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30 Time Saving and Useful Web Site Resources for Designers and Developers

Posted on 09. Nov, 2010 by bmackler in Resources

There are so many free tools online today that help designers and developers do their work better, quicker and more efficient, but sometimes its not easy to find out which ones are the best and most useful.  You can find tools that will help with web typography, CSS generators to quickly create code to color pickers and pallete galleries.  As designers we shouldn’t ignore these helpful and time saving tools. Working smart helps keep us fresh and ready for future projects.

Today lets take a look at 30 Time Saving and Useful Web Site Resources for Designers and Developers.

Which of these have you used and liked?

Intelligencefont

Automatic Font Styling

WebInk

Typography site from Extensis that includes fonts from a various foundries for your website.

Fillerati

Use paragraphs from literature as filler text instead of Lorem ipsum

WhatTheFont

Have you seen a font in use and want to know what it is? Submit an image to WhatTheFont to find the closest matches in our database.

CSS3 Sandbox

Has five different generators: linear gradients, radial gradients, text properties, box properties, and transforms.

Smush.it

Optimization techniques specific to image format to remove unnecessary bytes from image files. It

Color Palette Generator

This generator creates a color palette based on an image. Just enter any image URL and it will create two color schemes: dull and vibrant.

Color Scheme Designer

Attractive and easy to use interface. Just select a color, the type of color scheme you want to create (mono, complement, triad, tetrad, analogic, or accented analogic) and then make adjustments.

RedMark

This site offers visual communication in just three simple steps between designers and clients. It is also possible for a client to find a particular designer they need to match their business.

CSS3.0 Maker

Create a variety of CSS3 elements, including rounded corners, gradients, and shadows. You change properties using drop-downs and sliders, and it shows you a preview of what you’ve created.

Browser UI

Photoshop action that creates a browser window around any size document you can throw at it.

Defolio

Collaboration tool for sharing website designs with colleagues and clients. It handles version control and allows for visual comparison between versions

Mockingbird

Mockingbird is an online tool that makes it easy for you to create, link together, preview, and share mockups of your website or application.

Placehold.it

Format, Text, Color and Size – Quick and simple image placeholders.

CSS Menu Maker

Custom, cross browser compatible website menus. Menu generator makes it easy to create custom CSS menus without having to know all the complicated HTML and CSS

WordPress Generator

Create your own unique simple, minimalist wordpress theme easily within minutes.

Colorotate

View and create color schemes in 3D. Manipulate the color palette tool in 3 dimensions can lead to better understanding of how the colors in a palette relate to one another.

Spoon

Run desktop applications in the “cloud” with no installs, conflicts or dependencies such as .NET, Java nor AIR.  At home or on the road have any program at your disposal

Buttonator

Generate a variety of buttons and get the css ready to be used in your websites

Stylevault

Design showcase where web designers can show off their talents and get inspiration as well as giving it.

Pixlr

High powered Online Image editor. Edit, adjust and filter your images

Stripemania

Create striped backgrounds and textures in seconds with this online editor

CSS3 Generator v1.6

Generate various CSS3 effects  and use the code immediately

Entitifier

Clean up your text from Word, take out the extra useless code and characters and use in in HTML.

Are my sites up?

Website monitors your websites and if they go down, you will be notified right away

Nice Tables

Create and generate the HTML for nicely laid out and effective tables

Browser Shots

Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different operating systems and browsers.

Tiny Bounce

Save a screenshot of an image, create notes for feedback on it, and then send the link to others.

Google Font Preview

Helpful to try out fonts before embedding them in your website.

Button Maker

Simple to use button maker lets you create custom CSS3 buttons with gradients.