Category archives: JavaScript

 

 

What’s new for designers, April 2012

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The April edition of what’s new for web designers and developers includes new web apps, jQuery plugins, blogging platforms, coding resources, productivity and business tools, responsive design resources, and some really great new fonts. Many of the resources below are free or very low cost, and are sure to be useful to a lot of designers and developers out there. As always, if we’ve missed something you think should have been included, please let us know in the comments. And if you have an app or other resource you’d like to see included next month, tweet it to @cameron_chapman for consideration. Story Wheel Story Wheel is a new app that lets you take your Instagram photos and tell the story behind them. Just connect it to your Instagram account, then record your story, and create a nostalgic slideshow you can share with the world. TriggerApp TriggerApp is a project, team, and client management app that includes invoicing. It’s cloud based and powerful, yet incredibly easy to use. Anchor CMS Anchor CMS is a PHP5-based content management system created specifically for art-directed blogging. It has a powerful but simple theming engine, an uncluttered admin interface, and is completely free. Ingrid Ingrid is a fluid, lightweight CSS layout system that makes it easier to design re-flowing responsive layouts. It’s extendable and easy to implement, and doesn’t get in the way of your creativity. Instagram for Android Instagram has long been available for iOS, and it’s definitely among the top apps Android users seemed to want their own version of. Now it’s here: Instagram for Android. It’s a fast and fun way to share your photos. Just take a picture, choose a filter, and then post to Instagram (you can share to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, too). 15Five 15Five is a web app that makes it easy for upper-level management to keep track of what their employees are doing, without being obtrusive. Employees just take 15 minutes at the end of each week to write a report that can be read in 5 minutes. The reports can then be condensed into a single report for the CEO (or other top-level managers). Billable Billable is probably the easiest to use invoicing app on the market. Just edit the invoice that appears on the screen when you load the page, and then either save it (you can only save the current invoice, from what I gathered), export it as a PDF, or print it. Invoicebus Invoicebus is an easy to use app that lets you create invoices and quotes via a WYSIWYG editor. It supports all currencies and partial payments, lets you email docs or save them as PDFs, send payment reminders and get alerts when a client views a document you sent, and more. There’s a free plan that allows up to 3 clients, or paid plans for more. Wookmark jQuery Plugin Wookmark is a jQuery plugin for creating dynamic column grid layouts that automatically rearrange based on the browser’s viewport. Just download the JS file, include it on your site (along with jQuery), and run it on your content. From there, you can adjust the container, offset, and itemWidth. Adipoli jQuery Image Hover Plugin Adipoli is a simple jQuery plugin that gives you a variety of transitions for hovering over images. There are more than 20 transitions available, including grayscale to color, popouts, and many more! Backstretch Backstretch is a jQuery plugin for adding a dynamically resized background image to your pages. It resizes as the browser viewport changes, making it ideal for responsive designs. PageScroller PageScroller lets you add animated page targets to your website for smooth scrolling between content. You can choose to have left or right side nav, top nav, and next and previous buttons, and it comes with eight elegant skins! Rhinoslider Rhinoslider is a flexible jQuery slider/slideshow plugin. It offers multiple effects, each of which can be applied to run in different directions. New effects can be created by adjusting the settings of existing effects. CSS3 Responsive Slider CSS3 Responsive Slider is an image slider/carousel that resizes automatically based on the browser viewport, all without JavaScript! It works in Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari, with partial support in IE9. Fontomas Fontomas is an icon font generator that makes it easy to create a font that only contains the icons you want to use. Just select your icons, rearrange them, and then save. You can even load fonts (SVG/Cufon) from your own computer. Intype Intype is a text editor for Windows that offers advanced editing features like smart column selection, snippets, and multi-selection. Extension bundles let you add snippets, themes, or even language grammars (there are several already supported, including HTML, JavaScript, CSS, PHP, Ruby, and