10 Useful Design Resources and Tools For Web Designers and Web Developers

An effective, well-organized workflow is an important asset of professional web designers. The more useful and time-saving your design resources and tools are, the more time you can focus on important things, thus creating a foundation for timely good-quality results. The problem is that there are just way too many design resources, tools and services out there, so it has become difficult to keep track on them and find those tiny little time-savers that will spare you headaches and save time in a long run.

In this article i have come up with 10 Useful Design Resources and Tools For Web Designers and Web Developers that make your life easy.

You may be interested in the following related Design Resources and Tools as well.

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Typespiration

Watch this site grow: Typespiration. a growing collection of good Web type examples (with CSS code).

[button color=”blue” size=”medium” link=”http://typespiration.com/” target=”blank” ]Typespiration – Source[/button]

A Collection of Handy CSS Snippets

Don’t start your project with an empty style sheet: there are many great snippets that can make your life easier and speed up web development. We are going to show you some handy snippets that you might find useful for kick-starting your next project.

[button color=”blue” size=”medium” link=”http://tympanus.net/codrops/2012/10/25/kick-start-your-project-a-collection-of-handy-css-snippets/” target=”blank” ]Handy CSS Snippets – Source[/button]

Journey in to Mobile

Code School’s Journey Into Mobile is freely available to the readers of our November issue.

[button color=”blue” size=”medium” link=”http://www.codeschool.com/courses/journey-into-mobile” target=”blank” ]Journey in to Mobile – Source[/button]

Creating Responsive Web Design

Learn how to optimize your webpages for different screen sizes and platforms.

[button color=”blue” size=”medium” link=”http://ude.my/bt0nc” target=”blank” ]Creating Responsive Web Design – Source[/button]

The Ultimate WordPress Theme Builder

Here’s a true drag-and-drop layout builder for WordPress. You’ll be able to use unlimited templates on your sites, access a powerful Style Editor for countless CSS options, as well as integrate unlimited fonts, forms, shortcode generator, slideshows and SEO among many other features. See the video

[button color=”blue” size=”medium” link=”http://www.mightydeals.com/deal/ultimatum.html?refID=2a98a7″ target=”blank” ]Ultimate WordPress Theme Builder – See Video[/button]

34 Responsive Grid System

34Grid is a Responsive Grid System based on an “equally distributed columns” layout. In contrast to other great grid systems, 34Grid provides equally distributed columns for each row and also column complements for inequal distributions. It is completely customizable allowing you to choose your own download package (number of max columns, column margin, row margins and transitions between columns).

If you’re already familiar with grid systems and responsive web design just create&download a bundle and see what is inside.

[button color=”blue” size=”medium” link=”http://34grid.com/” target=”blank” ]34 Responsive Grid System – Source & Download[/button]

Frank – A Responsive WordPress Theme Designed Specifically for Speed

Frank’s main focus is speed. The parent theme’s default home page makes 9 database queries and consists of 2 requests weighing ~29Kb (9.6Kb gzipped). Frank keeps it basic—no Javascript frameworks, no unecessary images, just a simple, no-frills, screaming fast blog.

Frank has several different layouts to choose from for your home page. Most layouts let you specify the number of posts to show and from what categories. Templates can be stacked by any amount and order to give you the structure you need. Additionally, there are plenty of well-placed widgets that will give you that extra level of customization.

[button color=”blue” size=”medium” link=”http://somerandomdude.com/work/frank/” target=”blank” ]Frank – Source[/button] [button color=”blue” size=”medium” link=”https://github.com/somerandomdude/Frank/zipball/master” target=”blank” ]Frank – Download[/button]

Free CSS3 help in Photoshop

If you use Photoshop for design, you’ll want to check out the free CSS3Ps. It’s a cloud-based plugin that converts your PSD layers into CSS3. Currently supported are vendor prefixes, text layers, multiple layers selection, size, stroke, inner shadow, outer glow, SCSS and SASS for Compass, border radius, gradient overlay, inner glow, and drop shadow, with more features being added.

[button color=”blue” size=”medium” link=”http://css3ps.com/” target=”blank” ]CSS3PS – Source[/button] [button color=”blue” size=”medium” link=”http://css3ps.com/Download/” target=”blank” ]CSS3PS – Download[/button]

Simplified Blogging with Ghost

Ghost is a blogging platform concept from John O’Nolan that focuses exclusively on blogging. It would Markdown for post formatting, include no native comments, require fewer plugins, and operate 100% as a not-for-profit. It’s a fantastic idea, and one that would be a welcome option for many who are starting to find WordPress too powerful (bloated?) for simple blogging.

[button color=”blue” size=”medium” link=”http://john.onolan.org/ghost/” target=”blank” ]Ghost – Source[/button]

HTML5 Blank Responsive Theme for Quick WordPress Theme Development

HTML5 Blank Theme is a WordPress shell for deploying your next project on. It’s not just a clean slate to develop with, it’s a lean foundation that includes various tools, functions and setups to get any WordPress theme developer deployed and coding within minutes.

It’s feature list is extensive and impressive, ranging from HTML5 and CSS3 setups, to built-in WordPress functions, mobile/responsive ready, time-saving tools and much more.

[button color=”blue” size=”medium” link=”http://html5blank.com/” target=”blank” ]Source[/button] [button color=”blue” size=”medium” link=”http://github.com/toddmotto/HTML5-Blank-WordPress-Theme/zipball/master” target=”blank” ]Download[/button]

Jarallax – A Javascript library for creating a parallax scrolling website

Jarallax is an open-source Javascript library which makes adjusting css based on interaction easy.

With Jarallax it’s easy to create a parallax scrolling website.

[button color=”blue” size=”medium” link=”http://www.jarallax.com/?page=home” target=”blank” ]Source[/button] [button color=”blue” size=”medium” link=”http://www.jarallax.com/?page=download” target=”blank” ]Download[/button]

Do let us know which Useful Design Resources and Tools you use for your projects in the comment section will try to include those Design Resources and Tools in our next article.

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