Stylesheets.
- Sass supports multiple inheritances.
- It has features of Nesting, Variables, Loops, Arguments, etc.
- It is compatible with CSS.
- Sass has a large community.
Verdict: Several frameworks such as Compass, Bourbon, Susy, etc, are built using Sass. It will allow you to create your own functions and provide several built-in functions as well.
Website: Sass
#5) Grunt
Best for small to medium-sized businesses.
Price: Free
Grunt is a JavaScript Task Runner that is useful for automation. It will perform most of the repetitive work such as minification, compilation, Unit testing, etc.
Features:
- It provides various plugins.
- Grunt will let you automate almost anything using minimum efforts.
- You can also create your own Grunt plugin to Npm.
- It is easy to install.
Verdict: You will require the updated Npm as it installs the Grunt and Grunt plugins. You can take the help of the“Getting Started” guide that is provided by Grunt.
Website: Grunt
#6) CodePen
Best for small to large businesses.
Price: CodePen offers four plans for individuals i.e. Free, Annual Starter ($8 per month), Annual Developer ($12 per month), and Annual Super ($26 per month). Team plans start at $12 per month per member.
CodePen is an online tool that has the functionalities for designing and sharing front end development. You can use CodePen to build the entire project as it provides all the features of IDE in the browser.
Features:
- It provides a customizable editor.
- CodePen will let you keep your pens private.
- It will allow you to drag-and-drop images, CSS, JSON files, SVGS, Media files, etc.
- It has a collaboration mode that will allow multiple people to write and edit code in a pen at the same time.
Verdict: CodePen offers a front-end environment that will help you with testing and sharing.
Website: CodePen
Conclusion
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