MockFlow: Online Wireframe Tool 15 Free Online Tools for Web Designers on a Budget About two years ago when I became a full time freelance web designer, I made it a point to operate with little overhead. Even though I was confident I could make it as a freelancer, there was some fear that things might not go as planned. Because of this, I didn’t go out and spend lots of money on equipment and expensive software. Pixlr Pixlr is a powerful online image editing application. Google Analytics Google Analytics is probably the most popular free analytics tool available. Typetester The Typetester is an online application for comparison of the fonts for the screen. CSS Type Set CSS Type Set allows you to visually and interactively style text and it generates the CSS. net2ftp net2ftp gives you a fully featured ftp client within your browser. WhatTheFont WhatTheFont allows you to scan in or provide the URL of a font and it will tell you what it is. Color Scheme Designer Fontstruct Kuler Kuler is a community driven web app that lets your browse color palettes created by others. Bespin
A UI Design and Prototyping Treasure Chest When designing a user interface there are always times that you will find yourself using the same graphical element over and over. So in order to be more productive, it’s a good idea to keep a library of common elements such as form elements, buttons, icons, browser templates, and windows. Having these close by will save time and speed up your design and prototyping work flow. Here is a collection of these types of elements that should be a big help to you. Browser Templates For The Website / Web Application Designer WEB UI Treasure Chest v 1.0 Webdesigner kit Turquoise PSD Vector Pack: Browser Screens and Website Elements Browser Form Elements PSD iPhone GUI PSD 3.0 iPhone GUI PSD 3.0 OmniGraffle Wireframe Stencils Web Form Elements Vol.2 21 Best Icon Sets for Designing Web Apps Web Form Elements Windows 7 Taskbar .psd Windows 7 Window PSD Web Browser Elements Yahoo! Quommunication Starter Kit About the Author Henry Jones is a web developer, designer, and entrepreneur with over 14 years of experience.
Home - Pencil Project 13 Excellent Tools and Systems for CSS Grid Based Layouts | Tool A good grid can be a strong foundation for any design. Using grids got its start in print design, but has made it’s way over to the web. There are several advantages to using grids in web design, but primarily they help achieve structure and consistency in layouts. If you have yet to start using grids in your web design projects, but want to get started…we’re here to help. In this post, we’ve rounded up 13 excellent tools and systems for CSS grid based layouts. #grid #grid is a little tool that inserts a layout grid in web pages, allows you to hold it in place, and toggle between displaying it in the foreground or background. Gridmaker Gridmaker is a handy tool for creating grid templates for use in Photoshop. 960 Grid System The 960 Grid System is an effort to streamline web development workflow by providing commonly used dimensions, based on a width of 960 pixels. YUI: CSS Grid Builder 1 KB CSS Grid The 1 KB CSS Grid is a simple, lightweight approach that doesn’t require a PhD. Blueprint
The Four Key Components of a Great Web Design There’s a lot that goes into creating a web design, but I believe it can be broken down into four main components. If you’re able to execute on all four, you will have a hit web design on your hands. However, if you come up short on one, the entire design will suffer. That’s the challenge. 1. The importance of having a good foundation applies to just about everything in life. Use Wireframes A common practice by web designers to nail down a layout is to create a wireframe, which is basically a bare-bones representation of the various elements that will appear on the page. Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain of 31Three is great about posting his design processes on his blog. Be generous with whitespace One key aspect of a great layout is more about what’s in between (or rather not in between) your various page elements. Mutant Labs is another great example of good use of whitespace. Learn more about layout and wireframes 2. Big = important Make it legible Learn more about typography 3. 4.
tubular, a YouTube Background Player jQuery Plugin | Sean McCambridge Design Video controls:Play | Pause | Volume Up | Volume Down | Mute Tubular is a jQuery plugin that lets you set a YouTube video as your page background. Just attach it to your page wrapper element, set some options, and you're on your way. $(page content wrapper element).tubular(options); Tubular's hello, world Assuming you're happy with the default options and you use a wrapper div with the id of wrapper, you simply attach to your wrapper div and specify the video you want to load: and Presto! A word of caution Tubular does not design your website for you. Options and defaults ratio: 16/9 // usually either 4/3 or 16/9 -- tweak as needed videoId: 'ZCAnLxRvNNc' // toy robot in space is a good default, no?