more). SearchMeme SearchMeme is a free jQuery plugin that generates a small search button that expands into a text box when clicked on. Place it in your sidebar, your header, or anywhere else on your site. SnipSave SnipSave lets you create an account and save code snippets from anywhere. You can then edit or delete those code snippets from the easy-to-use interface. Akordeon Akordeon is a free, lightweight jQuery plugin for creating accordion layouts. It’s fully customizable and can display large chunks of content in a limited space. Morris.js Morris.js is a lightweight library that makes it easy to draw time-series graphs that actually look good, using jQuery and Raphael. Via.Me Via.Me is a new way to share photos, videos, stories, and sounds. There’s a web interface as well as an iOS app, and you can sign up with Facebook or Twitter. Noty Noty is a jQuery plugin for creating alternative alert and other notification messages (such as success, error, and confirmation). Notifications can be placed in a variety of areas, and the API allows you to customize the text, animation, speed, buttons, and more. PSDCovers With PSDCovers , you can create 3D product mockups in Photoshop using your 2D designs. You just choose and download the product shot you want to use, locate the appropriate Action, run “Step 1″ to create a template, position and scale your 2D design on that template, and then run “Step 2″ to generate the 3D result. Comcure Comcure offers forever free backups for your website. Just set up the automatic backups, and then forget about it. Comcure will run backups according to schedule, and will email you if there’s ever an issue. It even backs up your MySQL databases, and your backups will be stored at two of their five worldwide datacenters! Slidedeck2 Slidedeck2 is a WordPress content slider. It lets you create photo and video galleries, post sliders, social feed sliders (for Google+, Instagram, and Twitter), and more. OK The Creative Finder The Creative Finder has a new look. And along with it they’ve added more features, including new account types, mobile portfolios, and more. Breezi Breezi is a new website builder that makes it easy to design, edit, and launch beautiful websites in minutes. One of Breezi’s best features, and what sets it apart from most other website builders, is that it has exceptionally well designed templates to get you started. And through the end of April, when you sign up for a new site, you’ll get it free! Twitter Follow Box Twitter Follow Box adds a facebook-like box style widget for Twitter. It’s a simple jQuery plugin, but has enough options to customize the widget to match your site’s design. Nagasaki (free) Nagasaki is a free typeface designed by Sasha Iacob, inspired by the ’57 poster “Hiroshima”, which was designed by Wim Crowell. It’s perfect for posters, flyers, and other pieces where you need a big, bold display font. Sablon Type (free) Sablon Type is based on din-bold outlines using the add and subtract circles around the edges. It’s a handmade EPS font that’s licensed for both personal and commercial use. Average (free) Average is a new, free Google Web Font designed by Eduardo Rodriguez Tunni. It’s a serif font that was created after extensive research into text typeface families from various periods in history. Bobber (free) Bobber is an alternative slab serif typeface with its own distinct style. The font is available as an .ai archive. Henry (free) Henry is an all-caps, vintage style typeface based on vintage cars and fonts from the 1960s. Silver Fake (free) Silver Fake is a free slab serif typeface. It’s simultaneously modern and retro, with unique letterforms and some alternatve characters. Hem and Haw ($25) Hem and Haw is a stitched sans serif display typeface, designed by Ray Larabie for Stella Roberts Fonts. It was rebuilt from the former freeware design “Stitchen”, now with a more complete character set, including punctuation and currency symbols. Taco Wagon ($15) Taco Wagon is a distressed display font inspired by Mexican hand-painted lettering. It includes a separate file for the drop shadow, so that it can be colored independently. Sunset Strip ($79) Sunset Strip is a pretty script font designed by Jason Walcott for Jukebox Type. It includes a full collection of characters, including alternates. Sanchez ($126) Sanchez is a slab-serif typeface that strongly resembles Rockwell, except with rounded edges. It includes 12 variants, and is the first display typeface family from Linotype. Sansational ($139) Sansational is a display sans serif typeface that includes six variants. It’s a casual font, with a playful touch, designed by Jason Walcott for Jukebox Type. Written exclusively for WDD by Cameron Chapman . Know of a new app or resource that should have been included but wasn’t? Let us know in the comments! Design and sell your first iPhone game – only $59! (reg. $249) Source

 

