Graphic and Web Design BlogResources

15+ Amazing Project Management and Collaboration Tools

Siva Kumar — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:00:59 +0000

Everyone knows about what is project management. It’s nothing but planning, organizing and managing the resources.But how to do? What is the right way to do it. Are there any tools available for project management and collaboration. How these tools can be useful and what are the features. These are the things we are going to analyze in this article. We will see best project collaboration tools available on web to manage projects easily.

Pros and Cons of Project Collaboration Tools

Online project management lets you collaborate with project resources, manage project users, analyze risks, assign tasks, coordinate schedules and make your project a success from anywhere in the world.
These project management apps are here to save you time, but they can also be very time-consuming and not intuitive.
If you have a team who works with you remotely, then this is the right choice.

Project management process and its approach

Projects were generally managed by creative architects and engineers themselves. Major process steps are initiation, planning or development, production or execution, monitoring and controlling . To handle these process number of approaches are there like:

Traditional approach
Critical chain project management
Extreme project management
Event chain methodology
Prince2 (Structured approach)
Process based management.

1.Teambox

Teambox is listed first because it’s the application we are currently using for 1stwebdesigner, but don’t let that sway you. This is a place for your team in twitter like project collaboration tool. You can share tasks, messages, attach files and Notification by email.And also it’s an open source project.Teambox offers up to three projects free and offers 2000 projects for premium plans.And it’s very easy to use.

Advantages

Easy to setup in 1 minute.
Access from anywhere, anytime.
Secure and backup of your data.
Updating new features constantly.
Notified by mails.

2.Basecamp

This is a project management,Collaboration and task web-based tool trusted by millions of users.The features are Share files, Meet deadlines, Assign tasks, Centralize feedback, Basecamp tackles project management from an entirely different angle: A focus on communication and collaboration. They have some extras and addons also.Four price planning is available , Each and every plan has30 days trial period.

Advantages

Dashboard
To-do lists
File sharing
Message boards
Milestones
Time tracking
Project overview and comments on messages

3.Activecollab

A project management and collaboration tool.It will make your work and cooperation with your team, clients, suppliers and others much easier. Useful to keep projects on track, Email support, Extend and integrate of modules,Collaborate,Save time.And new added features are invoice,subversion integration,Global documents,Drag and drop task management, Improved visual editor and much more…

Advantages

Dashboard
Manage projects
Invoicing
Track time
Share files
Email integration etc…

4.DeskAway

It’s an online project management, project collaboration,Task & issue tracking software.Easy to use for virtual,distributed and global teams.The main reasons why you have to use Deskaway are simple & affordable,Less email clutter,Delegation and tracking, Control is in your hand, Nothing to download and install,Backup of your data in daily basis,No risk and little more.Please read their FAQ’s and it will be very useful before your picking this tool.

Advantages

Track work
Delegate
Share
Collaborate

5.Teamwork

Web-based project management tool that helps managers,staff and clients work together more productivity online.Stay on track,Share & collaborate,work faster and host it yourself.you get room for 2 projects, free storage space and you can instantly upgrade to a paid plan at any time.

Benefits

Manage projects
Manage task lists
Schedule milestones
Add messages
Time tracking
Upload files
Manage people
E-mail integration
Multi language support

6.5pm

5pm is an intuitive web-based project management tool.It is flexible and easy to use.you can request a custom plan here through mail.Backup your data nightly.256-bit high grade encryption for data security.Desktop tracker widget is available.Filter users in time line and much more features are available with multi language support.

Benefits

Manage projects and tasks online.
Share notes and files.
Track time
E-mail integration
Customized reports
Interactive timeline

7.Wrike

Project planning,management and tracking software.Can easily track your project.It gives you the full insight to your business.Your project plans are always up to date.30 day free trial pack is available for plans.Outlook synchronization,Windows mobile sync, icalendar and rss feeds are available for a reasonable price.

Benefits

Complete picture for your business.
Unique control
More productive
Very easy to use
Intelligent email engine, So it works with any email software.

8.Wridea

Free online idea management and collaboration service.It’s a web-based service first to avoid your ideas being forgotten and organize your ideas.It’s already being used by more than 40,000 users.With the help of this tool, you can store your ideas, manage and organize them, collaborate with your friends over your ideas, etc. Wridea provides you all required tools and services for organizing your ideas.

Wridea Features

Categorize your ideas under different pages.
Share your ideas.
Commenting on ideas.
Customized environment.

9.ZOHO projects

A centralized place where relevant project documents and contents are stored, updates are posted, everyone exchange ideas and get work done.Top reasons to choose ZOHO projects.Beyond your planning …get projects done,Planning,Works smarter,Reporting and value for your money.The updates of ZOHO are project stream, Dedicated wiki, Group chat MS project integration.Free for one project with unlimited users.

