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0
What is the best alternative to NPM?
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Gulp
All
17
Experiences
Pros
11
Cons
5
Specs
Top
Pro
Large plugin ecosystem
Currently gulp offers a selection of 1000+ plugins and it is growing rapidly.
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Top
Con
Dead
Gulp is dead, hasn't been updated in 4 years.
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Top
Pro
Focuses on code instead of configuration
This depends on your style, but gulp is closer to the code, the actual execution isn't hidden by multiple layers and it's much easier to customize the build system without writing bloated modules. This also brings rather small configuration files.
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Con
Rapidly changing API
While it's good that the gulp maintainers want the api to be as good as possible, it comes at the expense of stability. The upcoming gulp 4.0 release has another update to the way dependency management works which will require everyone to update their build scripts. It also makes it hard to look up information on best practices as the best practices keep changing, making a lot of the blog posts and questions about gulp out of date.
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Top
Pro
Allows creating task dependencies
Any task can be set to have other tasks as dependencies. The dependencies are specified through piping streams, and tasks run concurrently if they do not block in dependencies.
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Top
Con
You need to know some limitations that are not very intuitive
There are some features in Gulp which may not be very intuitive, or that otherwise should have been the default features instead of having to implement them through arguments. For example, to keep the correct folder structure when you are copying a file, you have to add {base: "lib/"} as an argument.
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Pro
It is possible to use projects that use streams without plugins
Since Gulp just uses streams at its core, you don't actually need a plugin wrapper to use a project that uses streams. If you use this approach, the you don't even have to worry about plugin maintenance at all, and get the bleeding edge updates as soon as they come out even if the plugin hasn't been updated. It also means if a project happens to not have a plugin, you don't need to write a new one, you can just use it as is.
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Top
Con
No incremental building
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Top
Pro
Streaming build system makes it easier to apply code transformations
In gulp, it's easy to pipe multiple steps together which you commonly need with build systems. For example, you may need to compile the javascript source files, then package them together, and then minify it. The streaming system makes this much easier. Additionally, it improves performance since all operations are done in memory (compared to I/O operations) and avoids the need of unnecessarily compiling files (compared to Grunt that has to compile all files even if just one has changed).
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Top
Con
Not suited for big and complex apps
Writing gulpfile for complex app which consists of many source types is very cumbersome and flawy process. You'll know when you want to move to webpack.
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Top
Pro
Chaining API that's simple and elegant
In Gulp, the transforms are performed through chains which makes it easier to understand the order of operations, and easier to modify it.
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Top
Pro
Concurrency allows for high-speed perfomance
Because streams in Gulp use pipes to establish dependency order, they are parallel by default without having to rely on plugins or hacks.
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Top
Pro
Minimizes disk operations for improved performance
Because Gulp is built using streams, it can store intermediate transformations in memory and defer writing to disk until the very end. This improves performance by not requiring expensive blocking disk operations for task dependencies.
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Top
Pro
The configuration file is easily readable
Gulp's configuration file is actually very readable because it's actual JavaScript instead of a large file of JSON objects. The entry barrier is very low for developers who have never used a task runner before and it's API is very simple, with only 4 methods.
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Top
Pro
Gulp modules are usable without Gulp
Because Gulp is built on top of the streaming API, you don't actually need gulp to use them. This could be helpful if you want to re-use those modules outside of gulp, possibly for testing, and using the same modules would be more consistent.
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Top
Pro
Gulp tasks run from terminal
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Specs
Task instruction style:
code
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Experiences
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110
12
Yarn
All
12
Experiences
Pros
11
Cons
1
Top
Pro
The same results will be yielded every time yarn is run in a repository
One of the most important aspects of Yarn is determinism (predictability). The lock file ensures that the same dependencies will always be installed in the same way and order regardless of the machine for a given repository.
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Top
Con
Takes up disk space
Yarn adds to your disk space usage since it stores dependencies locally.
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Top
Pro
Can tell you why a package was installed
yarn why <query> can tell you why a package was installed and what other packages depend on it.
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Top
Pro
Good network performance
Yarn efficiently queues up requests and avoids request waterfalls in order to maximize network utilization.
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Top
Pro
Offline mode
If you've installed a package before, you can install it again without any internet connection.
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Top
Pro
Flat Mode
Resolve mismatching versions of dependencies to a single version to avoid creating duplicates.
