Whether you are just starting to learn to program or you are already a developer and need to eventually consult functions and codes, you are going to love this tool, available both online and offline.
I am referring to DevDocs, an application available at devdocs.io where you will find all the documentation on programming languages and APIs that any programmer may need.
Customize your list of languages and APIs
As soon as you access the tool you will see, on the left, a sidebar with a search engine and a list of all the available languages and APIs. You can customize this list by accessing the application settings, which will save your preferences through a cookie.
In the tool preferences, on the left side, you will see checkboxes where you can select the languages and APIs you want to have available initially for your documentation searches. Just check the boxes of your most used languages and APIs and apply the changes in the preferences.
On the other part, in the main preferences screen, on the right, you have several other interesting settings, most of them visual, but one fundamental one, and that is the possibility of being able to consult all the documentation offline, without an Internet connection.
Combined Searches
Once you have everything to your liking you can start using DevDocs. What you will find is a tool for consulting development documentation on most languages and APIs, with some important particularities, such as the combined search.
And this is important because if you search for a term related to some action, and it has some function in several languages or APIs, DevDocs will show you the results in your favorite languages.
I’m not going to give you a list of all the documentation it offers, but you have all the most important languages, the documentation of the main servers, specific CMS, such as Drupal or WordPress, as well as the documentation of different versions of the main JavaScript frameworks, among much more.
DevDocs Offline
If you want to download the documentation and use it offline, just go to the settings icon and, in the “Offline Data” section, install all the documentation for your favorite languages on your computer.
Once you install the documentation (which you can keep updated automatically), for which you have to click on the “Install” links for each language, or on “Install all“, you will be able to consult that documentation offline, usually accessing DevDocs.
This is great if you have to program in a place with bad connection or even during a flight without WiFi.
Other options
In addition to directly in your browser, there are other ways to use DevDocs:
- Web App for Chrome
- Desktop Application
- Package for Sublime Text
- Package for Atom
- Extension for Visual Studio Code
- Workflow for Alfred
- And more…
Be grateful?
Finally, since DevDocs is a free and open-source tool, what less than leaving a tweet to its creators, thanking them for releasing such a practical and useful tool, which will surely save you a lot of time searching for programming language documentation for your developments.
