As developers, responsive web design is exciting simply because this means that we create a single site that adapts to all of the devices. We could previously achieve this same objective, however, it required creating a separate codebase for each individual device which was extremely tedious for developers and therefore costly to clients.

Why do we need responsive web design?

You might not need it. The answer to this questions depends on the nature of the website and how you are marketing it. The questions that should be asked is whether or not users will be browsing your site on their mobile devices. Mobile device internet browsing is up to 8% of total internet traffic now, which is a lot! Businesses that are forward thinking will adapt to the trends of their consumers.

Responsive design from a technological standpoint has enormous advantages simply because we are able to build one central access point for all data and design. To then have this same system scale across all platforms is a developer’s dream.

How important is it to my business?

If I were a business involved in online transactions, the first decision is whether or not the business needs a mobile app. If it does not, then we would recommend at least providing mobile browser compatibility. Whether you need responsive design or not depends on how often you need to update your website. Websites designed with responsive methods are much easier to maintain and give user’s continuity between platforms. For example, this blog is responsive. If you resize the window, the layout will change to meet the screen size. Since it is updated often (but not often enough), this blog’s responsive capabilities make it extremely easy to maintain and predict how the content will appear on the page. I don’t have to fire up my mobile version on my phone to know that it is going to look okay.

Obviously this also depends on what you are selling or doing online. What type of business are you? If you are selling a product or service to a market flooded with mobile devices (which is likely), then it might be a smart choice for you. However, there are certain types of products that people typically would not buy on their mobile devices. For example, I think it would be safe to say that consumers who purchased lawnmowers in the last year completed their transaction on a desktop whereas a significant number of ebooks had their associated transaction completed via a mobile device. It is all in the numbers, so let’s cut to the chase.

Mobile sales is definitely on the upswing and any business owner would be wise to be “responsive” to the trend. Get it?

The twitter of tech startup companies. This allows startups to keep track of potential and current competition, create a profile to attract investors, recruit employees, and generally learn about neat things companies are doing. Many of the startups listed on AngelList are based out of California, but it is a growing phenomenon. Browsing the site is almost like being at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference for tech startups. You connect with the people behind the scenes and gather your own following at the same time.

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Balsamiq Mockups

Simple and easy to use. When tech startups have a difficult time explaining how they envision their app working, we will sometimes teach them how to use Balsamiq which is a quick way to illustrate an app or idea. Balsamiq now supports the growing mobile app market. It has been a great asset to get the awesomeness in the brain, down on paper. It uses a very simple drag and drop interface and is external-asset friendly.

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MailChimp

Cream of the crop for email marketing. Mailchimp allows tech startups to successfully launch a campaign when they are getting ready to launch a product. It provides an easy way for users to manage their subscription which avoids the deadly spam persona that all tech startups should avoid like the plague. The API allows us to integrate it into websites with ease.

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HootSuite

Manage multiple social media accounts from one simple interface. Tech startups usually have their Facebook page, Twitter profile(s), LinkedIn accounts, etc. Keeping all of those updated can be quite a chore and hiring someone isn’t always an option in the economically lean startup world. We are fans of HootSuite and it’s awesome ability to manage social media accounts and then gather reports and analytics to monitor the social graph.

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Startup Compass

This is a new tool that recently debuted. What is most fascinating is the data that has been gathered about startups using this tool, which is essentially benchmarking startups based on different attributes, such as rate of growth. For example, they found that tech startups can be hindered by premature growth spurts whereas startups that grow at a normal pace tend to grow 20 times faster in the long run. Also, about 90% of all startups fail. The “Startup Compass” tool from Startup Genome is meant to tell a story. Not only why startups succeed, but also what factors lead to their failure.

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We have had the most success with this e-commerce platform. Although they advertise their enterprise solutions, the community edition for developers (like us) is actually free. One of the challenges we have faced with the community edition is the performance can be significantly lower than the enterprise edition. We were able to customize a server that runs Magento E-commerce just as fast as the enterprise edition which gives our clients the snappy shopping experience they want for their users. Many  large merchants such as Toms, The North Face, and OfficeMax use Magento as their e-commerce platform of choice.

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Opencart

The guys at Opencart have definitely emphasized open source and documentation in this product. Although it may lack the large community of extensions that Magento offers, it is considerably lighter as an application which can make it an advantageous choice. It has unlimited categories, a template engine, built in payment gateways, tax rates, shipping weight calculation, and most of the bare bones necessities for an e-commerce platform.

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OsCommerce

Free under the GNU General Public License and as open source as e-commerce gets. OsCommerce is feature rich but it is recommended that a designer gets heavily involved due to the shortcomings of it’s default template system. The visual appeal of the stores it showcases go from beauty to beast. The bottom line is, the functionality is there, the aesthetics are not.