Features

Task dependency
Milestones for a project
Meetings
Document sharing
Dashboard and time tracking.

10.onstage

Team collaboration,Project management,File sharing and task software.Your business and communication can be more efficient and better organized.Easy file sharing,A free version forever, not just for 30 days. Plus, an unlimited number of users at no extra cost!

Technical features

Document preview with ipaper from scribd.
Optimized for PDA’s
Multi language
SSL encryption

11.Springloops

Source code management tool for web developers.You can do code in parallel and share it safely.Ultimate work flow,Easy management,Unique code browser and Basecamp integration are the main features in this tool.It’s free for 100MB only.

12.Rememberthemilk

This is an online to do list and task management.You can manage tasks quickly and easily.Get remind anywhere and you can locate your tasks here too.Remembermilk providing more number of services for their users like sync with Blackberry, Gmail, Android, for twitter , Manage your remember through google calendar and third party applitication or services etc…

13.Comindwork

Tools for Collaboration,Communication,Tracking and project management too.Comindwork SaaS improves the knowledge work productivity in projects performed by teams in professional service firms (e.g. software, advertising & marketing, consulting, lawyers, NGO) and by divisions within enterprises (e.g. support, marketing, R&D, upper management).More benefits for project manager, to team and for your clients.Free for 20MB

Customizable features are

Personal and project dashboards
Business wiki and files with permissions
Time tracking
To-do lists,Milestones and notifications
Report in Gantt charts.
Customizable work flow and business rules
Project level settings and lot more 250+customizable features.

14.Central Desktop

Central desktop “Over 375,000 users around the globe rely on Central Desktop every day to accelerate their business, connect their people, and manage their projects.” Free usage for 25 MB.

Quick setup
Enterprise grade search.
Real-time collaboration
Centralized communication
Team accountability

15.Ajaxworkspace

AJAXworkspace offers more than 10 powerful online project management and collaboration features such as project dashboard, tracking software, task management, document management, file sharing, and discussion board.It consists of an integrated suite of simple and easy-to-use collaboration functionality.This is an ideal tool for any type of project management regardless of whether you are working in a company or a freelancer from home.

Other Features

Bookmark
Personalization
Security access control
Event calendar
Graphical reporting tool

More tools

Let us know what are your favorite project collaboration tools and tips.

40 Free Minimalist And High Quality Fonts

Tomas Laurinavičius — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:59:59 +0000

You can meet a lot of minimalistic style fans all over the world. Minimalist style looks very clean, professional and easy to understand. You probably have heard about minimalism motto “Less is more” which means that work with less details shows much more than overdone work with too much stuff in it.

If you are looking for some great free minimalist fonts you came to the right place. In this collection you will find many fonts you will want to download immediately, I assure you!

1. BonvenoCF

2. Existence Light

3. Aurulent Sans

4. Vegur

5. Comfortaa

6. Sansation

7. Salaryman

8. Greyscale Basic

9. Lane

10. Raleway

11. Aaargh

12. CartoGothic Std

13. Mentone

14. Aller

15. Bitstream Vera Sans

16. Bebas

17. Caviar Dreams

18. Cicle

19. Colaborate

20. COM4t Sans Medium

21. District Thin

22. DISCO

23. DejaVu Sans

24. Droid Sans

25. Dustismo

26. Eau

27. Expressway

28. Lacuna Regular

29. Liberation Sans

30. Gnuolane

31. New Cicle

32. Nevis

33. Museo Sans

34. Luxi Sans

35. Sonrisa

36. Puritan

37. Print Clearly

38. Perspective Sans

39. Tuffy

40. Quicksand

Further Free Fonts Resources:

Do you know some more great minimalistic fonts? Share with us your favorite!

40 Powerful CSS Tools And Generators To Automate Your Workflow

Daniels Mekšs — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:00:11 +0000

Showcase of 40 useful and powerful CSS tools and generators. These tools can really relieve developers work in many ways – I understand you like always to do everything by yourself but it’s not the best way in the most cases, because it really takes time and such liberty we don’t always have.

This is considered to be really complete list about everything CSS related, as CSS lover myself I really evaluate good automated ways so I can focus on things I enjoy the most – creating elegant, usable and optimized website! I just hope you will find some relief in this list as well! Enjoy your time and test these tools for best results!

1. CSS Layout Generator

Showcase of 40 useful and powerful CSS tools and generators. These tools should really relieve web developers work. This generator will create a fluid or fixed width floated column layout, with up to 3 columns and with header and footer. Values can be specified in either pixels, ems or percentages.

2. Simple CSS

Simple CSS allows you to easily create Cascading Style Sheets from scratch, and/or modify existing ones, using a familiar point-and-click interface.

3. Code Beautifier

Formats and optimizes CSS.

4. Clean CSS

CleanCSS is a powerful CSS optimizer and formatter. Basically, it takes your CSS code and makes it cleaner and more concise.

