WebDev3000 » CC License

Three Icon Sets For You

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 04:18:11 +0000

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!

Incoming search terms:

Get Shareaholic

FlipBook CMS

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 18:59:48 +0000

Today, I found myself listening to a few ladies talking about kids, books, computers and TV. I am no detective, I just happened to be in the right place at the right time and just hear them talk. All of a sudden, I remembered some of the books I read over and over again back when I was a kid or how glad I was every time I got a new book or even when I got a book from my school’s library. Well, those times may be gone, but… FlipBook CMS brings them back in a strange way – without any piece of paper, just with a computer, some kind of Internet connection and virtually no coding!

Absolutely free to download and use, FlipBook CMS also comes with the source code that you can easily modify and remove the backlink to flip-book-free.com. Great, so you can have a flipbook with a CMS-style backend without paying a single penny! In case you didn’t figure that out already, the catch is that pages can be easily edited, without bothering to edit any XML files and images.

FlipBook CMS includes a wide range of features, can be easily customized and is also SEO friendly, coming with a one-click installation PHP script. What else could you ask of it? A preview, right! Here you go – you don’t want to miss it, trust me, even if you think that you don’t need FlipBook CMS, because the preview flipbook has an excellent audio loop in the background and it would be a pity to come so close to it and not hear it. That’s all, folks!

Incoming search terms:

Get Shareaholic

Less Framework

Codrut Nistor — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 21:15:50 +0000

I am sure you think that Android tablets, the whole iPad madness, these smartphones that get more powerful with each month are great, right? No matter if we’re looking at it from a regular user’s point of view or we take things seriously and use a developer’s perspective, things are looking great for everyone: more ways to access the Internet on the road and have fun with games you couldn’t even dream of a decade ago for the average Joe/Jane, more devices needing for applications to work with… but unfortunately also more headaches when it comes to designing sites that work well on computers using different resolutions and operating systems, phones, iPads, iPhones and so on.

Well, Less Framework just got a new update, bringing its current version number to 3. Good, but what is it, after all? To make a long story short, I think it’s enough said that Less Framework 3 is a cross-device CSS grid system that uses standards-based CSS3 media queries, being fully compatible with all the browsers that really matters and then some, since the list available on its official page is this: Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer 9, Android phones, and all iOS devices (that’s all iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches). Pretty impressive, if you ask me…

… but in case you don’t want to go through the entire mumbo-jumbo on that site, here’s a little excerpt to get you started: “The idea is to first create a default layout normally, and then additional layouts using inline media queries. Any browsers incompatible with media queries will simply ignore all the additional layouts, and will only use the default one. The additional layouts will inherit any styles given to the default layout, so coding them is a breeze.”

There are no special requirements, just click the link above, do your thing and get your code snippet – it’s just as easy as that! Good luck!

Incoming search terms:

Get Shareaholic

Agile Uploader

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:17:10 +0000

I love smart scripts. I really enjoy when I get to earn more time for thinking, instead of working on repetitive tasks. For example, let’s think about image uploading and resizing. No matter what I use to resize the files, this operation requires my direct intervention. Fortunately, scripts like Agile Uploader can do this by themselves!

Freely available and covered by the terms of the Creative Commons license, Agile Uploader has no special requirements, offering excellent speed and being able to resize images on the client-side, thus saving bandwidth and computing time of the server used.

Agile Uploader can handle both single and multiple files, and if the default SWF file encapsulating this script is not enough, you can also take advantage of the jQuery plugin bundled with it. As a little bonus, the plugin comes with a few visual settings, not to mention that you can use it to set options that get passed to the SWF via flashvars in the end…

Compatibility: all major browsers, at least until proven otherwise…

Incoming search terms:

Get Shareaholic

So So Social

Codrut Nistor — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 19:00:09 +0000

I think the World Wide Web should be renamed to WWSN. What do you think? WWSN should stand for “World Wide Social Network,” at least the way I see it. Good idea or bad idea, this surely reflects the reality of these last few years pretty accurately, so seeing more and more plugins like So So Social shouldn’t be amazing at all. Amazing or not, here it is…

… So So Social is a jQuery plugin that also uses some YQL (Yahoo Query Language) and has as purpose gathering RSS feeds from various social networks you may be using and then sorting all the info there into a so-called “activity feed,” turning your online activity from multiple sources into a single data stream similar to the news feed on Facebook, for example.

Thanks to YQL, you don’t have to mess with a single line of PHP, ASP, CFM or another language, and So So Social is easily customizable via CSS and JS, having a light footprint and being extremely easy to install and fire up. Covered by the terms of the CC License, So So Social works great with all major browsers and needs jQuery and a few minutes of your precious time. That’s all, folks!

Incoming search terms:

Get Shareaholic

HTML5 Reset

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 13:18:30 +0000

HTML5 is the way of the future… or nothing will manage to bring down Flash? Hey, but what about Adobe Air? When it comes to Web technologies, everything’s moving so fast, that even programmers/designers can’t keep up with all the new things. Fortunately, there are small things and big things that change on the Web these days, and while not everyone cares about the little things, all those involved in designing and programming websites should care about HTML5. A lot!