Mozilla demos WebRTC integration, browser-powered video chat (video)

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Last week at IETF 83 in Paris Mozilla gave a little demo that went almost completely unnoticed. The team behind Firefox showed off an experimental built of its flagship browser with integrated WebRTC support. To showcase the real-time communication plug-in’s capabilities, the foundation built a simple video chat client based around Persona and SocialAPI. Whether or not such a feature will ever make it into an official build of the browser remains to be seen, but for now you can check out the simple, yet impressive, HTML and Javascript demo after the break. Continue reading Mozilla demos WebRTC integration, browser-powered video chat (video) Mozilla demos WebRTC integration, browser-powered video chat (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Apr 2012 21:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink TechCrunch | Mozilla Hacks | Email this | Comments

 

Our favorite tweets of the week Apr 2 – Apr 8, 2012

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Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers. The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter , however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the best tweets that we sent out this past week. Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that we tweeted about, so don’t miss out. To keep up to date with all the cool links, simply follow us @DesignerDepot Parallax Scrolling: An Introduction http://su.pr/1ASut4 The Importance of White Space: Take a Breath Already! http://ow.ly/a1aNZ Get rid of that mess: 10 Plugins to Help Spring Clean Your WordPress Blog http://ow.ly/a1aL4 Icon fonts are awesome, but.. http://ow.ly/a1czO 8-Bit Video Games Can Teach Us About Design And UX. Here’s what: http://ow.ly/a1cER Mark Powell takes his drawing skill to vintage envelopes & the result is stunning http://ow.ly/a1bXO Birth of a Book: a tour of Smith Settle’s handmade bookbinding process http://ow.ly/a3r23 *Its growth is then up to us Foresight.js gives webpages a future-preview ability http://ow.ly/a3pDH Seoul-based Studio fnt has an incredible body of work with clean, but powerful results http://ow.ly/a3tSj The ethics of SEO – what’s your status? http://ow.ly/a4tDX The Key To Keeping Designers Happy – Facebook Has It http://ow.ly/a4JJx Typography Shop has some cool stuff for designers and typophiles. Check them out! http://might.ly/a4dHI Drop Caps: Historical Use And Current Best Practices With CSS http://ow.ly/a4Ltn *Inspiring read Up and Running With Custom Post Types http://su.pr/2JZDMR Can You Guess The 8 Reasons Why Users Don’t Fill Out Sign Up Forms? http://ow.ly/a6kPq Webkit CSS properties allows you to enhance the look of your web pages where possible. Check it out: http://ow.ly/a6lgl Matt Needle shows you how to transform an iconic image into a visually striking, unique print http://ow.ly/a6nIk Fool.js – awesomeness & fun http://ow.ly/a7ig9 Mhm, mhm, you’re goona like this http://ow.ly/a7poT Easy WordPress pagination without plugins Astounding collection of Minimalist Movie Posters http://ow.ly/a7qXU How Ford Engages Customers With Social Media http://ow.ly/a7sbj *great insights from a connoisseur Want more? No problem! Keep track of all our tweets by following us @DesignerDepot Arnold Samuels Art Deco Font – only $14! Source

 

Mozilla releases BrowserQuest for HTML5 gamers and warriors (video)

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Mozilla is flexing its HTML5 muscles today, with a new game called BrowserQuest. Designed specifically for browser-based gaming, BrowserQuest brands itself as a “tribute to classic video games with a multiplayer twist.” The game’s plot is relatively routine — warriors, hidden treasure, etc. — but what’s most interesting is its underlying architecture. Its 2D tile graphics engine is powered by HTML5 Canvas, with browser-to-server communications handled by WebSockets. Sound effects, meanwhile, are powered by HTML5 audio APIs, and each player’s progress is saved using localStorage. The game also supports lots of simultaneous players, thanks to a JavaScript-coded backend that runs on Node.js. You can keep track of the player load in real-time at the BrowserQuest Dashboard (linked below). For more details, check out the source link at the bottom of the page, or click past the break for a brief demo video. Continue reading Mozilla releases BrowserQuest for HTML5 gamers and warriors (video) Mozilla releases BrowserQuest for HTML5 gamers and warriors (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Mar 2012 06:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink Ars Technica | Mozilla | Email this | Comments