5. CSS Compressor

Use this utility to compress your CSS to increase loading speed and save on bandwidth as well.

6. CSS Superscrub

This tool can significantly reduce the size and complexity of your CSS by programmatically stripping unneeded content, stripping redundant calls, and intelligently grouping the remaining element names.

7. CSS Validator

The W3C CSS Validation Service is a free software created by the W3C to help Web designers and Web developers check Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). It can be used on this free service on the web, or downloaded and used either as a java program, or as a java servlet on a Web server.

8. CSS Sorter

CSS Sorter is a free online tool for sorting CSS files. It organizes CSS rules alphabetically so that it will be easier for you to maintain your CSS files.

9. Browser Support of CSS Properties & Selector

This is a list of CSS properties and selectors with the first browser versions that support them. The list includes most CSS2.1 properties and some of CSS3, more will be added as time permits.

10. Layout Generator

Generating multi-column and grid layouts with CSS 2.0 techniques using %, px, or em.

11. Variable Grid System

The variable grid system is a quick way to generate an underlying CSS grid for your site. The CSS generated file is based on the 960 Grid System.

12. Blueprint Grid Generator

This tool will help you generate more flexible versions of Blueprint’s grid.css and compressed.css and grid.png files. Whether you prefer 8, 10,16 or 24 columns in your design, this generator now enables you that flexibility with Blueprint.

13. Grid Builder

The CSS Grid Builder allows you to rapidly generate a CSS-based, web-standards compliant page layout in a matter of minutes. Once you’ve got the page layout the way you want it, all you have to do is press “Show Code” and it generates the HTML for you.

14. CSS Menu Builder

Choose from our 300+ horizontal menus, our 700+ vertical menus combinations and our breadcrumb menus that consist of more than 200+ combinations, in total the site offers more than 1000 menu combinations not including the endless color combinations.

15. CSS Menu Maker

Here you can exploit gallery of professionally designed CSS menus, customize them and then download the HTML and CSS.

16. Jotform

Web-based WYSIWYG form builder

17. Quick Form Builder

Allows you to easily create CSS forms.

18. CSS Button & Text Field Generator

Generates CSS based buttons and text fields.

19. Rounded Corner Generator

Spiffy Corners is a simple way to generate the CSS and HTML you need to create anti-aliased corners without using images or JavaScript.

20. CSS Type Set

CSS Type Set is a hands-on typography tool allowing designers and developers to interactively test and learn how to style their web content.

21. Typetester

The Typetester is an online application for comparison of the fonts for the screen. It’s primary role is to make web designer’s life easier. As the new fonts are bundled into operating systems, the list of the common fonts will be updated.

22. Image Replacement Methods

Plenty of new and interesting revisions to the original Fahrner Image Replacement technique sprouted up in late 2003. This was an attempt to consolidate them.

23. CSS Frame Generator

This tool returns corresponding CSS in a line-by-line way indented with spaces to reflect XHTML structure – each selector and all of its properties and values in one line.

24. Postable

“I absolutely hate having to switch all the “< ” and “>” signs in my code to “<” and “>”, respectively. I also hate having to write “&” anytime I want to include an ampersand. This makes including code snippets on my blog and whatnot extremely annoying, and today I finally got fed up.” Created by Elliot Swan.

25. Slickmap

SlickMap CSS is a simple stylesheet for displaying finished sitemaps directly from HTML unordered list navigation. It’s suitable for most web sites – accommodating up to three levels of page navigation and additional utility links – and can easily be customized to meet your own individual needs, branding, or style preferences.

26. Text Wrapper

The CSS Text Wrapper allows you to easily make HTML text wrap in shapes other than just a rectangle. You can make text wrap around curves, zig-zags, or whatever you want. All you have to do is draw the left and right edges below and then copy the generated code to your website.

27. Listamatic

Can you take a simple list and use different Cascading Style Sheets to create radically different list options? The Listamatic shows the power of CSS when applied to one simple list.

28. CSS Sprite Generator

CSS sprites are a way to reduce the number of HTTP requests made for image resources referenced by your site. Images are combined into one larger image at defined X and Y coordinates. Having assigned this generated image to relevant page elements the background-position CSS property can then be used to shift the visible area to the required component image

29. Colors Pallete Generator

Welcome to CSS Drive’s Image to Colors Palette Generator! Upload an image to generate a color palette based on the image’s primary colors. Useful for quickly grabbing a particular color within an image for inspiration. Generates also Photoshop swatches and CSS styles.

30. CSS Table Wizard

Use this wizard to experiment with table border styles and generate style source code. This wizard uses dynamic HTML to change the style of the table in-situ, without loading another page.

31. Em Calculator

Em Calculator is a small JavaScript tool which helps making scalable and accessible CSS design. It converts size in pixels to relative em units, which are based on a text size.

