WebDev3000 » Design http://www.webdev3000.com web design, freebies and more Tue, 20 Dec 2011 22:07:46 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 Surface iPhone UI Kit http://www.webdev3000.com/surface-iphone-ui-kit/ http://www.webdev3000.com/surface-iphone-ui-kit/#comments Thu, 16 Jun 2011 06:06:12 +0000 Codrut Nistor http://www.webdev3000.com/?p=974 Still having some problems with your iPhone development work? Well, I guess there’s nothing out of this world, since nothing’s that simple when it comes to programming stuff for the iPhone/iPad or the iPod. Fortunately, there are plenty of great tools available for free, so if you want to ease your life, you don’t really have to start paying for tools that can help you. Today, the time has come to tell you a few words about Surface iPhone UI Kit, so let’s get to it, shall we?

This excellent freebie know as Surface iPhone UI Kit was designed to cover all the common UI elements of the iPhone, being one hell of a choice for those in need to quickly design user interfaces of iPhone apps. Also great for wireframing, Surface iPhone UI Kit includes two PSD files – one for the Retina resolution and one for standard (pre iPhone 4) resolution. More than just that, you can also mess with the set and obtain interface elements that can be easily used to “dress” iPad apps, even programs built to run on Android and Windows phones!

Other than the above, I think there’s nothing much left to be said – after all, designing a user interface is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, so… start sweating with Surface iPhone UI Kit, will you? Good luck! ;)

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]]> http://www.webdev3000.com/surface-iphone-ui-kit/feed/ 0 Three Icon Sets For You http://www.webdev3000.com/three-icon-sets-for-you/ http://www.webdev3000.com/three-icon-sets-for-you/#comments Tue, 14 Jun 2011 04:18:11 +0000 Codrut Nistor http://www.webdev3000.com/?p=969 I know some of you may not consider this to be such a great find, but I think we all need some cool icon sets from time to time. If they come for free, then we’re already talking about an offer that only a few can refuse, so today I decided to tell you about not one or two, but three icon sets. These being said, let’s take them down one by one, shall we?

Released by design deck on the 3rd of June, the 25-icon Mini Social Icon Set includes 25 layered social icons freely available in PNG JPG & PSD formats for the following: Rss, Facebook, Twitter, dribbble, Google, last FM, Share this, Ember, Digg, LinkedIn, YouTube, Skype, Stumbleupon, Evernote, flickr, Forrst, Yahoo, Github, Vimeo, Aim, tumblr, Paypal, Behance, MySpace and Gowalla. As you can see in the image above, they look pretty cool, so I guess we can move on now, right?


Next in line is the Clean Noise Social Media Icon Set from Creative Nerds, also freely available to use in commercial and non commercial design projects, just like the previous set. This one contains 12 icons, looks different, but it’s still a great resource, so here you have it!


At last, we have a set of Awesome Textured Icons that, in fact, consists of over 40 black and white icons (shades of grey also included, lol), also packing 10 social network icons. Each icon comes as a 32X32 PNG image, but if you need them larger or smaller, you should know that vector PSD files are also available in the ZIP file. Free for both personal and commercial purposes, the Awesome Textured Icons set is a great way to close this day, don’t you think? That’s all, folks! ;)

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]]> http://www.webdev3000.com/three-icon-sets-for-you/feed/ 0 Lubith http://www.webdev3000.com/lubith/ http://www.webdev3000.com/lubith/#comments Thu, 09 Jun 2011 14:30:02 +0000 Codrut Nistor http://www.webdev3000.com/?p=966 Can you believe that some people pay up to 100 bucks or more to some self-titled “designers” who don’t work at least 20 minutes to “create” a WordPress theme? I didn’t do such a thing, but one buddy of mine did it a few times – in the end, it’s not a fool the one asking, but the one paying, especially since we’re only talking about starting with some theme already available and changing it here and there, not building one from scratch! Well, today I’ll give everyone something to think about – Lubith can do a lot for free… so if you’re planning to pay for a WordPress theme, at least be sure you’ll get an original one, not just a painted old crow, all right? ;)

No need for any other introduction – Lubith is a Web-based WordPress theme editor that, unfortunately, only seems to work with Firefox and Chrome, but it surely gets the job done! By using it, you’ll save a lot of time and money, since it requires no coding, it’s completely free and sports an intuitive interface. Even more, if “intuitive” is not easy for you, there’s also a tutorials section on the official page, available right here. For now, it’s only one there, but we’ll surely have more in the future, I have no doubt about it…

Other than the above, I should add that, in case you’re feelin’ lost, the support forum will surely help you – it’s not really crowded there as I write this, but most issues reported get answers pretty soon and, in the end, that’s what really matters – to learn how to master Lubith as soon as possible, so maybe you can create some WordPress themes for others in need and ready to pay for it, right? Good luck with that and anything else you may have in mind!

