Five invaluable web tools for any designer
Monday, November 9th, 2009
Sometimes, a designer is left stranded on a computer that lacks their normal tools of the trade, and when they get the itch to design something… Well, oftentimes, they’re out of luck.
But, there are some web tools that can be awesome temporary replacements for all your beloved applications. Sometimes you’ll have to give up some favourite features, but in the end… Well, be happy with what you get.
And there are other times when you could just use some assistance with whatever you’re working on, and said assistance is best found in your browser. Well, for your benefit, I’ve gathered up five of my favourite designer web apps so you can have a go.
Aviary
Aviary is a great web-based replacement for Photoshop. At first, I cringed at the thought, but it’s really quite fantastic.
It’s got an awesome feature set, and has one goal in mind… It’s even outlined in a header on their homepage. “Creation on the Fly”
I think a designer of any calibre will be impressed with what Aviary has to offer. It’s definitely worth a look.
Colour Scheme Designer
Colour Scheme Designer is fantastic… Everybody has that moment of, “What goes together?” when they’re designing something, and this sets out to conserve as much as your time as possible by making it easy to whip up a colour scheme and get back to the important stuff.
CSS Sandbox: Markup for the rest of us
We can’t all be CSS gurus. CSS Sandbox allows you to quickly make a stylesheet in real-time, with your results shown right above, by just clicking various elements that you want included. It really doesn’t get much simpler than this. And if it does, I want the link to whatever you’re using.
Choose your colour, border colour, font, text align, border width… This thing’s got it all, and you can easily copy and paste the markup when you’ve got the look you want.
Dummy Text Generator (Lorem Ipsum)
Now, this is about as basic as it gets for any designer… a Dummy Text Generator. It’s one of the key things you learn about when you’re in the early stages of whipping up that first template, and it remains a key piece for just about anything you’re working on that contains text.
It fills the gaps, and makes your design flow and look natural.
There are tons of Lorem Ipsum generators around the ‘net, but this one’s got a permanent spot on my bookmark toolbar, due to it’s simplicity and brilliant design. There’s not much variety that can be put into one of these things, but these guys did it right.
PHP Anywhere
I feel this one doesn’t need much of an explanation, but sure, why not?
PHP Anywhere is a nice little web app that lets you take your code with you. You can edit your code right in your browser, allowing you to keep working on that project no matter where you are, so long as you’ve got an internet connection. This is an incredibly valuable resource.
And with that, I leave you to your work.
There are tons more web apps out there, and new ones are sprouting up every day, so keep an eye out.
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