 

Marvell launches Kinoma Play app platform for Android

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Almost a year has passed since we last saw Marvell’s Kinoma platform in person, but the time has finally arrived for its release. We got the chance to sit down with Peter Hoddie, VP of the Kinoma Platform, to learn a little bit more about his software and what Kinoma can bring to your smartphone experience. First, a quick refresher. Kinoma Play is technically an app, but in reality it serves as an entirely new UI for your Android device running versions 2.1 and up. The platform currently has 50 of its own apps — written in Kinoma Play Script, a Javascript language — that are obtained through the Kinoma store, and these apps can be accessed on their own or through Play’s unique dashboard system. There are currently five dashboards: Play, Search, Places, Music, and Send, with more to come as users ask for them. These dashboards group related apps and allow you to access them simultaneously in a truncated, list form — for instance, the search dashboard returns results from Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Bing, and any other Kinoma app you choose to add. In addition to those useful dashboards, the software improves the UX by simply speeding things up. It’s a lightweight platform with small apps (many are only 100 – 150KB in size) that launch quickly and run smoothly. Still not sold? Head on past the break to see Peter walk us through a little bit of what Kinoma can do, and read on to learn more about the platform. Continue reading Marvell launches Kinoma Play app platform for Android Marvell launches Kinoma Play app platform for Android originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Mar 2012 13:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | | Email this | Comments

 