32. IE6 CSS Fixer

A tool specifically designed to ease the pain of the IE6 CSS debugger. This tool was conceived to decrease the monkey work when starting an IE6 CSS fix file. It applies a series of basic fixes that are known to conquer many problems and cause as little harm as possible.

33. Mappet

CSS image maps generator

34. Sky CSS Tool

Sky CSS allows you to create CSS classes almost without using manuscript code. JavaScript compatible browser is needed for the proper functioning.

35. ReCSS

This little bookmarklet makes refreshing your CSS a breeze. It comes in quite handy when you’re developing dynamic applications. Tested in IE and Firefox.

36. CSS Viewer

A simple CSS property viewer. Firefox addon.

37. The Box Office

The Box Office lets you wrap/float/contour text around freeform images using CSS for usage in (X)HTML pages.

38. CSS Evolve

CSSEvolve lets you play with many properties of a web site, including the site’s color scheme, fonts, borders, and more. CSSEvolve works through a process of simulated evolution in which you select site features that you like and refine them through multiple generations.

39. Wordoff

Wordoff applies the following rules to strip the cruft that is pasted into WYSIWYG editors from Word:

Attributes are removed for all elements except s

s and

s are removed

Empty elements are removed

Consecutive line breaks are reduced to two

40. CSS Fly

CSSFly is a web 2.0 tool for easy editing websites direct and in real-time in your browser. Simply edit the (X)HTML-code and the external Style-Sheet files : what you code is what you get! This tool is designed for developers. Use it for developing, testing or checking your web-project or take a look behind the sceneries of your favourite websites.

5 Top jQuery Chart Libraries for Interactive Charts

Leonel Hilario — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:00:59 +0000

Nowadays the need for an easy way to add interactive charts becomes essential because we are shifting from pc applications to web application. jQuery and other libraries allows to make accessible data visualization in (x)HTML, giving us this needed functionality.

In this article we are going to present 5 chart libraries that suit different needs from simple charts to high complex charts. Most of them are free for personal and commercial use.

1. jQuery Visualize Plugin

jQuery Visualize Plugin is the perfect plugin if you have a table and want to generate a chart out of it. It offers different types of charts such as Bar, Area, Pie & Line charts.
Examples

Type of Charts: Bar, Area, Pie & Line.
Requirements: jQuery, excanvas (included)
Browser Support: IE6*, IE7*, IE8*, Firefox 2, Firefox 3.5, Safari 3 and 4, Opera 9.
* HTML 5 canvas element is not supported by IE but Google maintains a library that translates canvas scripting into VML, allowing it to work in all versions of internet explorer.
Demo: http://www.filamentgroup.com/examples/charting_v2/index_2.php
License: MIT and GPL licenses

2. Highcharts

Highcharts is a really impressive jQuery Chart Library. In a few words Highcharts is compatible with most Browsers and even the iPhone; numerous chart types are supported; it is a dynamic plugin because you can add, remove and modify series, axes or points at any time after chart creation and you can load data from external files; tooltip labels are also supported which is great for detailed information in a point of a chart; zooming and last but not least all text labels can be rotated in any angle.
Examples

Line and column example

Columns with rotated labels

Type of Charts: Bar, Area, Areaspline , Pie, Line, Spline, Column & Scatter.
Requirements: jQuery or MooTools
Browser Support: IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 2, Firefox 3.5, Safari 3 and 4, Opera 9 and iPhone!
Demo: http://www.highcharts.com/demo/
License: Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 License. Free for personal website, a school site or a non-profit organization. For a single commercial Website the license costs $80.

3. Flot

Flot is as the authors call it an “Attractive Javascript plotting for jQuery” which is true. The charts look simple and nice, it is easy to create charts and all settings are optional. Some key features of plot is turning series on/off, zooming, interacting with the data points and it integrates a simple tooltip feature.
Examples

Tracking curves with crosshair plugin

Type of Charts: Bar, Area, Point & Line.
Requirements: jQuery
Browser Support: IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 2, Firefox 3.5, Safari 3 and 4, Opera 9 and Konqueror 4+.
Demo: http://people.iola.dk/olau/flot/examples/
License: MIT License

4. jQuery Sparklines

Sparklines generates small inline charts either inline in the HTML or via JavaScript. It is really good for displaying mini graphs notably because most of them just take 1 line of HTML or JavaScript code. Another great feature is it self-refreshing capabilities. You can see it in their Mouse-Speed demo which shows you the power of live charting.
Example

Type of Charts: Bar, Tristate, Bullet, Box Plot & Line.
Requirements: jQuery
Browser Support: IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 2, Firefox 3.5, Safari 3 and 4, Opera 9 and Google Chrome.
Demo: http://omnipotent.net/jquery.sparkline/
License: New BSD License

5. jqPlot

jqPlot did not catch my eye at first glance but after further research I found it to be one of the best and free jQuery chart library. Numerous graphical options are available you can even add shadows and interact per drag&drop in the charts! It even automatically computes trend lines. We could compare it to highcharts in terms of features and functionality.
Examples

Type of Charts: Bar, Pie & Line.
Requirements: jQuery
Browser Support: IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 2, Firefox 3.5, Safari 3 and 4, Opera 9 and Google Chrome.
Demo: http://www.jqplot.com/tests/
License: MIT and GPL version 2 licenses

Conclusion

As you may have seen from this 5 jQuery chart libraries they suit different needs. First Sparklines generates a small inline chart which is perfect for charts where the precision is not important. You look at the small chart and you should directly know what happened.