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]]> http://www.webdev3000.com/lubith/feed/ 0 resizeMyBrowser http://www.webdev3000.com/resizemybrowser/ http://www.webdev3000.com/resizemybrowser/#comments Tue, 07 Jun 2011 08:45:37 +0000 Codrut Nistor http://www.webdev3000.com/?p=963 For a lot of Web developers and designers, keeping things as short and simple as possible is not something to choose – it’s something you follow as faithfully as possible, or else… wasting your time can have really nasty consequences, going as far as leaving you without any work to do. After all, who wants to work with a person/company needing more time than all the others to get the same job done? Well, today we’re not going to talk about any impressive script or IDE that can help you spare some of that precious time, since I think that easy to use, straightforward Web-based tools like resizeMyBrowser can also have a serious impact in the long run…

… so let’s make a short story even shorter: created by Chen Luo, resizeMyBrowser is nothing more but a browser resizing application that works best with best on Safari, Firefox and IE, unfortunately still encountering some issues on Opera and Chrome. Basically, it does the following things: allows you to set to set the browser size by both Inner window and Outer window, displays the current size values in real time when manually resizing the browser, it even lets you create your own presets, all inside a clean layout. Excellent!

As I write this, resizeMyBrowser is free and I have no doubt that it will continue to remain this way. Current version is 1.0.9, released back on the 23rd of February and, if you ask me, all I wish to see until Christmas is support for Opera and Chrome or – why not? – even some extensions for this browser to get the resizing job properly done. That’s all, folks! ;)

]]> http://www.webdev3000.com/resizemybrowser/feed/ 0 Css-sprit.es http://www.webdev3000.com/css-sprit-es/ http://www.webdev3000.com/css-sprit-es/#comments Thu, 02 Jun 2011 10:45:23 +0000 Codrut Nistor http://www.webdev3000.com/?p=959 While an experienced developer can get started with CSS and go above average level in less than an hour, I think that code generators should be used as often as possible, I decided to take a closer look at another Web-based CSS tool. After a few minutes spent searching for something interesting enough, I ended up facing today’s subject – ladies and gentlemen, here’s Css-sprit.es!

Before anything else, Css-sprit.es is a great domain name, if you ask me. Other than that, I think I should add that this is a Web-based CSS sprites generator that can be freely used by anyone and packs a bunch of interesting features, including CSS-based rollover effects with a few different presets available. The sprite image to upload can be in the JPG, GIF or PNG format, while output is CSS or SASS.


“Carefully handcrafted by Nicolas Crovatti” and powered by jQuery and Pixastic, Css-sprit.es is still in Beta status, but seems like a pretty useful, good looking and reliable Web-based tool, so why not take it for a spin? Since “Beta” also means “possibly buggy” and I must confess I didn’t manage to spot any bugs, could you drop a comment below with any compatibility/functional bugs that you encountered, if any? Thank you in advance!

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]]> http://www.webdev3000.com/css-sprit-es/feed/ 0 Vectorian Giotto http://www.webdev3000.com/vectorian-giotto/ http://www.webdev3000.com/vectorian-giotto/#comments Thu, 12 May 2011 10:30:00 +0000 Codrut Nistor http://www.webdev3000.com/?p=924 As you probably noticed until now, we usually stay away from standalone software for a single platform here, on WebDev3000. Well, today we’ll talk about Vectorian Giotto, a program that only works with Win 2000/XP/Vista/7, so in case you’re wondering why is this happening, I can only tell you two words: free and awesome. Ready for it? Let’s go!

According to the official mumbo-jumbo, Vectorian Giotto 3.0 “is the free Flash animation package made for you to design, not to code.” While Adobe’s Flash is slowly moving away from designers to coders (according to the official Giotto page I mentioned above, the introduction of ActionScript 3 lead to simple actions like a button click to require 10x more coding than before!), Giotto provides a familiar interface and all the tools required to get some quick Flash work done without having to code your heart out. Even more, it doesn’t cost a single penny! ;)

The features list looks pretty solid, including a built-in editor for color palettes, vector drawing tools, filters… not to mention that rich collection of templates that allows you to have a simple banner ready in a matter of minutes. Ssssss-mokin’!!! Other than all these, I think I can only add a minor drawback – the documentation is only available online, but since Giotto is such a great product, I think we can overlook this minor issue, don’t you think? After all, you only need to remember that Vectorian Giotto is one hell of a Flash tool, great for both amateur and professional designers and, since it comes for free… why not give it a try? Good luck!

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]]> http://www.webdev3000.com/vectorian-giotto/feed/ 1 Patternify http://www.webdev3000.com/patternify/ http://www.webdev3000.com/patternify/#comments Tue, 12 Apr 2011 16:45:12 +0000 Codrut Nistor http://www.webdev3000.com/?p=904 Weather has been really sad lately – a lot of rain, cold as in late November/early December… all without following any logical pattern. Well… weather may go on a strange path, but as far as pattern generators go, Patternify scores quite a few points in my book, despite the fact we’re not talking about a perfect product. After all, we’re not trying to find perfection here – we simply look for things worth checking out that may prove useful to some of you and, at least if you ask me, Patternify is one of them.