HTML5 Reset, today’s topic, is all about offering a base for those HTML5-CSS3 projects, packing together various JS hacks for IE, CSS-reset, as well as a bunch of other goodies that could help you overcome any browser compatibility issues that may appear. Next to the basic HTML5 stuff like title, header, footer, HTML5 Reset also contains “conditional comments to call about half a dozen IE-specific CSS files, as well as a couple popular IE-correcting javascript files.”

This package comes in two big versions, Bare Bones and Kitchen Sink. The first one only contains the essentials, while the other one offers a lot of things, so customizing it is usually about removing stuff, instead of adding it. This version is also available in two flavors, without comments and fully commented. I guess this is it for today, and I really hope you’ll find HTML5 Reset to be an easy and pleasant way of getting your week started… Good luck!

Get Shareaholic

phpA/B

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:17:11 +0000

While some say content is the king, I must somehow disagree. Content may be the king, but it’s all about delivery. No matter how brilliant and useful may be your writing, for example, users visiting your blog won’t look for those Google ads placed in a corner, or somewhere below the copyright information. Even more, colors and placement of page elements may turn interesting content into boring one, but – usually – not the other way around, so instead of finding about what’s good and bad the hard way, it would be a good idea to do some A/B testing…

Since I told you about this, I will tell you about a free tool for quickly setting up A/B tests on your website, namely phpA/B. Covered by the terms of the Creative Commons License, phpA/B integrates automatically into Google Analytics and can be run in both trial and live mode. After all, going for live testing with a popular website can hurt your finances a lot, in some cases.

Anyway, you shouldn’t worry about testing your work a bit, because phpA/B is able to automatically keep out search engine bots of your tests, allowing you to get some clean results and minimize risks. If you got “PHP version 5 or above, Google Analytics, and a thirst for knowledge,” you should go ahead and give phpA/B a try, don’t you think? Good luck!

Incoming search terms:

phpa/b

Get Shareaholic

Toucan

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:18:38 +0000

If you ever feel down, just think about people who struggle daily with more than you ever had to face your entire life. If that doesn’t help you move on… I honestly don’t what will. Think about colors and the world around you, for example. Ever felt that you’re living in a grey, sad city? Think about people who are color blind! Today, it’s not about making your life better, but about colors, and Toucan can really help you bring a lot of color into your projects…

… and, best of all, we’re talking about a completely free online resource, capable of providing up to 20 colors per palette, offering advanced sharing and importing features, all being done carefully following color theory. It even includes color deficiency previews, and to save your creations, you only need to create a free account. Unfortunately, I didn’t create an account, so I can’t tell you more about the formats available for saving your work, but I am sure you can discover that for yourselves, right?

All you have to do is go to this page and press the yellow Launch Toucan button. Oh, yeah, one more thing – Toucan seems to work properly with all popular browsers, and you will also find a great tutorial movie on the page that I just mentioned, so nobody’s asking you to create an account before seeing what you’ll get. That’s all, folks, enjoy Toucan and be sure to have a colorful day!

Get Shareaholic

Tiny Fluid Grid

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 09:04:03 +0000

A few years ago, resolutions used by people going online were only a few, so designing sites using fluid layouts wasn’t something you had to do to be sure everyone’s happy. With the large scale introduction of wide resolution monitors, mobile devices like the iPad or the netbooks, fluid design became much more important, and so happened with tools created to help you get this job done. Today, we’ll talk about Tiny Fluid Grid, pictured below.

Tiny Fluid Grid was inspired by the 1KB CSS Grid and allows you to easily create fluid grids in just a few minutes, while offering the chance to customize three variables of the output: number of columns, min & max width, as well as gutter percentage.

Covered by the terms of the CC License, Tiny Fluid Grid can be downloaded as a package containing the index.html file with demo code, and the grid.css containing the CSS for the fluid layout you just created.

Compatibility: The online tool and the generated code itself should work with all major Web browsers.

Incoming search terms:

Get Shareaholic

LAFKON vektorDB

Codrut Nistor — Mon, 03 May 2010 07:59:15 +0000

I love vectorized images, especially when they are the result of a conversion operation performed on a good photo. Sure, this requires a good photo and a program that can turn your raster image to vector, right? Scratch that, just get some free vectors, and that’s all. With resources like LAFKON vektorDB, you can’t go wrong!

LAFKON vektorDB is a freely accessible database containing free vector images created by LAFKON Publishing. How many sets are available? That’s a good question, and I am really sorry to say that I can’t answer it. Just… browse through, and start counting, if you really don’t have anything else better to do! Now, going back to the vectors and their use…

… I should add that all vectors are available as layered PDFs or SVGs, so you can easily edit them as needed. All the designs available on this page are free when used in open source projects, or with an attribution when used in free/commercial projects, being covered by the terms of the GNU and CC licenses.

Compatibility: all major browsers, as far as I can tell (no problems in Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome)

Incoming search terms:

Get Shareaholic