Coding & development are challenging profiles if you are working solo or if you working with a team. Sometimes you even have to work when you are distant from your team & if you are stuck it takes a lot of time to figure out codes & conditions to insert for a particular functionality to work. Thankfully there are web based services that are of great help when it comes to coding together remotely. Here are the 7 best tools for collaborative web development:
Visual Studio Live Share
Microsoft’s Visual Studio Live Share integrates real-time collaborative programming into those development environments. You can share code projects in read-only or live editing mode,plus you can also share terminals or debugging sessions as well as editor panes with other developers working with you on a project. You can also share a running web application with other collaborators. The best part is the software is free to use.
Teletype for Atom
Teletype turns Atom into a code collaboration system. The software is developed by Github & has a vast library of add-ons to enhance its functionality.You can invite other developers to join you in active tabs in your instance of Atom, make edits in real time, and follow you between tabs as you switch files. All collaboration is done peer-to-peer via the WebRTC protocol. However this software lacks features such as sharing a running server or granular access controls. The software is free to use.
Codeshare
Codeshare offers the most minimal collaborative-coding environment. The welcome screen has a notepad where you can input all your development codes while being connected to other collaborators online via video chatting. All yo need to do is share Codeshare instance, give other people the URL, and they can start typing and video-chatting along with you right away. Code written in the editor can be downloaded with a click, and each instance expires automatically after 24 hours. Codeshare is free to use.
CodeSandbox Live
CodeSandbox offers an online IDE for rapid development of web apps—JavaScript, TypeScript, and frameworks like React, Angular, and Vue. This software offers multi modes - Live Mode & classroom mode.The Live mode in CodeSandbox lets you invite other people to work simultaneously on the same project; you can edit files together in real-time and chat as you work. Classroom Mode lets you designate certain people as editors and everyone else as read-only. The software comes with free & premium price options.
Floobits
Floobits offers collaborative, real-time editing and chat but its limited to its own in-browser editor and via add-ons for multiple editors including Sublime Text, Atom, Neovim, Emacs, and IntelliJ IDEA. It doesn't offer Visual Studio code editing feature. Along with granular permission, Floobits offers service for multiple user to collaborate at once. If you are looking for a service to set up public and private workspaces, share terminals, synchronize work directories without using an editor, and use WebRTC and IRC to video chat and text chat with your teammates, Floobits is your ally. The software is free but is limited to 5 public workspaces. The private workspace is chargeable.
Codeanywhere
Codeanywhere is promoted chiefly as a code-on-the-go environment—an in-browser, on-tablet, on-phone editor with support for 75 languages and in-cloud execution environments for many of them. But Codeanywhere also has several real-time code sharing and collaboration features. You can just share a project out to others by way of a link, or set up real-time collaboration to allow others to edit your files in your editor. You can also provide other users SSH access to your project.
AWS Cloud9
AWS Cloud9, a third-party product Amazon acquired, provides an in-browser development environment that supports some 40 programming languages with varying levels of tooling. Multiple developers can collaborate on the same cloud-hosted project in real time, using shared environments. They can watch each others’ typing (with visual cues indicating who has written which lines of code) and chat in a pane within the IDE. Project admins can grant read/write or read-only privileges to collaborators. AWS Cloud9 does not, however, have an explicit “follow my lead” mode as per Visual Studio Live Share. You pay per instance for using the AWS Cloud9 service.