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70 of the best resources for web designers and developers
10/09/2009 A quick round up of some of the best web design and web development resources and the best bit is that most of them are completely free.Podcasts for web designers & developers
I got into web design podcasts quite recently when I bought myself an Iphone, they are great for listening to on the tube, train or bus.
- .net magazine podcast
- Adobe Photoshop quck tips podcast
- Quick and to the point tutorials on Photoshop techniques, the podcasts arem easy to follow and are results driven rather than feature driven.
- App Clinic podcast
- Two podcasts for the price of one
- Boagworld podcast
- A non-techy series that is useful for anyone involved in websites.
- Creative Expert podcast
- Interviews with lots of creative types
- PhotoshopTV podcast
- Video Podcast of photoshop tutorials
- Rails Podcast
- Ruby Ruby Ruby Ruby ahhhhhh!
- Rookie Designer podcast
- A podcast aimed at rookie designers (I ike sensible website names)
- Sitepoint podcast
- A llittle on the nerdy side of geekdom though still has its merits
- The Ajaxian podcast
- A tech heavy podcast
- The Rissington podcast
- A web-geek version of Gardeners Question Time
- UIE Brain Sparks podcast
- Usability and interaction design
- Webaxe podcast
- A podcast specialising in accessibility
- WebDevRadio podcast
- Strictly web development
- You Suck at Photoshop podcast
- Photoshop tutorials with adult-themed humor designed by Matt Bledsoe and Troy Hitch
- You Suck at Web Design Podcast
- A podcast and blog with a slightly more stylised aproach
Blogs for web designers & developers
There are so many good blogs out there posted by web designers or for web designers that if you read them all, you might become an expert at web design in theory but you would actually never get anything done. Here are just a few good ones for those those who actually want to spend some of their time designing and building websites.
- Clagnut blog
- Various web development posts
- Dev Lounge blog
- A frequently updated and simple but nicely designed blog
- Sharebrain blog
- Lots of posts on graphics and Jquery
- Smashing Magazine blog
- The staple of Smashing magazine are its lists. Top 50 this top 100 that. they do also do some original articles too though. the article comments sections are pretty banal with very few useful comments coming from readers.
- Smileycat blog
- The posts are a little irregular but then quality is beter than quantity
- Snook blog
- A very funky looking blog with some interesting articles too
- The CSS Blog
- A new blog but with lots of potential
- Tuturotial Blog
- Lots of graphics tutorials
- Web designer wall
- Often imitated but still original, quite a varied blog.
- Zeldman blog
- A log by one of the conference circuit celebs
- A List Apart
- A broad spectrum of subjects within web design
Galleries for web design inspiration
Galleries can be a good place to get some inspiration for your next website, you have to be careful however to ensure that you use these sites purely for inspiration and not as somewhere to steal ideas from.
- Best Web Gallery
- CSS Beauty
- CSS Drive
- CSS Elite
- CSS Mania
- CSS Remix
- CSS Vault
- Stylegala
- Web Creme
- Pattern Tap
Firefox extensions for web designers & developers
- CodeBurner
- A reference extension for Firebug
- Colorzilla
- An eyedropper tool that sits convieniently in your status bar
- CSSViewer
- A great extension for quick-checking and comparing font sizes colours and other attributes across your pages
- Dummy Lipsum
- Generate latin filler text when you are creating webpage mock-ups
- Dust-Me Selectors
- A tool for cleaning up your CSS code by removing CSS selectors that aren’t being used by your webpages
- Firebug
- Possibly the most used web development extension
- MeasureIt
- A useful ruler that sits in your status bar
- Pencil
- Wireframing built
- Screengrab
- Copy or save screen grabs of your web page in its entirety or just small snippets
- Web developer toolbar
- A treasure trove of front end development tools, my favourite bits being the outline current element and edit CSS tools. This tool is very useful though it hasn’t moved forward feature wise since I first downloaded a few years ago.
- YSlow
- Check the speed of your websites and find out what is slowing them down
Iphone Apps for web designers & developers
The range of applications for web de4signers is somewhat limited by the Iphones built in limitations but considering that it is basically a telephone what more do you want?
- Analytics App
- For those who can’t leave their website visitors alone.
- Cliqcliq Colors
- A colour scheme tool to help you find nice colour combinations for your designs.
- Database Viewer
- Does what is says on the tin
- Ego
- Website analytics on Speed
- FTP On The Go
- An FTP program that works over WIFI and 3G, with basic built-in editor. I wouldn’t recommend building a whole website with this tool but it could be a life saver if you need to updaate your existing website on the run.
- Mocha VNC Lite
- Control your computer through your Iphone.
- ServersMan
- Use your iphone as a web server… I haven’t tried this one and am not sure why you would want a web server on your iphone but I am sure someone will find this useful.
- Source Viewer
- View your website code on your Iphone. Something I have only had the need for a few times but if you need it then you need it. I wonder what the capacity for Iphone’s copy and paste functionality is?
- WhatTheFont
- Seen a font you want to use in your next website design? With WhatTheFont you can take a photo using your Iphone’s built-sin camera and find what it is or at least find a close version
- Web Tools
- A selection of tools for web designers and developers built into a single iphone App
Online tools for web designers & developers
There are literally thousands of tools and resources for web designers and developers on the web. Makes sense really, here are just a few.
- 100 Random Colors
- Need a starting point for your next colour scheme?
- BgPatterns
- Create repeating backgrund wallpaper form a selection of images and with a range of settings and colours.
- Browser Shots
- Basic browser testing via screensots of your website
- Code Beautifier
- An online CSS optimiser
- Color Palette Generator
- Generate a colour scheme from a photograph
- Colorblind Web Page Filter
- Find out how colour blind people see your website.
- CSS SuperScrub
- An online CSS optimiser
- CSS Type Set
- Insert the text you want to style, adjust a few settings and sliders and out comes your CSS
- Kuler
- a flash driven colour scheme generator
- Tartan Maker
- If you ever fancied a Scottish or Doris Day themed website then this is the site you want
- Type Tester
- Compare different fonts, sizes and line spacing side by side.
So there yiou go just a few of the many thousands of tools and resources available to web designers many of those above are completely free too. Please send me links to any you think I should have included.
This entry was posted in Accessibility, Front-end development, Product/service review, The cloud, Visual Design, usability and tagged blogs, firefox extensions, iphone apps, podcasts, resources, tools, web apps, Web design, Web development. Bookmark the permalink. ← Secrets to a successful website WordPress finally →