What’s new for designers, March 2012

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The February edition of what’s new for web designers and developers includes new web apps, frameworks, jQuery plugins, icons, productivity tools, responsive design resources, and some really great new fonts. Many of the resources below are free or very low cost, and are sure to be useful to a lot of designers and developers out there. As always, if we’ve missed something you think should have been included, please let us know in the comments. And if you have an app or other resource you’d like to see included next month, tweet it to @cameron_chapman for consideration. Osmosis Osmosis is a simple app for managing your client questionnaires in a way that makes it easier to interact with your clients and gather the information you need from them. It’s made to fit into your workflow while still being easy to use for your clients. MockVault MockVault is a web app for getting approval from clients for your designs. It guides them through the design you’ve created, making it easier for them to review and approve. Trajectory Trajectory is a new app for managing software projects. It makes it easy to write user stories, track bugs and to-dos, while also facilitating discussion. The Responsinator The Responsinator lets you test any live website for responsiveness on a variety of mobile devices, including tablets and e-readers. All you have to do is enter a URL. Font Awesome Font Awesome is an icon font designed specifically for use with Twitter Bootstrap. It includes over 150 icons, is free for commercial use, offers infinite scalability, and is screen reader compatible. TOC Need a table of contents for your website? TOC is a jQuery plugin that does just that. It’s completely customizable, automatically highlights the current section, and is extremely lightweight. Simple Green SimpleGreen is an icon pack for sustainable businesses. The free version includes 48 environment and social icons, while the paid version includes 200 icons. Codiqa Codiqa is a tool for rapidly creating mobile app prototypes. It’s drag-and-drop jQuery interface makes it quick and easy to build what you need, and it also includes tools for sharing those prototypes. Iubenda Iubenda lets you quickly and easily generate a privacy policy for your website. Just add services, insert the owner, embed the policy, and show the result. Curtain.js Curtain.js is a plugin for creating a web page with multiple fixed panels that unroll with a curtain-rising effect. Navigation is done via keyboard, scrollbar, or your mousewheel. Wonderflux Wonderflux is a new free WordPress theme framework that lets you rapidly create WP themes. It’s licensed under the GPLv2, so you can use it on unlimited client, personal, and commercial sites. Centratissimo Centratissimo is an all-centered, auto-resizable layout. It includes smooth scrolling between pages and dynamic resizing, along with some other neat features, all done with jQuery. Turn.js Turn.js is a jQuery plugin for creating page-turning transitions with HTML5. It uses hardware acceleration, works on tablets and smartphones, is lightweight (only 6K), and is easy to manipulate. jQuery Org Chart jQuery Org Chart is a plugin that lets you render tree-like structures with nested elements. Data is entered in a nested unordered list, making it incredibly easy to use. bgStretcher II bgStretcher is a jQuery plugin for adding a full-page background image that proportionally resizes to fill the entire window area. It’s unobtrusive and simple to setup, and works with all modern browsers. Hogan.js Hogan.js is a JavaScript templating engine developed by Twitter. It’s only 2.5K, and was developed against the mustache test suite (so all the specs for that hold true for Hogan.js). Entypo Entypo is a set of more than a hundred pictograms, available as an OpenType font, a web font, and vector EPS. It’s Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike licensed, so you can use it on personal and commercial projects. Prefix Free Prefix Free processes your code to add the current browser’s prefix to any CSS code, so you can use only un-prefixed CSS properties in your code. It works in IE9+, Opera 10+, Firefox 3.5+, Safari 4+, and Chrome. Zoomooz Zoomooz is a jQuery plugin for making any element on your website zoomable. It’s supported by all modern browsers and has detailed settings options. Underscore.js Underscore.js is a utility-belt library for JavaScript that gives you a lot of the functional support you’d expect from Ruby or Prototype.js without extending any of the built-in JavaScript objects. It provides over sixty functions that support the usual functional suspects, including map, select, invoke, as well as more specialized ones. Socialico Socialico is a set of 74 social media icons, combined with a single weight font. Lowercase letters show the icons in a circle, while the capital letters of the same alphabet show the icons without the circle. Warm Framework The Warp Framework provides a set of tools for developing cross-platform themes. It currently supports Joomla and WordPress, and can be extended to work with other systems. It makes it possible to create themes that are easily portable between supported systems while retaining all features. Glisse.js Glisse.js is a responsive and customizable jQuery photo viewer. Transitions between images are entirely assumed by CSS3. Collusion Collusion is a Firefox add-on that lets you see all the third parties that are tracking your movements online. In real time, it shows how that data creates a spiderweb of interaction. Cyfe Cyfe is an all-in-one business dashboard that lets you see an overview of your entire business in real time. View data from Google Analytics, Salesforce, AdSense, MailChimp, Amazon, Facebook, WordPress, Zendesk, Twitter, and more from a single location! jQuery HTML5 Placeholder Plugin This jQuery HTML5 Placeholder Plugin adds cross-browser support for the HTML5 placeholder attribute functionality via jQuery. It has a couple of customization options and usage is very straightforward. FanMix FanMix is a “social inbox” that lets you manage all of your conversations online from a single inbox, just like email. Probably the most useful feature is the ability to search across your entire social history. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Lightroom 4 was just released and includes some great new features. It includes new adjustment controls to maximize dynamic range from cameras, as well as new and improved auto adjustments. The upgrade is $79, while the full version is $149. Geared (name your price) Geared is a distressed slab serif typeface with a style reminiscent of athletic t-shirts. It comes with four unique weights: thin, regular, bold, and extrabold. Abraham Lincoln (name your price) Abraham Lincoln has perhaps the best tagline of any typeface: “Tall. Skinny. Honest.” It was inspired by the proportions of its namesake and the advertisements and playbills of the 1800s. Sedgwick Co (free) Sedgwick Co is an uppercase slab serif typeface inspired by the city of Wichita, KS. It’s both classic and modern, and reminscent of western-style fonts. Web Serveroff (free) Web Serveroff is a modern, condensed sans serif typeface. It comes in both regular and italic styles. Kommisar ($16.25) Kommisar is loosely based on the Trajan capital in Rome and influenced by Father Edward Catich, an American sign painter and lettering artist. It’s contemporary, but with a decidedly antiquarian look. Yeti ($5) Yeti is a display typeface, hand-drawn with a hint of calligraphy. It supports multiple languages and even comes with some graphics and web icons. Intro (free) Intro is a free geometric font from FontFabric. The letterforms are mostly created based on simple geometric shapes — triangles, circles, and squares. Written exclusively for WDD by Cameron Chapman . Know of a new app or resource that should have been included but wasn’t? Let us know in the comments! How to learn iOS Programming – 55% Off! Source