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Top
Pro
Multiple registries
Install any package from either npm or Bower and keep your package workflow the same.
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Top
Pro
Network resilience
A single request failing won't cause an install to fail. Requests are retried upon failure.
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Top
Pro
Good documentation
It looks like it has good documentation.
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Pro
Security is put at the forefront
Even though it's still in its early stages of development, security is one of the core values on which Yarn is built. It uses checksums to verify the integrity of every package before executing its code. This also helps avoiding errors related to faulty caching or captive portals. Further steps are also being taken to improve the security of Yarn which will be implemented in the future.
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Pro
Built by the community for the community
Even though it's backed by Facebook, Yarn is built as a community project first and foremost. It's completely open source and hosted on Github. It's released under a standard open source client and has its own GitHub organization and set up to work under the same governance model that other successful projects have used in the past, such as Rust and Ember. All of this means that both existing and new contributors will always work together to improve the product and introduce new features while also keeping in mind suggestions coming from the community.
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Pro
Backed by Facebook and Google
Was created in a collaboration of Facebook with Exponent, Google and Tilde.
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Experiences
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53
8
Webpack
All
11
Experiences
Pros
9
Cons
2
Top
Pro
Rich and flexible plugin infrastructure
Plugins and loaders are easy to write and allow you to control each step of the build, from loading and compiling CoffeeScript, LESS and JADE files to smart post processing and asset manifest building.
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Top
Con
Config file may be hard to understand
Due to a somewhat hard to grasp syntax, configuring Webpack may take some time.
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Top
Pro
Tap into npm's huge module ecosystem
Using Webpack opens you up to npm, that has over 80k modules of which a great amount work both client-side and server-side. And the list is growing rapidly.
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Top
Con
Can not load files discovered during runtime
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Top
Pro
Can create a single bundle or multiple chunks loaded on demand, to reduce initial loading time
Webpack allows you to split your codebase into multiple chunks. Chunks are loaded on demand. This reduces the initial loading time.
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Top
Pro
Supports source maps for easier debugging
Source maps allow for easier debugging, because they allow you to find the problems within the origin files instead of the output file.
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Top
Pro
ES6 module support
Webpack supports ES6 modules and their import and export methods without having to compile them to CommonJS require
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Top
Pro
Share the same modules client-side and server-side
Because Webpack allows you to use the same require() function as node.js, you can easily share modules between the client-side and server-side.
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Top
Pro
Bundles CommonJs and AMD modules (even combined)
Webpack supports AMD and CommonJS module styles. It performs clever static analysis on the AST of your code. It even has an evaluation engine to evaluate simple expressions. This allows you to support most existing libraries.
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Top
Pro
Mix ES6 AMD and CommonJS
Webpack supports using all three module types, even in the same file.
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Top
Pro
Limit plugin integration issues
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107
17
Wikifactory
All
4
Experiences
Pros
4
Top
Pro
Great content and community
With a community of 140K engineers, designers, SMEs, startups and manufacturers.
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Top
Pro
It is possible to manufacture prototypes and final parts, directly from the platform
Users can get quotes in 24 hours for 3D printing, CNC machining, sheet metal fabrication and/or injection molding.
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Top
Pro
Made it easier to document projects
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Top
Pro
Easy to use
It has real-time collaboration tools like user permission, annotations, chat, notifications, CAD viewer, version control and more.
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10
0
Fly
All
8
Experiences
Pros
6
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
Takes advantage of ES6 features
Fly is written to use new ES6 features like generators and promises.
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Top
Con
Limited number of plugins
There's still a very limited number of Fly plugins. This can contribute negatively in development time and energies spent to make a plugin to complete a task for which there's none yet.
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Top
Pro
Support for concurrent tasks
Fly supports parallel processing and concurrent tasks via Fly.prototype.start([tasks], { parallel: true })
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Top
Pro
Smaller build files, with same benefits of a huge one
If it's a fly- plugin you don't have to require it like you do with every other build tool. Theres no need for wrapper functions for each plugin (aka .pipe()). If it's a fly- plugin you just call it directly. The build file get's to the point quickly without adding all the extra fluff. This makes your build file very clean and easy to read!
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Top
Pro
Very easy to setup
Fly is easy to setup, there are no caveats that you have to know since everything is very intuitive. Also with fly you don't have to repeat your self several times. You just define out what you want and that's it. If it's a fly plugin it will be required automatically without the need for an additional plugin.
