Tag Archives: Web Apps

10 Web Apps for Web Design

If someone asked you what tools you commonly use for constructing web designs, you would probably mention the obvious: your favorite text editor and graphics program, the web inspector in your preferred browser, things like that. But what about those nifty web apps that, though not necessarily an essential, are majorly helpful for small parts of your workflow?

Here are a few useful web apps that help you do things like choose a color palette or add vendor prefixes to your CSS.

Sprite Cow

Sprite Cow makes it easy to get the background-position offset and element dimensions for an item in your CSS sprite. It’s so much easier than trying to figure it out in Photoshop. All you have to do in most cases is click the part of the sprite you want to use and copy the coordinates into your CSS. Most of the time, it does an excellent job at selecting the relevant pixels.

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HootSuite Adds Paid Plans

HootSuite, the “social media dashboard” has just announced their new premium accounts. There is still a free option, though you will need to fork over some cash if you need “team members” (collaborators who can post to your shared social media profiles) or more than one RSS feed piped into your Twitter streams.

Starting today (Wednesday, Aug. 11th), all new customers will be required to select a plan upon signing-up — including choosing the free option if desired.

The following week, current HootSuite users will be asked to choose a package with the help of a migration wizard to help you choose the best plan.

For all customers (aside from Enterprise-class accounts), we’ll include a 30-day free trial. This period will allow you to experiment and discover which plan best fits your needs. Again, we’ll continue to offer a free plan for those of you who don’t require advanced options at this time.

The paid plans start at $4.99/month and quickly get pricey. I think their tier structure could have used some more work, such as allowing more collaborators and for cheaper plans, but maybe that’s just me…

Web Resources Depot Admin Template

Web Resources Depot has released a free Admin Template for use in web apps. It’s a three-column design with a row of tabs, for navigation, along the top. With some modifications, it would work well for a web application, if you were developing one.

Personally, I would use the design during development, and swap it out with a unique theme when all the coding work is done. But if you’re trying to put together a web app, and you don’t have any design know-how, and don’t want to hire a designer, you could conceivably use this. I’d just recommend customizing it a bit, so it doesn’t look like you have the exact same template as someone else.

Admin Template

You can view a live demo of the template, and download it here.

The Advantage of Web Applications

Web applications, or web apps, have, in my opinion, one huge advantage over “normal” programs. I’m sure you can guess what it is before you finish reading this.

I just got a new Apple MacBook, as I’ve Twittered about, told everyone I know on Facebook, and all but made a T-Shirt that says “I have a MacBook.” I’ve been trying to adjust to the new (to me) platform, and adapt my daily patterns.

Surprisingly, I haven’t had many problems with old Windows habits (e.g. reaching to the top-right corner to close a window). My biggest issues have been with software. Some familiar applications have Mac versions thankfully. (If there wasn’t a Mac version of Firefox, I wouldn’t have been so quick to want to get a Mac.)

I had to find some Mac equivalents of some programs, like NeoOffice to replace Microsoft Works, and CyberDuck to replace FileZilla. (FileZilla is great, and there is a Mac version, but it behaves oddly, lacking a normal window, and extending down from the menu bar.)

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