Expert Techniques for Web Design: Tips, Tutorials and Tools !

30 Widgets for Designers and Developers

2009-08-19T05:14:00.000-07:00

Dashboard Widgets are created using the easiest and most wide spread of languages, namely, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. So, they are quite simple to develop,and often there functions are very simple as well, but they are useful. Below you will 30 MAC Dashboard Widgets for Web Designers and Developers. I hope they help.

CSS Cheat Sheet

CSS Cheat Sheet Homepage »

A must for any web developer, this widget displays the much of the essential information from the CSS Cheat Sheet from Added Bytes.

Tags – CSS

Tags – CSS Homepage »

With this widget you can lookup with ease CSS Properties and Attributes and copy them to the Clipboard.

CSS Reference

CSS Reference Homepage »

CSS Reference contains complete definitions of the most popular CSS values, along with syntax and variables. You can easily switch among the six section by using the buttons at the top of the widget.

CSS: Aligning type to a baseline grid

CSS: Aligning type to a baseline grid Homepage »

This widget calculates the relative font size and line height and copies the formatted CSS to the pasteboard.

.clearfix

.clearfix Homepage »

This is one handy widget, just press the button to have the CSS .clearfix code available in your clipboard.

PHPQuickReference

PHPQuickReference Homepage »

PHPQuickReference gives you a handy PHP reference right on Dashboard. Search with autocompletion and hints and copy and paste sample code to your project.

PHP Function Reference

PHP Function Reference Homepage »

PHP Function Reference provides fast lookup of information about the PHP web programming language. The following languages are available: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, and Romanian.

Tags – PHP

Tags – PHP Homepage »

With this widget you can look up PHP functions, copy the text to the Clipboard, and you can also click on the function name to be linked to the PHP Online Documentation in your web browser.

W3C Tool Kit 1.2

W3C Tool Kit 1.2 Homepage »

W3C Tool Kit is a little Widget with fast access to the W3C Markup and CSS Validator as well as their Link Checker.

Quick Codes 2 Go 2.5

Quick Codes 2 Go 2.5 Homepage »

Quick codes allows you to build an html document and you then simply copy and paste it. Available inEnglish and Spanish.

JavaDoc

JavaDoc Homepage »

JavaDoc is a Mac OS X Dashboard widget to quickly access the local Java API. Local Java API documentation must be installed, you can do this from the XTools installer options, on the Mac OS X DVD, or from http://connect.apple.com/.

Prototype Reference Widget

Prototype Reference Widget Homepage »

This widgets allows you to quickly search the Prototype documentation, it’s quite simple to use: For instance if you are looking for documentation on “Event”, just type “event” – if you want some details on “Event.observe”, just enter “Event.observe".

Tags – HTML

Tags – HTML Homepage »

You can search for HTML tags by Tag Name and Property and then click to copy the text to the Clipboard.

HTML Tidy Widget

HTML Tidy Widget Homepage »

This widget allows you to use HTMLTidy to clean up your HTML code directly from your Dashboard. Simply enter your HTML code and click "Tidy It!" and you will get nicely formatted valid HTML, XHTML, or XML, and a list of any errors and warnings encountered.

HTML Entity Character Lookup

HTML Entity Character Lookup Homepage »

Using HTML entities is the right way to ensure all the characters on your page are validated. With this widget you won't have to scan through 250 rows of characters to find the right entity code, it is all automated.

HTML Character

HTML Character Homepage »

This is a small widget similiar in function to the widget above, with slightly less options.

Symbol Caddy

Symbol Caddy Homepage »

The Symbol Caddy Dashboard widget keeps a few common special characters at your fingertips. Keyboard mode copies the special character and HTML mode copies the HTML entity code.

fcXHTML Reference

fcXHTML Reference Homepage »

The Fuzzy Coconut widget, is an off-line reference to the XHTML 1 specification from the W3C. The fcXHTML Reference widget does not function by retrieving information from the internet; instead it's entirely self-contained, so it’ll work even when wi-fi doesn’t.

Super Rule

Super Rule Homepage »

With Super Rule you can easily and precisely measure the spacing of your graphics in any web browser.

Page Capture

Page Capture Homepage »

The Page Capture is a screen capture widget, that is both easy to use and lightning fast. No matter how long a page may be, the Page Capture widget will capture the entire page and save it to an image.

Screenshot Plus

Screenshot Plus Homepage »

Screenshot Plus can take full screen captures, grab portions of the screen, and even capture windows, desktop icons, and other widgets. Captures may be saved to the clipboard or to the hard drive, or they may be exported to any application directly from the widget.

ColorSchemer

ColorSchemer Homepage »

ColorSchemer Galleria is a free Dashboard widget that allows you to browse all of the schemes in the ColorSchemer Gallery without leaving your Dashboard, putting an endless supply of color ideas & inspiration at your fingertips.

ColourMod – DHTML Colour Picker

ColourMod – DHTML Colour Picker Homepage »

ColourMod allows the user to input a starting value and get an automatic conversion. Whether you start with RGB, CMYK, HSV or a Hex value you will get its equivalent in RGB, CMYK, HSV and Hex. It also allows for the user to select their own colours and get the color's corresponding Hex, HSV, CMYK and RGB values. There are currently two methods of colour selection: Default Color selection and Color Wheel selection.

Color Theory

Color Theory Homepage »

Color Theory helps you design your website, redecorate your home, or perhaps even choose your outfit in the morning. It can even simulates various forms of color blindness. The Sphere uses basic color theory in order to automatically provide you with visually appealing colors.