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Top
Pro
Fly plugins are required automatically
If you want to use a Fly plugin in a flyfile, it's automatically required without needing an additional plugin.
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Top
Pro
Can run subtasks inside a task
Fly supports running multiple subtasks in a single task without having to create a new one.
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Specs
Number of Plugins:
~5
Task instruction style:
Code
Processing method:
Pipeline
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Experiences
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3
0
Volo
All
6
Experiences
Pros
5
Cons
1
Top
Pro
Automatically converts files to AMD for you
Volo is based around AMD, which is great for asynchronous loading, and if you try to add a non-AMD package, it will interactively ask you for its dependencies and exports.
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Top
Con
Does not store components in a registry
Volo installs components directly from urls and repositories, which makes it more susceptible to components being taken down, with fewer guarantees about their availability.
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Top
Pro
Provides command endpoints for task management
Volo also allows you to provide a volofile that lets you run various tasks. Volo provides a helper object for running cross platform command line commands, and also allows you to use binaries in node_modules or create your own.
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Top
Pro
Quickly bootstrap your project with templates
Volo has a create command that can copy template projects from GitHub, so you can get set up quickly.
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Top
Pro
Allows for extensible commands
Sometimes you might require some additional commands, other than the ones Volo provides; Volo has you covered in these cases as well. The package manager is extremely extensible at its core, and can be easily modified and extended.
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Top
Pro
Loads packages directly from Github
If any project exists on Github, that means you can use it along with Volo in your frontend projects.
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2
0
Sass
All
13
Experiences
Pros
11
Cons
2
Top
Pro
Powerful advanced function features
You are able to declare custom functions with Sass (for example, converting units) which can be easily invoked, even when using shorthand properties. This results in cleaner, more reusable code.
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Top
Con
Requires Ruby or libSass
To compile Sass, it needs either Ruby or libSass installed locally.
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Top
Pro
Nested selectors
Sass allows you to nest selectors which results in code that is both faster to write and cleaner to read. For example, this: .parent color: blue .child color: yellow Will compile to this: .parent { color: blue; } .parent .child { color: yellow; }
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Top
Con
Noisy syntax
There is many unnecessary characters when using the SCSS syntax. {}:;@ However using the Sass syntax eliminates them.
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Top
Pro
Rapid development
Another big advantage for Sass is the very active community pushing the development forward at a rapid pace. Sass is constantly coming out with bug fixes, and are often the first to come out with improvements. This is an important factor to keep in mind when picking a preprocessor to invest your time into.
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Top
Pro
Extends CSS maintaining compatibility with CSS standards specification
It comes with two possible syntaxes: Sass - No parens or semicolons allowed and the nesting is dictated with whitespace. SCSS - SCSS syntax is a superset of CSS – which means SCSS can be written as CSS, but has been expanded to include the features of Sass as well. SCSS is easier to pick up for beginners and Sass has a cleaner syntax. Having both syntaxes means you can pick the one that best suits your coding style. The mandatory syntax rules for both SCSS and Sass results in a more consistent code. For a more detailed analysis between Sass and SCSS go here. To see a nice comparison of the Sass syntax against CSS and SCSS go here.
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Top
Pro
Output minified CSS
Sass simplifies minifying CSS files by offering a one-line command that will output a minified version.
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Top
Pro
Easy to learn
It's very comfortable and easy to write/learn Sass, even for beginners.
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Top
Pro
Compass framework provides added features
Sass can be used with a framework called Compass, which provides additional functions and mixins which can reduce the amount of code you have to write. For example, Compass will take care of vendor prefixes. This: div { background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(#F00, #000); background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(#F00, #000); background-image: -o-linear-gradient(#F00, #000); background-image: linear-gradient(#F00, #000); } Can be written as: .gradient { @include background-image(linear-gradient(#F00, #000)); } For a full list of features, check out the Compass documentation.
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Top
Pro
Source maps support
Rather than being limited to editing the outputted CSS file in devtools, with source maps you are able to manipulate the original .scss file.
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Top
Pro
Libsass - C/C++ port of Sass
There is also a C/C++ port of the Sass CSS precompiler called Libsass that decouples Sass from Ruby. It is very fast, portable and easy to build and integrate with a variety of platforms and languages.
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Top
Pro
New sass package means you no longer need external dependencies
The latest implementation of Sass is written in Dart, and compiles to pure JS with no native code or external dependencies, means you no longer need Ruby or libSass.