 

Our favorite tweets of the week Feb 27-Mar 4, 2012

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Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers. The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter , however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the best tweets that we sent out this past week. Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that we tweeted about, so don’t miss out. To keep up to date with all the cool links, simply follow us @DesignerDepot Oh those dreadful deadlines. Here’s some magic you can use to be on time http://ow.ly/9jb6L With tweets flying across the Twitterverse every day, let’s see what’s the state in 2012 http://ow.ly/9jdRl # HTML5 Hidden Gem: Context Menus ow.ly/9je30 The 10 Best WordPress Plugins for Online Entrepreneurs http://ow.ly/9jdYG *Great list What good is any info unless it provokes a healthy discussion? http://ow.ly/9je5x First contact http://ow.ly/i/tNxp Amazing Motion in Air Series by Mike Campau, a USA designer http://ow.ly/9je7h Sarah Bridgland’s collages pop right into your face! http://ow.ly/9jTPu What Can You Do With Paper.js? http://su.pr/2vz9ug Worth taking a look: 10 Graphic Novels for the Literary Minded http://ow.ly/9kKWK Is There Ever A Justification For Responsive Text? http://ow.ly/9l0jJ *Great article Check ‘em out: 11 CMSs to Help You Create Your Own Social Networking Website http://ow.ly/9l0E8 Cool! Cari Vander Yacht Turns Retro Snapshots Into Goofy Animated GIFs http://ow.ly/9l0N4 Blending Ads into your Website Layout the Creative Way http://ow.ly/9mtUy Why designers shouldn’t think outside the box http://ow.ly/9mB6M *Interesting article Start humming: 10 awesome HTML5 audio players http://ow.ly/9mBgg Laugh Of The Day: Yo Momma Jokes For Graphic Designers http://ow.ly/9mBuy How could anyone take a refreshingly new photo of a celebrity? Ask Jake Chessum. Or see his work: http://ow.ly/9mBCS Nice! RT @ smashingmag : regu.la: a small network of blogs serving a daily pinch of information – http://regu.la/ Paper-in-Screen Prototyping http://ow.ly/9o8iU *Very interesting # UX article Michiel Schuurman and his particular affinity for psychedelic & joyfully chromatic typography http://ow.ly/9o8I4 Fine Identity Portfolio by Tom Emil Olsen, a Designer from Norway http://ow.ly/9pLtK Want more? No problem! Keep track of all our tweets by following us @DesignerDepot HotGloo Professional Web Based Wireframing – 60% Off! Source

 