Ivana Jurčić – Lilit » Blog Archive » A Collection of Printable At the beginning of a web (or application) development project I always create the sketches first. While sketching can be done on a blank paper, it’s much better to use a sketch template. For me that is the best and most productive way to work on and improve my ideas before application development begins (and things get more complicated :-)). This way I won’t pay too much attention to some details that should be taken care of later, but stay focused on general layout and functionality. Below you will find more than 20 resources that you can use in sketching phase of application development. And, of course, don’t forget to share your wireframes on I ♥ wireframes :-) Printable sketch templates for websites These are some pretty good, printable sketch templates for website design. Browser Sketch Pad (PDF) Browser Sketch Pad by Design Commission — see original source 960 grid template 960 grid template by Nathan Smith — see original source 960 Sketch PDF template Graph paper Paper browser Notepod
11 UI Kits for iPhone and iPad Development Last week we posted a collection of printable wireframing templates which included some for iPhone and iPad app design. These are great for communicating early mockups and ideas, but when it’s time for those ideas to make the jump from paper to the computer screen, it’s helpful to have a library of UI elements at your disposal. Since we love saving you time, we’ve found some for you. iPad GUI Kit in PSD Format iPhone GUI PSD 3.0 Free iPhone Toolbar Icons Ultimate iPhone Stencil for Omnigraffle iPhone UI Vector Elements Free iPhone Toolbar Icons Yahoo! iPad GUI PSD iPad Vector GUI Elements iPad Stencil for Omnigraffle iPhone PSD Vector Kit About the Author Henry Jones is a web developer, designer, and entrepreneur with over 14 years of experience. Related Posts 468 shares 8 Essential iPad Apps for Bloggers Before I begin, let me just say what this list is, and what it isn’t. Read More 930 shares 30 Inspiring iPad App Websites
Learn CSS Positioning in Ten Steps: position static relative abs 1. position:static The default positioning for all elements is position:static, which means the element is not positioned and occurs where it normally would in the document. Normally you wouldn't specify this unless you needed to override a positioning that had been previously set. 2. position:relative If you specify position:relative, then you can use top or bottom, and left or right to move the element relative to where it would normally occur in the document. Let's move div-1 down 20 pixels, and to the left 40 pixels: Notice the space where div-1 normally would have been if we had not moved it: now it is an empty space. It appears that position:relative is not very useful, but it will perform an important task later in this tutorial. 3. position:absolute When you specify position:absolute, the element is removed from the document and placed exactly where you tell it to go. Let's move div-1a to the top right of the page: What I really want is to position div-1a relative to div-1. Footnotes 10.
Balsamiq Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts To use a keyboard shortcut you press a modifier key with a character key. For example, pressing the Command key (it has a symbol) and then the "c" key copies whatever is currently selected (text, graphics, and so forth) into the Clipboard. This is also known as the Command-C keyboard shortcut. A modifier key is a part of many keyboard shortcuts. Here are the modifier key symbols you may see in OS X menus: Startup shortcuts Press the key or key combination until the expected function occurs/appears (for example, hold Option during startup until Startup Manager appears). Sleep and shut down shortcuts Finder keyboard shortcuts Application and other OS X shortcuts Note: Some applications may not support all of the following application key combinations. *Note: If no text is selected, the extension begins at the insertion point. Universal Access - VoiceOver keyboard commands For information about VoiceOver key combination differences in Mac OS X v10.6, see this article. Full keyboard access
960 Grid System