What’s so special about Patternify, after all? Nothing really special, but it’s clearly one Web-based tool I had some fun discovering and taking for a spin – this free to use application allows you to easily design stripe patterns that can be exported as PNG files. More than just designing a pattern from scratch, you can also choose one of the existing 15 patterns, grouped into three categories – Old School, Color and Misc. Even more, you can also grab the generated base64 CSS code instead of the PNG file mentioned above. At last, Patternify provides a unique link for each pattern, so you can easily share your work with others – not that it’s really hard to draw something that’s as large as 10X10 pixels maximum… ;)

In case you’re still wondering about the licensing part… there’s no license to be scared of, just a free service that can be used to generate freely usable patterns – nothing more, nothing less! Oh, yeah… speaking about compatibility… I guess there’s no surprise that Patternify works with all major browsers – at least that’s what I can tell you. If you have some problems with Patternify on a specific software/hardware combination, please drop a comment below to let everyone know about it, all right? That’s all, folks!

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]]> http://www.webdev3000.com/patternify/feed/ 1 Page Speed http://www.webdev3000.com/page-speed/ http://www.webdev3000.com/page-speed/#comments Mon, 04 Apr 2011 12:40:21 +0000 Codrut Nistor http://www.webdev3000.com/?p=900 As I’m sure you know already, Google’s algorithm has been taking into account the speed of the Web sites checked for quite a while. Obviously, the speed of a page/website doesn’t only depend on the raw speed of the server hosting it, since there’s much more to keep in mind than that, and Page Speed was always one of the best tools to help you evaluate your websites’ performance…

… only that today we’re talking about Google’s popular Firebug/Chrome addon with a twist: Page Speed just got a brand new online version that offers similar functionality to the addon mentioned above, only that it can be used on any Web browser. Using it is really straightforward – all you have to do is enter the URL you want to check, choose if you want to get suggestions for improving your site’s speed on desktop or mobile devices, then browse the results.

If the above doesn’t seem clear enough, then you definitely have to take a look at Page Speed or… just read some of that official mumbo-jumbo right now, despite the fact it doesn’t actually say anything new: Page Speed “is a web-based tool that allows users to analyze pages at any time, in any browser, without downloading an extension. It also features Page Speed Mobile analysis, which lets developers analyze their site as viewed by a mobile browser, and get suggestions specific to mobile optimization.” Got it? Get to it! ;)

]]> http://www.webdev3000.com/page-speed/feed/ 0 CSSWARP http://www.webdev3000.com/csswarp/ http://www.webdev3000.com/csswarp/#comments Tue, 15 Mar 2011 08:53:34 +0000 Codrut Nistor http://www.webdev3000.com/?p=878 To be honest, I think the time for warped text has passed, but if you’re into some retro-style Web design, then I am sure you’ll find CSSWARP to be pretty useful – after all, we’re talking about a Web-based application that can generate HTML5 code, so it’s not retro to the bone, actually… ;)

According to its official page, CSSWARP is a CSS3 text to path generator that’s more than just another tool – this one “is a proof of concept” that allows you to “create Illustrator like “warped” text (text following an irregular path) with pure CSS and HTML.” Using CSSWARP is really straightforward, but some things need to be said – for example, this Web-based tool can also use local fonts, next to any font you may want to pick from the Google Font Directory.

The features of this tool are not hidden, so everything’s revealed at first sight – customizable text, curve style and font type, instant warped HTML generation, browser-specific CSS rules (IE9, Opera, Firefox and WebKit available), while compatibility of this tool shouldn’t raise any concerns – CSSWARP works with all modern browsers… as long as we’re not talking about some modern text mode browser, of course! ;)

Ouch, forgot about this – in case you didn’t manage to take a look at CSSWARP yet and you’re wondering about its price, I have some good news for you – this tool is free to use for everyone, at least at this time!

]]> http://www.webdev3000.com/csswarp/feed/ 0 Online CSS Code Generators http://www.webdev3000.com/online-css-code-generators/ http://www.webdev3000.com/online-css-code-generators/#comments Tue, 15 Feb 2011 21:21:53 +0000 Adrian http://www.webdev3000.com/?p=840 CSS is the  most used style sheet languages. But if you are new in web programming, CSS is not that user friendly as you might expect. But there are a few solotuins for this. The online CSS code generators are perfect tools for beginners and they will really help to design your website as you wanted.

In my opinion, the best online CSS code generator is CSS3.0 Maker. Using CSS3.0 Maker you can create Border Radius, Gradient, CSS Transform, CSS Animation, CSS Transition, RGBA, Text Shadow, Box Shadow, Text Rotation and @Font Face. Another great thing about CSS3.0 Maker is the browser compatibility and mobile compatibility options. This way you can see with what browsers/mobile devices is your CSS code compatible.

If you want to create only menus using CSS code, you should try Only CSS Menu. The name says all about this online tool. Using Only CSS Menu you can create great horizontal menus, vertical menus, horizontal dropdown menu, step by step navigation, and vista style CSS menu.

Online CSS Editor is not really a code generator. Is more like a CSS dynamic previewer. You can write the code and you can preview the results. Or you can use it to modify a CSS file. From here you can also use CSS Validator. With CSS Validator you can validate your code and you can see the errors in your CSS that can make your page to be displayed incorrectly.

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