Monday, June 21, 2010
77 Resources to Simplify Your Life as a Web Designer
Jan
As a web designer, achieving efficiency in your workflow will have a significant impact on your success. Fortunately, there are a number of great resources that have been created with the intent of making your life easier and your work quicker and more effective. Choosing the right color combination can be a difficult task. Try some of these tools to make it an easier decision. CSS-based navigation menus are used by most websites now, but they don’t need to be created from scratch. There are hundreds of menus already created and available for your use. You can use them as is, or customize them to meet your needs and match your website. Xtreeme DHTML Menu Studio is a great tool for quickly creating dynamic navigation menus (cost: $49). Quality images greatly enhance the look and appearance of a website. You can find photos for free or buy higher quality photos for as little as $1. If you design WordPress themes you can save yourself a lot of time by downloading these blank themes (from Tomorrow’s Laundry). The blank themes provide you with a very basic starting point to work from (UPDATE: the link has been removed because this site is no longer available). You may be able to save time by starting with a basic CSS-based template. Most websites are built off a one of several different layouts that can be started from a template. One of the leading CSS designers has created CSS Sculptor to speed up the creation of CSS-based layouts. If you design a lot of websites this $149 software may be very helpful. Dead links are extremely frustrating to visitors, but checking them manually is not realistic. These tools will do it for you. Adequate testing is a part of the design process, and unfortunately that means testing in a variety of browsers. Valid code is generally more accessible and it should be one of the first things you test when you encounter a problem. There’s no need to re-invent the wheel. Save yourself some time by using free scripts that others have created. Favicons are very popular right now, and they don’t have to be difficult to create. Try these free tools to create your own and help brand your website. Typography and fonts can make or break a design, but it can be time consuming to try a number of different options. Try some of these resources. Most of the modern web 2.0 and social media sites have several design features in common. Help to make your designs look more modern by incorporating some of these design tools. Buttons are everywhere. Easily and quickly create your own buttons with these tools. Gradient images are another staple of web 2.0. If you don’t have Photoshop there are some other ways to create gradients. Creating boxes with rounded corners is easy when you have the right tools. Speech bubbles will give comments and quotes some variety and add to your design. If you’re looking to clean, optimize and compress your CSS code, here are some choices.Color Tools
Free CSS Navigation Menus
DHTML Navigation Menus
Photos for Your Website
Icons
Blank WordPress Templates
CSS-Based Design Templates
Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor
Dead Links Checker
Testing in Multiple Browsers
Validators
Scripts
Favicon Generator
Fonts
Web 2.0 Tools
Button Makers
Gradient Image Tools
Rounded Corner Boxes
CSS Speech Bubbles
CSS Tools
Miscellaneous
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