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Pro
Easy to use with ruby apps
Since it's written in Ruby, it's easier and faster to use with Ruby apps.
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Experiences
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286
24
Brunch
All
5
Experiences
Pros
4
Specs
Top
Pro
Compilation is super fast
According to speed benchmarks, Brunch is one of the fastest tools around for compiling files. According to the authors of Brunch the reason behind this speed is that it recompiles only the changes that were made to an app and performs extensive caching of the app's code.
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Top
Pro
Time to setup is extremely low
After installing Brunch the next step is to load a skeleton from git.io/skeletons. This step is as easy as installing another plugin from the npm registry, just point Brunch to the path of the required skeleton/generator then wait for it to work out its magic. Next, run brunch build then wait for a second or two and voila! the project is ready.
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Top
Pro
The configuration file is small and the configuration itself is fast and easy
Brunch's config files can be extremely small compared to other alternatives. The fact that brunch also allows you to chose from a number of generators also lowers the configuration time considerably.
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Top
Pro
Concatenates scripts and styles and auto-generates matching source maps
Brunch automatically produces a source map for all javascript files and CSS stylesheets whenever it minifies an app's resources. This little feature is extremely helpful when debugging is required at the client end.
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Specs
Number of Plugins:
~100
Task instruction style:
Code
Processing method:
Pipeline
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18
3
Figma
All
7
Experiences
Pros
6
Cons
1
Top
Pro
Works in the browser
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Top
Con
Inefficient workflow
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Top
Pro
Live previews for mobile
Mirrors your designs to your phone in realtime.
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Top
Pro
Allows for real time collaboration
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Top
Pro
Has all the core functionality you'd expect from something like Sketch
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Top
Pro
Integrates with Slack
Provides integration with Slack.
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Top
Pro
Provides a free version
Does not require a paid subscription for use. Can be used freely with a lot of features. The free use allows very limited collaboration.
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103
13
Angular
All
3
Experiences
Pros
1
Cons
2
Top
Pro
Great tooling and language support
Very good CLI and webpack, bundling, testing, deployment support. Deep TypeScript integration and support.
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Top
Con
Slightly over-engineered
Very enterprisey - made for huge architectures and with tons of declarative, non-intuitive annotations it makes it overkill for very small projects.
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Con
Native i18n support over-engineered
Not developer-friendly. Switching languages need reloading the whole page. There are third party solutions that work better.
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28
5
Broccoli
All
7
Experiences
Pros
3
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
Brocfile fairly straightforward and small
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Top
Con
Windows not fully supported
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Top
Pro
Rebuilds are really fast
In larger apps rebuilds get slower and slower as the size of the application increases. Broccoli deals with this by building only the files that were changed and intelligently figuring out their dependencies. This leads to rebuilds being of O(1) constant-time (in Software Engineering terms).
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Top
Con
Assumptions about your project limit what you can do
Assumes you want to always output to single output directory. This directory must not exist at the time of running. It also (therefore) can't be your current directory. This puts broccoli slightly out of the class of a truly general "task runner".
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Top
Pro
Chainable plugins
With broccoli developers can chain plugins. var tree = broccoli.makeTree('lib') tree = compileCoffeeScript(tree) tree = uglifyJS(tree) return tree
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Top
Con
Small community
Broccoli's community is still relatively small and not very active, at least compared to it's competitors. This leads to fewer plugins, guides and less support from developers for any problem that you may face using Broccoli.
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Specs
Number of Plugins:
200+
Task instruction style:
Configuration
Processing method:
Pipeline
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Experiences
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5
1
JSPM
All
14
Experiences
Pros
9
Cons
5
Top
Pro
Registry agnostic
JSPM is registry agnostic, it can pull packages from npm and github and is built in such a way it can support more.
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Top
Con
You need to be an expert to write shims
You can load any module. But that comes with the price: you need to find or write configs to load a particular rare module.
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Top
Pro
Module style agnostic
Loads ES6, AMD, CommonJS and globals.
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Con
Doesn't hide complexity
JSPM doesn't try to hide complexity from the user. I.e. when some issue emerges you need understand a lot to be able to patch it or create a workaround.
