At last, you should save your barcode, and the formats available are only two – JPEG or PNG, but I think they’re enough. I don’t think you’ll have any problems using this tool, and I hope you won’t ever need technical support, because Barcodes Inc., the company behind it, won’t offer such a thing. After all, you got the freebie, what else can you ask? Enjoy it as it is!

Compatibility: any major browser – it even works in Firefox with the scriptblocker enabled!

Using BgPatterns is really straightforward – all you need to do is mess with each of the elements I mentioned above, and finally download you work (you can also get a free account on the site and save it there, or just apply the background image to the background of the site itself). Awesome!

Just one more thing – BgPatterns is free for any kind of work you may have in mind, but if you really like this resource and make good use of it, I suggest sparing some bucks for a little donation…

Compatibility: I played with BgPatterns in Opera, IE, Chrome, and even in FF with my script blocker turned on (warning: disable such tools to see the tool working properly, all right?) – everything worked just as expected!

All categories are available from the front page of the site, and we’re talking about exactly 20 categories here, from Brick, Concrete and Fabric, all the way down to Water or Wood. When talking about textures, size DOES matter, and I was really happy to notice that most textures available here are about 3000X2000 pixels large, and nicely compressed, since the JPEG files are usually around 3-4MB in size.

Each image can be previewed and then downloaded as a ZIP file, and the only thing that I can see as bad about TextureZ is that you can’t add desired files to some kind of download basket and get’em all with a click. Well, I guess you can’t have everything for free, so you should work your way to downloading this entire site, after all – unless you’re going to use some kind of download manager…

Compatibility: any browser you may use, probably even text-based ones (none available here to try that, sorry…)

More than just creating patterns, you can test them with one of the (only) six backgrounds available, but the image you’ll download is a XxY(3X3 up to 32X32) pixels GIF file with the pattern you customized. Each pattern can be exported as a line of code (something like “{x:3,y:3,p:[[2,0],[0,2]]}”), so you can have your own patterns collection at hand anytime. This may seem like a primitive approach, but it gets the job done easily, and that’s what really matters, after all…

At last, you should also take a look at the library, currently containing 175 items. If you think that designing small patterns can’t be really fun or the results can’t be that interesting… take a look at the Stripe Designer library, and then get back here!

Compatibility: Stripe Designer worked well with IE, Opera, Maxthon, Firefox, and even Google Chrome, so I guess it should work with any major or less-major browser you throw at it…

At last, you should also take a look at the gallery and enjoy the social part of the site – you can sign up for a free account, share your tartans, see them being voted and climbing up the ladder leading to the Hall of Fame.

Oh, yeah, there one more thing I should tell you – once you finish playing with your design, the texture can be downloaded as a PNG file with the tiny resolution of 36X36 pixels (at least that’s what I got on my first try), but depending on the settings, it can get as high as 600X600 pixels.

Compatibility: I tried Tartan Maker with Opera, Firefox (3.5 already), Google Chrome, IE, Maxthon, and I only had problems in FF, because of my script blocker… so everything’s just great

Patterns can be downloaded as 260X260 pixels large PNG files, but PatternCooler also offers the chance of customizing everything about these patterns, including size. The cherry on top of the PatternCooler cake is the fact that you can create a free account and save all your “work in progress” patterns, making it easier to manage what’s cool and what’s not, since there are currently 139 patterns available to choose from, and that number is constantly growing…

Compatibility: to fully enjoy PatternCooler, you will need a Web browser with full SVG support; some features, like pattern editing, are not available in Opera, but everything seems to work fine in Flock, Firefox, Internet Explorer 8, as well as in Safari and Google Chrome

… be sure not to miss Stripe.licious!!! Here, you can watch and save the latest stripes created by registered users of the website, as well as take them to the main page and edit the stripes to match your needs.

The result of your work can be saved as PNG or transparent background GIF file, and working with this tool is nothing less but pure fun. No matter if you need stripes for some project or not, my suggestion is to give Stripemania a chance. The weekend is only a few hours away, and if you hate games and wasting time in front of the computer, this little Web-based tool can provide you those 10 minutes of fun to get the weekend started properly!

Compatiblity: Stripemania works great with every browser you can think of – Internet Explorer 7/8, Firefox, Flock, Opera, Safari, and even “strange creatures” like K-Meleon

There are two elements to customize – dots, and background. For each of them, you have to choose one or two colors, enter its hex value (a color picker would have been nice), select the size, and then press OK. Randomizing settings is also a good option. At last, just right click and choose Save Background As. Why? Because…

Compatibility: after playing with Background Dotter for a while, I can conclude that you should use it in Internet Explorer 7/8 and compatible browsers, because they didn’t add a Save button yet, and saving the background image can’t be done in Safari or Opera; Firefox/Flock can also be used with this tool, but you’ll have to click View Background Image first, and then Save Image As, both available as you right click over the page