40+ Essential Front End Web Developer Cheat Sheets

Today more or less everyone can put a simple web page together but implementation of professional Web based Application Front Ends is not as simple as some people may think.

It is a complex task requiring deep knowledge of several technologies like html, css, javascript, php, etc. In this article you will find essential cheat sheets for the most commen web based technologies that you are likely to use if you’re a Front End Web Developer.

First you will find resources covering client side markup and development (html, xhtml, css, javascript, jQuery etc.) and then you will find resoures covering server side development that are to some extent required for Front End Development (php, asp.net, …).

Please make sure that you post a comment if you know an important resource that have not been included in the article. I hope you will find this article useful, lets get started![exec]$filestr = file_get_contents(‘http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/googleadsensebelowmoretag.inc’);
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Markup Cheat Sheets

There’s a lot of cheat sheets available for CSS, html and any other web technology. I have picked a few that I believe stand out because they are able to assist you remebering important elements of key web technologies or because they are really well structured.

Print out your favorite Cheat Sheet and put it on the wall just next to your monitor to get instant access to help and reference.

CSS2 Cheat Sheet

This cheat sheet is designed to not only be a quick reference for CSS properties but also to give you a good feel for how each property should be used. It contains all of the properties in the CSS2 specification including a description of the syntax of each one. There are also sections that describe selectors, pseudo-elements and pseudo-classes, @ rules, and colors.

Gosquared CSS help sheets

Good looking and well structured CSS overview

addedbytes CSS2 Cheat Sheet

The CSS cheat sheet is a one-page reference sheet, listing all selectors (as of CSS 2.1) and properties. It includes a visual example of the box model, unit reference for CSS units and the various media types CSS makes allowance for.

Core css

All you need to know about CSS in 3 parts. These documents go through all important aspects of CSS on a minimum number of pages.

CSS Shorthand Cheat Sheet

Get help with some of the CSS elements that are so easy to forget.

CSS2 – Quick Reference Guide – PDF

XHTML 1.1 Cheat Sheet

This cheat sheet is designed to be a quick reference to all of the elements and attributes available in the XHTML 1.1 specification. And because XHTML 1.1 is designed to be modular, it is organized into sections to mirror the XHTML abstract modules and the elements and attributes contained within each.

Gosquared html help sheets

Good looking and well structured html overview

HTML Cheat Sheet

The HTML cheat sheet is a one-page A4 printable document, designed to provide a quick reference for HTML. PDF PNG

HTML5 Canvas Cheat Sheet

The information is pretty much just a copy of what is found in the WHATWG specs, just condensed and hopefully a bit easier to read. There are virtually no explanations, however, and no examples other than some graphics for compositing values and a few other things (the appearance of which is very much inspired by those found in Mozilla’s examples). So, it’s basically just a listing of the attributes and methods of the canvas element and the 2d drawing context.

HTML Character Entities Cheat Sheet

The HTML Character Entities cheat sheet is designed to act as a reference sheet, listing the various character codes in HTML. PDF PNG

HTML Character Entities Cheat Sheet

This cheat sheet contains a list of all of the HTML 4 character entities including ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) entities. The characters are organized into 8 groups: Latin characters, Greek characters, numbers, puncutation and miscellaneous symbols, mathematical symbols, currency symbols, arrows and shapes, and spacing symbols.

Each character contains a unicode entity reference (e.g. &#160) as well as a named entity reference (e.g.  ) where available.

HTML Colors Cheat Sheet

This cheat sheet contains a chart of 1050 colors grouped by hue and varied into 25 different saturations and brightnesses for each. Each color has the HTML color code reprsented as a Hex triplet (e.g. #808080). Also, it contains a chart of the 216 Web-safe colors and each is represented as a single-digit Hex triplet (e.g. #999).

RGB Hex Colour Chart

The RGB Hex colour chart is a very large (183kB) PNG file, and is sized to fit on a standard A4 piece of paper. It shows the 216 so-called “web safe” or “non-dithering” colours (there are actually only 22 web safe colours, but those are revolting).

Scripting Cheat Sheets

JavaScript Cheat Sheet

The JavaScript cheat sheet is designed to act as a reminder and reference sheet, listing methods and functions of JavaScript. It includes reference material for regular expressions in JavaScript, as well as a short guide to the XMLHttpRequest object. A description of what is on the cheat sheet follows, or if you are impatient, you can go straight to the full size JavaScript cheat sheet.

JavaScript DOM Cheatsheet

Working with XML in Javascript is

jQuery 1.3 Cheat Sheet

Quick reference to all jQuery 1.3 functions and properties. Note that it doesn’t cover any of the UI functionality as this could easily be a whole cheat sheet in and of itself.

jQuery Cheat Sheet 1.2

mootools 1.2 cheat sheet

This sheet cover Core, Native, Class, Element, Utilities and Request

prototype 1.5.0

Prototype 1.6.0.2 Cheat Sheet

• Modules are sorted in a somewhat logical order – those commonly used are mostly in the left/center area, while deprecated/utility methods are all the way to the right
• Method can be recognized by parentheses following it (anything that doesn’t have ones is a property)
• Deprecated items are marked red and have NO parentheses/arguments specified
• Prototype extends quite few native objects’ prototypes with a set of convenient methods. In such cases there’s an explicit note about it next to a module name – i.g. stripScripts() method from “String (String.prototype)” can be called as 'foo'.stripScripts()
• When a module is also a class, there’s a “(constructor)” note next to it – i.g. “Hash (constructor)” means that it should be called as new Hash()
• There are few bonus items (such as those from Prototype.Browser) which are not yet included in documentation

Download

Addison-Wesley’s JavaScript Reference Card

Javascript: A scripting language designed to be integrated into HTML code to produce enhanced, dynamic, interactive web pages.

jQuery selectors

Very comprehensive overview of jQuery selectors. This is a must have for every jQuery developer!

Server side programming

PHP Cheat Sheet (V2)

The PHP cheat sheet is a one-page reference sheet, listing date format arguments, regular expression syntax and common functions.

visibone

This website contains a 2-page light and lean PHP cheatsheet and an 8-page comprehensive PHP cheat sheet for committed PHP developers

Php 4 Reference Card

PHP Cheat Sheet

3 cheat sheets covering comparison using different operators etc.

Core C# and .NET Quick Reference

ASP.net

MS ASP

The ASP cheat sheet is designed to act as a reminder and reference sheet, listing various of the oft-forgotten parts of ASP / VBScript.

msnet formatting strings

SQL (Structured Query Language) in one page

MySQL Cheat Sheet

XML (eXtensible Markup Language) in one page

XML Syntax Quick Reference

Search Engine Optimization Cheat Sheets

Creating good content that is presented in the right way is important but only haft the way to get visitors. Understanding and mastering Search Engine Optimization, SEO is quite essential and here you get some really good overviews

The Web Developer’s SEO Cheat Sheet

This cheat sheet cover most of what you need, Important SEO Html Tags, Search Engine Indexing Limits, Recommended Title Tag Syntax, Common Canonical Issues, Important Search Engine Robot User-Agents etc.

Lars

Lars started tripwire magazine back in January 2009. He is really passionate about web design, web development and loves to look into new technologies, techniques, tools etc. and to write articles for his readers.