I wrote a few simple web apps to speed up production in a few departments at work, and I am loving coding with just Vanilla JS, after years of using React, TS, Vue2, Angular, etc.

But I feel like I have to be missing some tools since Js is older than time.

Here’s my workflow:

  1. Code in VSCode (auto-save)
  2. I built an AHK script that automatically switches to Chrome and hard-reloads the page
  3. Web Dev Tools are open in Chrome.
  4. I find errors in Js, HTML, or CSS and alt+tab back to VS to fix it
  • A Typescript LSP will catch a ton of js errors for you, even if you’re not doing ts.

    There is a plugin for the browser and the Atom editor called Emmet Livestyle. It’s the only real time preview plugin I have ever found. And I don’t mean reload on save - it would update the loaded page html/css in place with your changes as you typed them. I don’t think it was ported to vscode unfortunately.

    I have also fallen in love with the lit-html library.