20 Unparalleled Resources Addressing Each Attribute in Web Design and Development
Go-for-broke ambition may not be the hallmark of every web designer, but a slick and chrome piece of work is something all yearn to create. The same holds true for the web developers.
Some designers and developers like to go around at formulaic paces while other choose a more innovative approach, but irrespective of the freshness in their approach, there are basics that everyone needs to follow. When you are curating a design, a fine balance has to be maintained between making it visually appealing and making it usable. Apparently, we often find professionals on the wrong side of the line.
The common tendency is to either create over the top designs that give a major thrash to the usability since the website gets bloated and starts suffering from all kinds of issues like low speed, lack of responsiveness, and so on, or some keep the designs to black and white, rendering them visually dull and uninspiring in the process. Often, the lack of knowledge about the tools that can help them in their designing endeavor leads to these oversights.
The automated tools prove to be handy in letting them take a more open-ended approach to designing and experiment at will, since they know they have the tools to branch out to the unexplored territories with confidence.
Having said that, there is a pile out there. Picking out one for specific attributes of your website may not seem feasible, so we pick them out for you. The following section lists out the most significant web designing tools that you may or may not have gotten round to knowing about. I have duly segregated them based on the as[ect of web development they can help you out with:
Code Editing Tools
A code editor program should make your coding exercise a far easier one, not to mention a more accurate one too. Some of the best tools for the same include:
All developers have grown in their art using Notepad at some point in their career. ATPad happens to be a great upgrade of the same. The open source development tool boasts of a massive suite of buttons and support for intuitive and fully functional plugins. The software really makes software editing a breeze to carry out, not to mention its amazing execution speed and lightweight interface. To make coding easier for you, ATPad has the provision of highlighting syntaxes.
This one is not for the novices. While jEdit also supports a wide range of macros and makes it easier to write and tailor the code, the beginners do not find this tool feasible to use. The clipboards are large in number and you can easily look for the regular expressions through its more than accommodating interface.
To begin with, TextWrangler only works on the MAC systems. Besides this, it is language dependent, which is to say you can only use it in English language. Do these restrictions take away its charm? Probably yes. Is that all to TextWrangler? Definitely not. It also happens to be one of the most layered and versatile code editor with amazing features like Document’s Drawer and it also boasts syntax coloring function for as many as 44 programming languages that converts most of the major ones that you can think of. For the fact that it supports files of really large sizes further makes it highly sought after.
Tools for Creating Website Wireframe
Wireframes are essentially the website’s prototypes that give you a map over which you can chart out the entire process of website structure. Whether it is creating blocks for different sections of the final website or even fitting in the images that you are likely to use in the future, the wireframe can include the most intrinsic details.
The incentives to creating a well-articulated wireframe are a common knowledge. But if you want your wireframe to be nothing less than a perfect map for your future website, Mockingbird can serve the purpose excellently. The UI is efficiently made and facilitates easy drag and drop. Also, you can use to to link the pages in a manner most elaborative.
Creating website protoypes with Lumzy is a rewarding exercise with its provision to inject controls in the containers and create a representation of the website using the page navigation emulators and so on.
Cacoo is an online tool that can be leveraged to create some highly intuitive and elaborative website prototypes. You have the option of drawing different types of diagrams. The tool focuses highly on user friendly and thus includes the provision for drag and drop that simplifies the drawing exercise.
This one is again a tool that proves to be remarkably resourceful for drawing mock ups that can set a perfect platform for the ensuing process of website designing. Drag and drop the elements you wish to include into the mock container and lay down the map for the entire website in the most straightforward manner.
Tools for Editing Images
Pixlr is one of those well famed image editing tools that finds resonance with most designers. The environment it provides for editing is consummate as you can have a menu that contains filters, support for 25 languages and saves the final format in a range of formats.
It is said to be the most robust and customizable photo editing tool and there is a bona fide truth to the statement. You can use GIMP to take input photoshop files and convert them to the format of your choice.
PicMonkey is a vivacious tool that throws at you a bevy of options to tailor an image in a way that looks most relevant and stunning at the same time.
Tools for Debugging and Performance Enhancement
Kint is essentially a PHP debugger that happens to be amazingly user friendly and helps you to locate errors in you \r code efficiently and with a lot of success, so to speak.
Pinba is one of those MySQL storage engines that can really power you to find out the issues in your code, even if they are hiding really intrinsically. You get a fair insight by the means of stats and the input is carefully evaluated for errors as well.
A firefox extension, YSlow is the perfect tool to pinpoint the pain points of your website’s performance and act on them decisively. You can use this tool to boost your site’s performance by getting a detailed insight into the factors that affect it.
Krumo adds a lot of sense of structure to how you are trying to locate the bugs in the code. It makes use of the DHTML tree that helps in dictating the way a PHP variable is being dumped. Krumo is easily among the fastest debuggers around.
Tools for Adding Patterns and Colors
Adding the right patterns and colors to your website is crucial to its overall design as it goes a long way in determining its overall tonality and has an effect on how your brand is speaking to the end consumer. It also happens to come free of cost.
Again, the name stays true to the whole set of functionalities this tool swings at you. Color Lovers boasts of a wide palettes of colors that give the unrestrained control over what hue you wish to flaunt on your website. Also, there is a host of patterns for you to choose from.
With its massive suite of color palettes and patterns, the 4096 Color Wheel is a dream tool. Extremely easy to use and implement, this one doesn’t leave a grey area or any rough spot.
Colrd is just about the most interactive coloring tool you can ever come across. The website for this tool is a good insight into the kind of help you can hope to gain from using it. There is no dearth of options for you to choose from. You can swing a lot of color to your website and still make it extremely friendly for your server as this tool ensures the web page is not bogged down by the color doses.
Typography Tools
Typography happens to be one of the most crucial, yet the highly underrated aspect of website designing. When you are curating your website’s design, you have to be crystal clear about how you wish to place the fonts. Google Webfonts helps you add some visually stunning fonts that are very user friendly at the same time.
Font Squirrel also happens to be an incredibly effective tool for you to have different types of fonts on your website’s pages. Using this tool you can highlight the most important parts of your text and at the same time, ensure that you don’t end up fancying the typography too much. It does help you maintain a fine balance.
Web designing and development is an endeavor steeped in detail and imagination. The route however is made smoother using few of the afore-mentioned power tools along the way.