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Top
Pro
Can transcompile ES6, JSX and Typescript
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Con
Watcher has bugs
Watching would benefit from improvements
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Top
Pro
Much faster than Webpack or Browserify
While Webpack and Browserify recompile the source code using Babel, jspm is the only packager that can load prebuild/minified code downloaded from the npm registry.
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Con
Unstable API
0.17 is still in beta. 0.16 is lacking features.
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Top
Pro
Bundled based on imported modules without any config
Create the bundle file without config and add only the modules imported.
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Top
Con
Poor bundler performance
Bundling performance is slow, though offset by the fact that bundling is not required during development, since it can load dependencies asynchronously.
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Top
Pro
Switch between async or sync load
With a simple command you could change between load the modules async by systemjs or sync with a bundle file.
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Top
Pro
Easy install packages from npm, github or any git repository
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Top
Pro
Versioned package urls
It creates a packages folders which are versioned. This makes it future proof for a time where we stop bundling all the code. In the following presentation Guy Bedford calls bundling an anti-pattern.
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Pro
Very easy to start with
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39
8
Ruby on Rails
All
14
Experiences
Pros
8
Cons
5
Specs
Top
Pro
Massive community with lots of tutorials and guides
The sheer scale and massive number of developers using Rails has produced a large number of guides, tutorials, plugins, documentation, videos and anything that can help new and old Rails developers.
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Top
Con
Learning curve seems low at first, but starts becoming steeper
Rails' simplicity is deceptive. It's learning curve is really low at first, and the huge number of tutorials and guides out there for starting with Rails make it even easier. But it starts getting harder and harder as apps become more complicated. If good code conventions and OO design are not followed, then the codebase will be all over the place and it becomes impossible to maintain it.
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Top
Pro
Many plugins (gems) available
There are many third-party plugins (Ruby gems) available for Rails development. The larger ones and those that have a lot of downloads and users are very well documented and easy to use.
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Con
Too much magic
So much behavior is implemented with dynamic behind-the-scenes changes to existing classes that obscure bugs are way too common. Conflicting interactions between multiple plugins that both try to change the same objects are a particularly pernicious example.
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Pro
Ruby is a nice readable language
Ruby has a very clean syntax that makes code easier to both read and write than more traditional Object Oriented languages, such as Java. For beginning programmers, this means the focus is on the meaning of the program, where it should be, rather than trying to figure out the meaning of obscure characters. presidents = ["Ford", "Carter", "Reagan", "Bush1", "Clinton", "Bush2"] for ss in 0...presidents.length print ss, ": ", presidents[presidents.length - ss - 1], "\n"; end
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Con
Too much convention
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Pro
Good conventions
MVC is a great starting point, and perfect for APIs. You'll rarely if ever have to wonder "where should I put this code?"
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Top
Con
Not a very popular language outside of web development
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Pro
Small projects are very easy and it's possible to finish one in very little time
The large number of documentation, tutorials, videos and guides which help new developers who are just starting with Rails make it seem very easy to create a small and simple application by relying on code generation and components that come out of the box with Rails.
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Top
Con
Bad performance
Among the slowest frameworks. If you want to scale, you will have to migrate to another land.
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Top
Pro
Cool language
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Pro
Supported on every major cloud or VPS hosting service
Rails is supported on every major Cloud hosting service nowadays. There are also countless tutorials that help developers deploy their Rails apps if there are any problems on the way.
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Top
Pro
Meta-programming capabilities
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Specs
Written in:
Ruby
Default Template Engine:
ERB
Default ORM:
ActiveRecord
Default Test Engine:
RSpec & Cucumber
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186
32
GNU Make
All
5
Experiences
Pros
3
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
Uses the full power of the UNIX shell
Make takes advantage of the powerful UNIX shell, using it at it's full potential. STDIN and STDOUT are especially useful because of their versatility.
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Con
Doesn't run on Windows by default
Make requires Cygwin/msys2/MinGW to run on Windows.
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Pro
No need for wrapper modules
Other build tools need wrapper modules to do certain tasks. The biggest disadvantage of these wrapper modules is that they bind you to a version of that tool. With Make you don't have that problem, there's no need for wrappers and no tools to bind you to a version, you can use any version of Make that you want.
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Pro
Works with more than just node.js
Since it's written in C and can be found in all UNIX-based systems it can be used on platforms other than node.js.
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Specs
Platforms:
Unix, Linux, Windows, Mac
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56
13
Symfony
All
15
Experiences
Pros
9
Cons
5
Specs
Top
Pro
Open Source
Symfony is open source and released under the MIT license.