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WordPress e-Commerce Plugin

We have used this one for past clients before. Although the free version is open source, it is missing some important features that are only available in the “Gold Cart” version. Technically it makes this list, but I would not expect a free ride if you want to actually process payments outside of Google Checkout and Paypal. The payment gateways are only included in the “Gold Cart” version. the nice thing is that it integrates into WordPress so you can administer the store and the other content on the website from a single administration panel. Theming it is also a cinch.

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Simplecart Js

Fun to use! Everybody loves the snappy add to cart and checkout features. This cart is implemented without a database – it just uses HTML & Javascript. It has high flexibility and performance, however it is not feature packed like some of the other packages. It is the most nimble and light at only 8kb. Actually it is more of a shopping cart than anything. Although this is not robust enough for most situations and would only be feasible for a small number of products, it is taking the right direction on making shopping platforms slim and snappy.

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Looks plain jane, but with a mean Python under the hood.

 This is the new favorite around here.  Although taken aback when I first opened it, I quickly looked up some keyboard shortcuts for it to see what it could do. My test drive blew me away and I will tell you why. Coming from a bulky Java IDE, such as Netbeans, this thing is snappy! A quick search for a file using the Command+P shortcut found what I was looking for and it did so instantly.

So, it’s fast. What else?

Over 200 plugins already written. I checked out the source and it appears that it is written in Python and they have left things very open for development. In fact, the configuration file is not your typical options pane – instead, it is a configuration file that you actually edit and tweak to your liking. With this much support, it already has libraries for many PHP MVC frameworks, XDebug for live debugging (a must), and nifty code highlighting. For the near future I will be sticking with this one.

TextMate

Minimal & Extendable

TextMate is infamous for it’s support and and numerous bundles that have been created for it. A bundle can be language grammars, snippets, macros, or shortcut commands. What started out as a very minimalistic editor has turned into something extendable and frequently applauded.

Some features that stand out to me are the folding code section, the clipboard history where you can copy and paste multiple items, and the sweet folder/file pane for working within numerous folders simultaneously.

Weaknesses?

Some things I would like to see is support for SFTP, some built in validation, code hinting, and a split window feature.

Netbeans

Chuck-a-rama Style Buffet

If you want features, open up wide. This thing is packed. This is what I used for about 5 months while working on a particular project that that had multiple developers to sync code with. Git integration, XDebug, code validation plugins including CodeSniffer and JSLint, code completion, a nifty file navigator, tons of search features, regular expression engine, etc.

Sounds great, right?

Well, not really…for me at least. I was running on an iMac 27″ with dual i5′s and 12GB of RAM. That should be enough horsepower to run this beast. It was still pretty slow. Beefy Java apps are not really known for their speed or efficient memory usage, and this one fit the bill. Every time I would try to search for a file it would take a very long time and sporadically re-index upon search. There were a number of other quirks that bugged me such as having to add a file to a project before you can actually start coding, random bugs where it would say that I had a bug in my code when I had already corrected it, and did I mention that it is pretty slow?

Basically, when I picked up Sublime Text 2, there was a stark contrast in speed. Netbeans is awesome and it is free, but it comes with a different kind of price.

Coda/Coda2

Looks Great from 50 Feet!

But on closer inspection, you may find that it is missing some important features. I also believe that I am not the target market of this product so my review may be unfair. Coda seems to target front-end and PHP developers. The interface is by far the most appealing and it has some convenient features. For example, you can organize all your sites with FTP integration and group them together in Coda 2, file synchronization, code snippets, built in terminal application, rudimentary version control, and a few other ones. It is also worth mentioning that Coda 2 has MySQL database administration support at it’s most basic integration.

On Second Thought…

No live debugging, validation features are lacking, and some of the features it boasts are integrated at such a basic level that I still need third party apps to get the job done. For example, on Coda 2′s MySQL tool, I can only view/edit database structure. No custom queries, no MySQL views, no data browsing, etc. That really hurts! I resort to Navicat to do those tasks. The GIT integration is also fairly rudimentary. I use either Terminal or SourceTree for those tasks simply because the GIT integration is missing great features like “git stash.”

What will I do?

I personally will stick with Sublime Text 2 and supplement it with both Terminal/SourceTree for GIT source control and Navicat for my SQL administration.

What will you do?

Bookmarks

Although this can be a quick way to bookmark sites that have useful resources, it turns into a pain when you simply cannot remember which site has the resources that you are looking for. Still, it is a start.

Collage Tool (such as Evernote)

This is actually a great approach, especially if you are collecting images simply for inspiration. This quick reference avoids the troubles of digging through the pile of bookmarks and provides that quick creative juice that you need. Thumbs up.

Shared Folder

This would be my favorite approach. What you do is use a shared folder, such as one created on Dropbox, and you place all of your design assets categorically inside these folders. This way, you never have to go back and find where to download a certain texture or element. Additionally, once you hop on another computer, you can just quickly do a sync or browse to your web folder to get what you need. I use this to sync my home and work computers because sometimes I stumble on great stuff to use at work and don’t want to forget where I found it before I can get the file. Two thumbs up.

Know of any great ways to organize design assets? Share them with us!