Highcharts, Flot and jqPlot are very powerful jQuery chart libraries. My personal favourites is Highcharts and jqPlot. The visual quality of Highcharts charts are better than jqPlot but the last one is free. I recommend you to test at least one of them and you will see that they are really powerful.

Finally jQuery Visualize is really easy to use and specially adapted if you want to create a chart out of a table, just like you would do it in excel. This can be convenient when you need a table and a chart to visualize your thoughts. Feel free to give your feedback via comments section.:)

9 Handy FireFox Add-ons For Every Day Use

Anastasia Miles — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 09:00:58 +0000

Having worked as a project manager at several companies and having to monitor my own projects there’s a certain list of things I do to check on often (and I still do). Some of the things are SEO related, some are tech tasks, some help to achieve the marketing goals. Some of the things are just general but still it’s very convenient to have the nice set tools to perform the actions that you do on a regular basis. Today I’m going to write about Firefox add-ons that I have added my browser options (yes, I’m an addicted Firefox lover) as a project manager and just a human. All the add-ons listed help me in my daily work and I don’t know how much time I would spend if I had to search from all the information they give to me manually. I decided to divide this list into 2 sections- the add-ons that I use as a usual human being and the add-ons I find extremely useful for the project management. So here we go.

The Add-ons for regular Internet Surfers

1. The WOT Add-on (Web of trust)

Web of Trust warns you about risky sites that cheat customers, deliver malware or send spam. Never in my life did I have a problem with some serious viruses infecting my computer until about a month ago. Suddenly my browser got frozen and in about 5 minutes all the programs and applications on my computer stopped working while the antivirus software that I had (kasperski) haven’t showed any thread which surprised me tremendously. Having restarted the system I trying at least something I was continuously getting the notice that I have to send a sms to some address and buy the security code that should unblock my computer or something along that line. I had to reinstall the system on my pc but this was not the end yet.

On the next day I found out that I got the virus on my server that have infected all the .html and .php files. I knew from the server logs that the virus got there from my computer and thanks God I had files backed up.
Doing my daily job I visit hundreds of website and I had no idea where I could get such a deadly virus from. That’s when I started thinking that I need in some way to exclude the potentially dangerous websites or at least know what websites have low reputation. Now I’m a happy user of the WOT add-on. It works very simply and graphically clear.

Next to every link and in the browser address line you will see the circle that changes the color from green to red depending on website trustworthiness, green being safe and red very poor. They gather this information from website visitors using the WOT and you can also rank the website for several parameters like trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy etc. You can also leave a review if you say got infected from this website and want to warn the rest of the community. In case you get to the dangerous website they will show you a big pop-up with the warning before actually prompting you to the page, where you can choose where you want to see why the page is considered as dangerous, ignore the warning and go to the page or leave the page. If you have children there is also a children control option where the websites will adult content will not be available for browsing. You can get additional info on WOT add-on here.

2. Read It Later Add-on

Read It Later allows you to save pages of interest to read later. It’s very simple but very useful, at least for
me. Browsing tens of interesting pages daily I often don’t have time to read them right away. I used to add the pages I wanted to read to the bookmarks and then was totally forgetting about them or couldn’t find the pages I needed and finally I ended up with the long-long list of bookmarks cluttered with stuff of any kind one can ever imagine. Read it later add-on allows you to add the page to the read list in one click. You can right-click with the mouse anywhere on page you’d like to read later and choose an option “read this page later”.You can also copy the link and add it to the library clicking on small yellow arrow on the top right cornet of the browser.

3. Ad block Plus

A simple nice add-on that blocks add-on the pages. Once installed it will show up in a red hexagon in the top right of the browser window. Nothing special to say about it but it makes my life easier.

4. AddThis

AddThis is a nice add-on making sharing and bookmarking simple. The list of social icons will be added to your
browser toolbar area as well as to right-click mouse options. You just click on the icon, the application connects to your social network account and posts the update there. Here’s the sample how it looks in Twitter:

Though I use AddThis I still have a separate toolbar for stumble as this is one of my favorite websites and I love to have the options to leave a comment, thumb up or just view some cool stuff directly from the toolbar. You can install this add-on here.