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Con
Settings
Too many configurations.
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Pro
Easy debugging with a built-in debug toolbar
Symfony comes with a built-in toolbar that helps developers debug their applications during the development phase. The toolbar is also extendable and new components, called panels can be added if needed to help with the debugging process.
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Con
Very hard to install
Setting it up on webhost without a console is difficult.
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Pro
Great plugin ecosystem
One of the greatest strengths of Symfony is it's amazing and large plugin ecosystem, which comes as a result of it's large and dedicated community. Having a large number of plugins means less development time and more productivity.
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Con
Promotes bad development practices
Such as annotations via comments.
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Pro
Highly active community
Symfony has one of the most active communities out of all the PHP frameworks. This is shown by the high number of commits made every day in the GitHub repo.
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Con
Doctrine ORM
Symfony Standard Edition, which is the most widely used distribution, comes integrated with Doctrine, the most resource hogging ORM library.
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Pro
Teaches you good practices
Symfony makes you be a better programmer. You have to deal with the latest object-oriented design patterns such as service-oriented architecture, dependency injection, interface abstraction, and so on.
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Con
You need a lot of files to display a single page
For a simple hello world page you need about 5 files.
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Pro
Uses YAML/XML/PHP/Annotation
Symfony makes use of XML, YAML or PHP annotations to create configurations in order to tell Doctrine on how properties of a certain class should be.
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Pro
Powerful event system
Symfony has a powerful built-in event system that allows you to add flexibility to applications and makes it easier to maintain the codebase down the road.
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Pro
Great templating engine
Uses Twig, which is a simple and easy to learn templating language that can also be used as a standalone engine, outside the framework.
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Pro
Uses Doctrine ORM
Symfony makes use of the Doctrine ORM to add an abstraction layer over the database in order to maintain flexibility without having unnecessary code duplication.
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Specs
License:
MIT License
Initial Release:
2005
Written in:
PHP
PHP version:
8.0.12
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158
31
Krita
All
12
Experiences
Pros
7
Cons
4
Specs
Top
Pro
Easy to use layout
All the most used and useful tools are easy to find in Krita's UI and are often just one click away. They are not hidden behind menus or dropdowns.
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Con
New features are not tested thoroughly
Since releases are so often and with little time between them, usually new features are not tested a lot and this can bring a lot of bugs with them. Which fortunately are quickly patched in the next release.
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Pro
Constantly updated
Krita is getting constant releases with updates and bug fixes. New features are added at a pace that far surpasses the other alternatives.
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Con
Documentation is lacking
Krita's official documentation is incomplete in some areas, especially for new features that are constantly added. But this is compensated with it's great design and usability which makes it easier to understand how things work.
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Pro
Free and open source
Krita is completely free and open source. They have raised a couple of successful Kickstarters in the past to get the initial financing and now they are accepting donations.
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Con
Poor touch controls
They are still pretty much a WIP. But they are getting there.
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Pro
Developed in part by KDE, which has a great community and therefore great support.
KDE has a long history of making solid applications.
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Con
Working with text is not that pleasant
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Pro
Amazing support for displaying brushes
Krita's preset brushes are one of the default dockers. Each brush has a preview on mouseover that shows a detailed view of the type of brush involved. All the brushes also have useful and descriptive names such as "HP Pencil" or "Textured Fuzzy".
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Pro
Very customizable
Although the UI is rather busy, Krita is very customizable. The editing window can be themed and the sidebar can be customized extensively throw many dockers or panes.
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Pro
Easy editing in a tiled view
Tiled view that shows your image tiled in the editor, and permits you to edit it as you are seeing it tiled. If the brush passes out of your texture, it will just automatically wrap back the painting to the other side of the original texture, while permitting you to paint and see the results on any of the tiled "clones" (the shortcut key to activate this is w by default).
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac, Android
License:
Open source
Technology:
C++, Qt
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Experiences
Free
489
77
Inkscape
All
29
Experiences
Pros
13
Cons
15
Specs
Top
Pro
Free and open source
Inkscape is GPL-licensed and maintains public repositories.
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Con
Very slow startup on some systems
Depending on factors like how many fonts you have installed, Inkscape can take upwards of 30 seconds to launch.
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Pro
Opens lots of file types
Inkscape supports many common formats for import (including SVG, Photoshop and Illustrator) and its plugin architecture allows more to be added.