8 tools to make your website for free

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It’s the truth that sometimes we have to and want to produce web sites on a budget. It’s also true that sometimes we may just want to put up and create some sites for fun, so we don’t want to spend a ton of money on them. Well fortunately, that’s where the web comes in. There are so many great technological advances that allow us to create and put up websites, not just on a budget but for free. From web design to development, there are all-free services that allow us to create PROFESSIONAL web sites, not just template-based sites reminiscent of the late 90s. Today, we’ve picked 8 of the best sites to help you make your site—that’s right—everything is web-based and FREE. The design For many of us who are designers, we may start out with the design of the web site. It helps us visualize what we want where and gives us an idea how everything is going to be set up and work. Now many times designers will use programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Fireworks to create a layout. Below are three photo editing apps that I think are worth a try. Phoenix by Aviary What the developers say: “From basic image retouching to complex effects, Phoenix delivers the key features of a desktop image editor with the simplicity and accessibility of a web-based application.” What everyone is saying: The way that Phoenix is presented to us is as a tool that is great for image manipulations and adjustments and similar. The great thing about Phoenix is it has many of the features that are found familiar in Photoshop, but are much simpler. Everything that is necessary is there and is a bit more intuitive than more complex software like Photoshop or even Gimp. An added plus: Phoenix is created by Aviary, which has a plethora of other web based applications, such as a vector design application and video effects application. You are able to save your files on Aviary (as long as you’re a registered user) and you can easily open projects between applications. This is great for any designer or illustrator who wants to take their vector creation and make a website layout out of it. You are also able to import and work with PSD files. The drawbacks of this application are there aren’t a ton of filters. This doesn’t matter much if you are just making basic changes to photos (crop, transform, etc.), but if you are here to create a more complex layout or design, you may want to try a different application. Also, Aviary saves your work by default under a Creative Commons license, so unless you make changes there, you are going to be sharing your work all over. It can also publish your work for all to see through the Aviary network, if you choose to. Editor by Pixlr.com What the developers say: “ Pixlr Editor is a free online photo editor with a prefessional touch. Fix, adjust and filter your images…” What everyone is saying: Pixlr Editor pretty much presents itself as the online Photoshop. This application isn’t as easy to understand as the previous, Phoenix. There are so many features and filters in this Editor that are unique to this program, most for editing and retouching images. It would be very hard to use this application from scratch unless you have some knowledge about photo retouching, as well as some Photoshop knowledge. The sophistication of this application allows for more image heavy layouts and complex designs. There are plenty of filters and adjustments that help customize the looks of your images and design. There aren’t a lot of draw backs here, other than it’s a lot more complicated than most online applications, but because of that, there is a lot more customization that can be done. Unfortunately, you are unable to open and edit PSD files. However you are not required to have an account in order to save the files you create with Pixlr Editor—you can save them right on your hard drive. Splashup What the developers say: “ Splashup, formerly Fauxto, is a powerful editing tool and photo manager. With the features professionals use and novices want, it’s easy to use, works in real-time and allows you to edit many images at once. Splashup runs in all browsers, integrates seamlessly with top photo-sharing sites, and even has its own file format so you can save your work in progress. “ What everyone is saying: This application is a nice mix between the simplicity of Phoenix and the sophistication of Pixlr Editor. It seems to be an application that is close to—but not quite—a Photoshop copycat. I would actually say it isn’t as intuitive, as all the tools and buttons are not the same and it can get kind of confusing. However, that does not change the power of the designing capabilities. The biggest drawback I found with Splashup is that it is built with Flash. It’s not a huge deal, but it can probably suck up a lot of memory and go through many bugs and glitches. Also again, I didn’t find it as intuitive and easy to use as the other programs, mainly because of the Flash implementation and difference in some buttons. The bottom line, though, is Splashup is fully capable to design a web layout. Unfortunately again, this program does not import PSD files, but you also don’t need to have an account to save files. You can save them onto your hard drive as well as an array of other places (such as Flickr, Photobucket, etc.). Sumo Paint What the developers say: “ Sumopaint is

 

6 ways to improve your blog’s design

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Blogs can often be left out in the cold when it comes to design. A lot of us discount the need for intensive design when it comes to our blogs—whether for our companies, or ourselves. But it is important that we realize every aspect of our identity online should be designed in a clean and intuitive way with whatever style you prefer.

 

Mozilla Labs Apps set to allow developer submissions for Mozilla Marketplace at MWC

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Been keeping up with Mozilla Labs’ Apps project? Today the company’s focused on developers, with pleasing news if you’ve been looking to get your app’s feet wet in it. In the coming weeks at Mobile World Congress , the Firefox maker will finally open its self-titled Marketplace’s doors for app submissions. If you’re unfamiliar, Mozilla’s been working to create an “operating system- and device-independent market,” based on its own APIs, HTML5 and other open source materials. The end result will be the ability to use said apps without being locked down by your devices and their respective app stores. The store is set to open up for consumer consumption later in the year, so now’s your chance to reserve your software’s spot and name on the list. More details await in press release after the break and at source link below, while you get your code ready. Continue reading Mozilla Labs Apps set to allow developer submissions for Mozilla Marketplace at MWC Mozilla Labs Apps set to allow developer submissions for Mozilla Marketplace at MWC originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink Mobile Burn | The Mozilla Blog | Email this | Comments