Add-ons that I use in my work of a project manager

If you are starting the career of the project manager in some company or just have a start-up project I do recommend you to add this add-ons to the browser as they can not only make your life easier but help you choose the right direction in your marketing campaign as well as provide help to the customers if they run into some problems with the website.

1. Fire FTP

This might be one of the most Firefox add-ons. This plugin allows you to upload files to the server as any other FTP client but you don’t have to install it separately on your computer. The interface is quite intuitive. On the left you will see list of files on your computer and on the right once connected to the server you will see the files on the server. When you start the files upload or download you will see the how the process flows in the bottom area, the connection errors will show up there as well. You can choose the mode for files transfer (binary, ASCII and automatic) and whether to show or not to show the hidden files.

I started using FireFtp after my website files on the server were infected. Before that I was using Total Commander for years which I had to reinstall as well and since I didn’t want to get used to any other similar programs I decided to give a try to Fire FTP.

It’s not perfect and the websites in the other tabs and windows start working slower when FireFtp is working and there are now usual hot keys but it’s not bad at all. I like the error reports and I like when the program says ZZZZ when it’s connected to the server but not command is performed. This can be actually the only reason why I’m using it :)

2. HTTP Fox

HttpFox monitors and analyzes all incoming and outgoing HTTP traffic between the browser and the web servers. In simple words it shows you how the website interacts with the server and if any errors occur you can get the details of the error without having to check the server log files. I used to work for the company who developed a cool CMS system running on php and flex. Working with the customers, uploading files to their servers and helping them to actually manage the website I was facing some php or flex errors pretty often but the problem was that these were the errors the admin area was showing and I had no idea how to handle that. I’m neither a programmer nor a flash developer and this was a real nightmare for me. One of my friends recommended me to install the HTTP Fox plugin and there hasn’t been a single problem I couldn’t fix on my own.

I guess things would still work for me much easier if I had a better php knowledge. The way it works now- I start HTTP Fox (toogle HTTP Fox as they call it in the application), get the error description, go to google to type it there and then check for solutions how the error can be fixed on the php and flash forums :) With the HTTP Fox add-on you can also check whether some website will save a cookie on your computer as well as get some other useful info.

3. Fire Bug

Fire Bug is a great add-on that will be of a great help not just for a project manager but an advanced develop as well. The number of features is enormous but in my daily work I use just a few. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. I used Firebug multiple times to customize and make small changes on the WordPress themes, to get info on the images and embedded videos and flash files and get info about properties of the page elements. You can call the application from the Tools section of the browser or just right clicking on some elements on the page.

4. SeoQuake SEO extension

SeoQuake extension is a must if you perform any type of work related to SEO, links exchange, online advertising etc. It gives you a profound info about the website, helps you study your competitors and potential partners. At one glance you can see the page PageRank, the number of pages from the domain name indexed in Google, Yahoo and Bing, Alexa Rank, the age of the domain name and the direct link to the whois info. There’s information about internal and external links on the page as well as the information on the keywords density ( you can check what main keywords your competitors use and how often and where on page).

The SeoQuake extension has another cool feature- so called Yahoo links- showing the number (and the list) of external URLs pointing to the page and domain name. Extremely useful when you need to check who’s linking to your competitors.

5. Search Status

That’s a good alternative to SeoQuake but I prefer using them both. By default the Search Status add-on options will show up in the bottom right corner of the browser alone with the traffic stats from Alexa (alexa rank), Compete and mozRank by SeoMoz. Earlier I was using Alexa stats from the SeoQuake and had a separate Compete add-on installed and now I have them all in one place. Some of the other features Search Status add-on include: no follow links analysis, general page’s link report, stats about indexed pages and keywords density, whois info etc. There’s almost the same features as in SeoQuake and some additional ones but they are not convenient to use. I prefer clicking on an icon in the toolbar rather than going to the footer, clicking on the icon and only then getting the list of options available. It would be perfect is someone could combine these two.

That’s it, I’ve listed all the add-ons that I use daily. I’ll be glad to hear what add-ons you use and how they help you in your work. I still have a place for two or three until my browser stops working so do let me know :)

30 Free Fonts Best for Business Logos

Peter Olexa — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 10:39:39 +0000

We all know, it’s very important to choose the right font when working on a logo design. When speaking about business logos, we usually mean logos which are elegant, clean and not too fancy. So what kind of fonts should we be using? What kind of logos will make my logo look best? Instead of answering these questions, check the collection of 30 free business fonts below I put together just for this purpose.

Enjoy!