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Con
Uses its own SVG-format by default
Inkscape might use SVG as its default format, however this SVG's contains some additional SodiPodi/Inkscape additions that can be troublesome if you want to import the SVG into some other application.
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Pro
Export to different file types
Files can be exported and saved as a "normal" svg, png, jpg, bmp etc. file.
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Con
1.0 is sluggish
Inkscape 1.0 uses GTK 3 which is sluggish and slow for low spec systems( eg. ARM, Celeron, Pentium, Core-i3, Ryzen 3 or Athlon ) compared to previous versions.
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Pro
Cross-platform
Pre-built binaries are available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Inkscape can be built from source on additional platforms.
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Con
Buggy
Application is often buggy so it happens from time to time that the popup / right-click menu won't close and stays open. It crashes also sometimes randomly. This makes it almost unusable for productive / business use.
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Pro
Integrates well into a X11-System
Its uses the X11 icon theme and desktop theme(GTK).
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Con
Crashes very often
Inkscape encountered an internal error and will close now - is one of its standard messages.
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Pro
It can do anything
A very powerful software that can do pretty match anything!
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Con
Since 0.91 the gradient editor is gone
It is now only possible to edit a gradient on screen. but you can't set a stop to a specific percentage anymore.
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Top
Pro
Measurement Tool
This tool is extremely handy and can not be found in any other vector graphics programs out there.
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Con
Limited work with ICC CMYK color scheme
Support for ICC color profiles only in SVG files.
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Pro
Live Path Effects
Extremely powerful menu that offers more than 30 powerful Live Path Effects to apply to paths vastly enhancing the application functionality.
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Con
Uses GTK
It looks an feels like an alien. It also uses now touch-based widgets instead of professional widgets.
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Pro
Guides, Grids, and Canvas Rotation
Extremely handy features when building complex graphics using Inkscape.
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Con
Y-axis inverted
0,0 coordinates begin in lower left corner, not upper left corner as SVG standards define in Inkscape 0.92.x. It seems this is now fixed in the 1.0 beta 2 version of the program.
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Top
Pro
Dark Theme Support
The new 1.0 beta 2 version finally got support for dark theme which normally is only available for commercial software like Affinity Serif, Adobe Illustrator.
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Top
Con
A toy for facebook-ist enthusiasts, not for professionals
It's a Linux niche mumbo-jumbo, same as GIMP for raster edit .
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Pro
The new version 1.1 is looks and feels fantastic
Inskape got UI update: new dockable dialogs.
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Con
Based on the GTK widget toolkit
Software is based on GTK, so it might not integrate well in non-GTK environments. It also requires many dependencies on those non-GTK desktops. It also adds dependencies to GTK-environments since it is written in C++ which requires the gtkmm wrapper/interface.
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Pro
Interface is available in 29 languages
Basque, British English, Brazilian, Portuguese, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Latvian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Swedish.
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Con
Mac version does not look as polished as its versions for Windows/Linux version for the 0.92.x version
It seems that Inkscape 1.0 beta 2 for Mac got some needed attention and it looks a lot better with dark theme support. native DMG installer and they got rid of X11 which is great.
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Pro
It's really easy and fun
Vector graphics can be created and edited with Inkscape.
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Con
Incompatible with previous versions
Sometimes backward compatibility breaks. For example, pre 0.92 SVGs are incompatible with later releases (due different default resolutions).
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Con
No support for large printing machine system
No support for large printing machine environment, except exporting the resulting artwork to PDF.
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Con
Under GNU GPL
It is released under GNU GPL which one of the restricted open source license.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, macOS, Linux, Unix
License:
GPL-2.0-or-later
Technology:
C++
Initial Release:
2003
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Experiences
Free
249
52
GIMP
All
12
Experiences
Pros
7
Cons
4
Specs
Top
Con
Unintuitive interface
GIMP doesn't embrace OS X application design, thus Mac users might have a hard time wrapping their heads around GIMP's interface.
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Pro
Free, open source and cross-platform
GIMP is completely free and open source, meaning you can use GIMP and all of its features without spending a penny. This makes it an excellent case for artists or designers who may not have the budget to spend over 700 USD on Photoshop. It is also available for free on Windows, Mac OS and Linux. It's licensed under GPL with source code available here.