Delicious-SmallCaps

LatiniaBlack

QuigleyWiggly

Aerovias Brasil NF

Dollis

Celeste Sans Offc Black

Lido STF CE Bold

NK38pc_D

AtlasSolid

AunchantedExpandedBoldOblique

Oceania Bold

Palermo-Bold

CygnetRound

a_JasperCaps Bold

Dekers_Bold

Yanone Kaffeesatz Bold

MEAN 26 Italic

Amaze Normal

LT Oksana Medium

Star Avenue

Ageone

Lyon Bold

Beautiful ES

Anastasia Regular

Curvic

Sansation Regular

ImperatorSmallCaps

Easy Street EPS Bold

SF Fourche

Brownwood NF

27 Best Looking Free Drupal 6 Themes

Peteris Kelle — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:45:48 +0000

There are hundreds of Drupal themes which you can find on the Internet but not all of them are good looking. So, this time I have collected the best looking free Drupal 6 themes I have found.

I have no idea how much of you guys use Drupal, but I’m a big fan of Drupal and this time I take a big risk and hope you’ll at least check out this selection and compare it with your CMS. Drupal is definitely worth trying out, it has a lot more customization options and chances to add different features, which even mighty Wordpress cannot handle.

1. BlogBuzz

Stunning Drupal theme! Everything is so clean, very well made. Could be a great theme for your portfolio web site or a blog.

2. Magazeen

Great looking theme! Just clean and shiny.

3. Gardening

Beautiful cartoon-style Drupal theme. Great piece of art!

4. Acquia Prosper

Clean, good looking theme for an e-commerce website.

5. ColorPaper

Great piece of work! The best implementation of this theme could be for a blog or just a personal website.

6. Beach

Good looking Drupal theme. It has a nice underwater feeling.

7. Notechoas

Interesting piece of art. Background has a big role in this theme.

8. RootCandy

This is very cool and great looking theme for Drupal’s administration section. Everything looks clean and shiny and those icons look awesome.

9. Scruffy

Great Drupal theme for a blog.

10. Grassland

This theme looks nice. There’s a positive atmosphere inside this theme.

11. Coolweb

Great theme for a corporate website!

12. Cleanfolio

Beautiful theme for a small and simple website.

13. Abstract

Beautiful theme for a blog or portfolio website!

14. Fusion Theme

Clean and simple theme which looks great!

15. A3 Atlantis

Very interesting theme. Could be good for a corporate website.

16. Orange

Very well made and great looking theme for a social networking site!

17. Arclite Theme

Clean and simple theme which could be great for a blog.

18. Fields 2009 template

Good looking theme for a corporate website.

19. NonZeroRed DTB

Just a simple and good looking theme. Could be implemented for many types of websites.

20. Elements Theme

Interesting Drupal theme. Could look good for a portfolio website.

21. A Cold Day

Nice looking theme which has three color versions available.

22. Ebizon RedFire

If you want just a clean and simple website then this theme is a theme you are looking for.

23. Acquia Marina

Cool theme for many types of websites.

24. Alek 2.0

Simple Drupal theme for a simple website.

25. Twittish

If you would like that your website would look like Twitter then you have found the best solution for you!

26. AD Redoable

Simple theme which would look great for a portfolio website.

27. Austin Zen Sub Theme

If you want just a simple website without any flashy, shiny elements then this simple theme is for you.

15 More Really Fun Online Photo Editing Websites

Daniels Mekšs — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:34:41 +0000

Previous post 28 Online Photo Editing Websites To have Fun With turned out to be very very popular so I guess a lot of visitors enjoy to take a rest and quickly edit their photos and share with friends. It’s easy – just upload image, choose effect, do some little tweaks and cool effect is achieved!

Throughout this year several new fun websites have been released and become popular. After heavy research this is what I could come up with! Enjoy, take a rest and have a fun time!

1. Picjoke

In Picjoke you can choose from many cool effects to apply. Just choose picture from your computer and it will do the rest.

2. Cardgame

Create your own personalized playing cards at the click of a mouse button.

3. Condenent

Design your own Wired magazine cover.

4. Blibs

Here you can find lots of effects including animation, adjustments and even kaleidoscoper.

5. Imagechef

In imagechef you can easily create anything from word mosaics to football shirts. With over 100 templates it’s a great place to have fun with your photos. After you have created your photo you can share it social networks.

6. Anymaking

Anymaking is a great place to edit your photos online. Here you can find all the necessary tools for picture editing. Cropping, rounded corners, shadows, frames – it’s all here. There are also some cool effects to have fun with like wanted poster.

7. Frontpage

In 3 easy steps you can create a unique and fully personalised magazine cover for yourself or someone special. Use the magazine covers on your Facebook, MySpace profiles or on your own web site for free. You can even send the cover images to all your friends and family easily and quickly with the email options provided.

8. Maronface

Moronize your photo.

9. flauntR

flauntR is a flash based online photo editor, where you can quickly edit your photos, add some effects, blend photos and create social network photos.

10. Tiltshift maker

Tilt-shift miniature style photos are pictures of real-life scenes that are manipulated to look like model photographs.

11. Effmypic

Choose from over 30 cool effects to your picture

12. Avatar.pho.to

Upload your photo and create a cool avatar from it.

13. Seenow

In seenow you can find a lots of good quality effects and later share your outcomes.

14. Funnywow

Choose from over 40 cool effects to apply to your photos in good quality.

15. Wishafriend

Create photo effects, photo frames, name acronyms, fake magazine covers and much more.

Do you know more fun and free online photo editing websites? Share with us!

Most Interesting Design Trends Among Blogs: 2010

Cyrus Patten — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 11:10:33 +0000

The web is an dynamic, organic being. It evolves as people do, responding to trends in blogging and design by constantly raising the bar. With millions of bloggers out there, we see constant evolutions of the next design trend.

Here are some of my favorite recent trends in web design. Although the examples listed here may not be the orginator of the trend, they are the first to catch my eye.

Web 2.0

The design trend associated with Web 2.0 is actually multiple trends rolled into one.

Round corners
Glossy/Shiny graphics
Big, prominent graphics
Larger, non-serif typography

Simple

I’ve often said, a designer who can pull off a simplistic design is just as talented as the one that can create a super-complex one. That is because a simple design is more than just leaving elements out. It is about balancing design, carefully choosing colors and typography, and expertly integration navigation and content to create an effective and smooth design.

Whole site branding integration

Orginally, web designs included a header, with a logo and a content section, with the content. Recently, designers are pushing the limits by incorporating colors, logos, branding, messaging and graphics throughout the entire site, not just the header.

Advanced typography

Web designers are putting much more thought into typography. There are many resources popping up to pick a typography set. Once upon a time, designs included an h1, h2, and p style. Now some designs include dozens of different font stylings.

Single page design

Along with designing simpler sites, designers are exploring ways to keep content on one page. In portfolios, showcases or simple informational sites, developers are looking for ways to put all content on page one so the readers sees it all without having to click through anywhere. The example below you will recognized as Twitter. As arguably one of the top 5 sites on the web, everything you need to know about Twitter is located on the front page.

AJAX

You know AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML), it is that cool interaction when you click something on a site and it changes, without reloading. This is a huge advancement in web design technology and allows users to get the content they desire without moving about the site. Most major publishing platforms have integrated AJAX into their codex. The leader is easily seen in all the Wordpress AJAX plugins.

Large images

Advances in compression technology, increased internet access speeds have allowed designers to grow the size and quality of images they use in new designs. This makes for an appealing and graphically pleasing design.

Perspective and depth

Strategically using dropshadows, angles and overlaps, designers have added a 3rd dimension to web design that was previously limited to 2 dimensions. Using these techniques, designers are able to draw user attention to specific areas consistent with the goals of the site. Perhaps conversion forms, twitter buttons or featured content.

Themed designs

Designers are adding overarching themes like grunge, retro, whimsical, etc. These themes tie together all elements of a design and give the user a feeling of continuity, adding to the overall experience.

Specific purpose

Designers have realized that themes should be designed for a specific purpose such as magazine, portfolio, green, blogging, etc. Designing for a purpose allows the designer and webmaster to focus on function and not generalize the design so it can be used across multiple different sites.

Additional Resources

30 Stylish jQuery Tooltip Plugins For Catchy Designs

Peteris Kelle — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:56:59 +0000

Tooltips on website are small things which can play a big role in website design. If a tooltip on your website is very well made and looks amazing then it can lift up visitors impression about your website. And that’s why here comes jQuery to help with its well made tooltips. And remember that all those small website design things make your website look better.

So this time I will show you my Top 30 of jQuery tooltip plugins. Enjoy!

1. Dynamic tooltip

Very cool tooltip! It’s very well made because it consists of cool transition effects and it also has a transparency and a drop shadow effect.

2. Popup Bubble

Brilliant tooltip! It looks so simple but it has awesome transition effects. This tooltip could be very useful for clean and simple websites.

3. jQuery Horizontal Tooltips Menu Tutorials

Beautifully made tooltip! This tooltip never disappears but follows when you hover over other links. Such a simple looking tooltip but its animation is brilliant.

4. Prototip

A lot of various very good looking tooltips which look awesome and have beautiful effects. Brilliant peace of work!

5. Coda Popup Bubble

Very nice tooltip with cool transition effect and it also has a drop shadow.

6. Awesomeness

Cool tooltip with nice transition effect and cool transparent border around it.

7. TipTip

Beautifully made tooltip with fade in / out transition effects, transparency and drop shadow effect.

8. (mb)Tooltip

Beautifully made tooltip with nice transition for input fields.

9. vTip

Simple but well made tooltip with a fade in transition effect. It has a cool looking border around it and when this tooltip appears, it also follows your mouse.

10. jGrowl

Cool tooltip which appears when you click on the link and then it sticks on the right-top corner of your window, and disappears after some time or when you close it manually by clicking on the close button. It also has fade in / out transition effects.