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Top
Con
Less features than other programs
Being a free program, it shouldn't be surprising that it has limited features. For those needing more advanced features for something more professional, GIMP just isn't for you.
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Pro
Powerful
GIMP is the most feature rich free image editing tool. It has most image manipulation and workflow tools that you would expect from an image editing software and what it lacks it makes up with plugins.
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Top
Con
Lacks adjustment layers
Adjustment layers offer a non-destructive way of combining different photo manipulations. Without adjustment layers the only way to see changes is by irreversibly editing the image. They are promised in future updates.
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Top
Pro
Content-aware tools with a plugin
There's a content-aware fill plugin available for GIMP.
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Con
Poor performance
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Pro
Modular & single-window interface options
By default GIMP splits out each window, but you can check to use the one screen mode in options if you prefer.
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Pro
Lightweight
Compared to to other photo editing software, GIMP is very light weight. In addition it isn't very resource-intensive, meaning you can put it on a flash drive and have it with you to load up on just about any computer.
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Pro
Beginner-friendly
Gimp has less features than programs like Photoshop, but for a beginner, or someone not needing complicated options, Gimp is the perfect choice. It allows you to quickly do basic photo manipulation so you can easily get the product you need without having to worry about complicated features getting in the way.
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Pro
Full channel support
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows 10/8/7; Linux; MacOS
License:
GPLv3+
Tethered capture:
No
Non-Distructive Editing:
No, Feature in development with GEGL
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Experiences
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283
60
Font Awesome
All
15
Experiences
Pros
11
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
3332 icons to choose from
Font Awesome 5.1 offers 1264 free and 2068 payed icons.
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Top
Con
Too expensive
The icons I need are in the pay plan.
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Top
Pro
Large variety of icons
There is a wide range of web-related icons to choose from. Categories include web-application, directional, transportation and brand icons. See the full list of icons here.
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Top
Con
You will never use all icons
This means you'll have a lot of useless data (unused icons) being load into your application.
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Top
Pro
Easy to use
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Con
Font Awesome slows webpages
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Pro
MIT licence for the code
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Pro
Screen reader compatible
Other font icons have been known to have issues with this.
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Top
Pro
Font Aweseome 5 is here with over 929 icons and counting
The Pro version is very reasonable and gives you access to 2316 icons and counting. Across 3 weights! Very Nice!
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Top
Pro
Designed to be used with Bootstrap
Font Awesome can be used with any framework, however it's especially easy to use with Bootstrap.
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Top
Pro
Continuously updated
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Pro
Can employ tree shaking to not bundle unused icons
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Pro
IE7 support with older versions
IE7 support has been removed from Font Awesome 4.4.0. However you can still use an older version for IE7 support.
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Pro
Customizable icons through stacking
Icons in Font Awesome can be restyled by stacking different borders and background to modify their meaning. For example, any icon can be turned into a bullet point by stacking it on a circle, or converted into its negative by stacking a red cancel icon on top of it.
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Specs
Glyphs:
2,018
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Experiences
FREE-$99/year
94
25
Vectr
All
11
Experiences
Pros
9
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
Intuitive
Vectr is simpler than other web design or vector graphics design tools, and has all the features needed to make designs beautiful.
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Con
Requires an Internet connection to work
Must be tethered to an Internet connection at all times, so forget working on planes or other places where you're not online.
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Top
Pro
WordPress plugin
Embedded editor in WordPress is perfect for editing / creating: annotated images, watermarks, banners, image-collages, infographics, logotypes.
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Top
Pro
Grid and snapping
The grid and snap lines in your workspace serve as a visual aid and guideline for the composition and alignment of your designs.
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Pro
Supports importing various image formats
You may import your previous designs or downloaded graphics and edit them in Vectr as you like.
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Pro
Supports collaboration
You can send the unique URL to your Vectr project to friends and colleagues for collaboration.
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Pro
Low learning curve
Vectr has a very low learning curve and would be perfect for beginners. However, it’s absolutely easy to use no matter what your background is. Professional designers will also find a great number of useful tools which may change their designs completely.
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Pro
Designing offline
Vectr's desktop app works offline for up to 100 edits, and then once you get online it automatically synchronizes all of the projects with your online account. So you can work whenever you want without fearing for your projects.
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Pro
Free
The app is going to remain free forever.
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Pro
Cross-platform
You may download Vectr for Mac, Windows, Linux, and Chromebook.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac, Web
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Experiences
Free
14
5
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