RGB Converter

RGB Converter Homepage »

This cool little widget is a light-weight, RGB color converter, with an intuitive interface that makes value entry quick and simple. The color swatches and other values update as you fill in fields.

Twitter REST api Widget

Twitter REST api Widget Homepage »

This widget contains the Twitter REST api. Not all of the fine detail is there as in the official documentation and it is only intended as a quick guide at the top level.

ApacheConfig

ApacheConfig Homepage »

This widget add PHP scripting support on external server on Mac OS X.

SiteStatus

SiteStatus Homepage »

This widget allows to monitor a website or a web server in order to know if it is online or not. You simply give the complete URL including http://. Optionally, you can provide a specific string to be found in that particular web page to be sure you’re monitoring the correct webpage. If the string is left empty, it will simply check if the URL is online or not.

Web Monitor

Web Monitor Homepage »

This widget monitors your servers or any web site. The widget checks the response time periodically with a HTTP HEAD request which doesn’t put much impact on the server. It shows a response time chart, response time statistics and has an error log where you can see when and why requests to the server failed.

Lorem Ipsum 2.2

Lorem Ipsum 2.2 Homepage »

A small Dashboard widget that will generate variable length Lorem Ipsum text. A slider control allows you to select a variable portion of placeholder text or you can choose to copy a random sentence, paragraph, word, title or list to the clipboard.

.Com Domain Name Search

.Com Domain Name Search Homepage »

Search for a .com domain name from the number one registrar GoDaddy. With the domain widget you can search for domain names with out worying that the company at the other end will snatch up your name from you.

Wordpress Tutorial and Hack Toolbox !

2009-08-06T23:02:00.000-07:00

Wordpress just becomes more and more powerful, it’s very hard to keep up with new features. Thankfully there are several very active people behind great blogs, who write very well explained tutorials and premade code snippets to let you learn everything in very easy way. Today I made my exercise to find such sites and articles, which are very new and Wordpress 2.8. compatible. There are really long list with new features, you can check them in first link from Wordpress Codex, so make sure you can keep up!

In summary you’ll find here 37 helpful tutorials, resources and hacks + 11 helpful Wordpress related sites for further reading in long run. Hope you’ll like it!

1.Wordpress Codex – Version 2.8

It’s been a while since version 2.8. is released, all new features you can check on their website to get started with.

2.10 Things You Need To Know About WordPress 2.8

3.10 WordPress 2.8 Features To Look Out For

It’s a great achievement for WordPress 2.8 to be released so soon after 2.7. Named ‘Baker’, 2.8 adds plenty of new features, including syntax highlighting for theme/plugin editing, a theme installer, and a great revamped widgets interface and API.

4.Wordpress 2.8 And 10 Things That You Should Know Before/After You Upgrade

5.Handling Plugins Options in WordPress 2.8 with register_setting()

This tutorial shows why new register_setting() way is so good and how to use it effectively.

6.Set Meta Links For WordPress Plugins

Learn how you can expand plugins with useful functions and therefore optimize their usage in updated Wordpress 2.8. version.

7.WordPress Plugin-Path

8.WordPress Plugin Compatibility Checker

Check out which plugins are Wordpress 2.8 version compatible and more.

9.Plugins/Plugin Compatibility with Wordpress 2.8 from Wordpress Codex

Here is a list of plugins that have been tested for compatibility with Version 2.8.

10.Build A WordPress 2.8 Widget With The New Widget API

Tutorial explaining how to create very simple Wordpress 2.8 widget showing main changes.

11.The complete guide to creating widgets in WordPress 2.8

Advanced tutorial by Justin Tadlock, where he will walk you through widget development process with simple example and very well explained breakpoints.

12.Tutorial: WordPress 2.8 Widget API

Yet another great tutorial explaining functions – widget(), update(), and form() and finally how to put them all together.

13.How To Make Your Own WordPress 2.8 Widget

In this tutorial widget which will be created will display upcoming posts (scheduled posts). A lot of sites schedule posts to automatically publish at a specific time, helping them keep a steady flow of articles.

14.New WP_Widget Class In WordPress 2.8

This article is more for developers with added sample code with new class, showing how to use it effectively.

15.Creating Widgets in Wordpress 2.8 with the Widget API

In this tutorial you’ll going to learn how to create a simple multi-instance widget for adding posts your sidebar.

Introduction and Practical Taxonomy Usage

16.Custom taxonomies in WordPress 2.8

Useful tutorial explaining what taxonomy is and how to use it effectively in your own blog. Justin Tadlock also break down the code and explaining how to create custom taxonomy.

17.Using custom taxonomies to create a movie database

Following article will explain how to practically use custom taxonomies, in this case creating a movie database. Excellent tutorial!

18. An Introduction to WordPress Action Hooks

If you’re going to be doing any level of WordPress development, themes or plugins, you will invariably run into the need to take advantage of the WordPress Action Hook system. In this article you’ll learn what wordpress action hooks are, how those hooks work and finally how to create your own action hooks.

19. Define Your Own WordPress Action Hooks

20. Using Action Hooks in WordPress Child Themes

In this post Ian Stewart will review how to write a PHP function and go over the basic idea of how you can use Action Hooks in your WordPress Theme. He will take a look at a practical example of injecting a Welcome Blurb into your Theme without touching the existing code and also look at how to remove existing content being injected into Theme Hooks.

21. Understanding Action Hooks In Wordpress

On this article you’ll learn how to define your own hooks and trigger them using action hooks.

22.WordPress 2.8 and the body_class() Function

Learn what’s so significant with this function and how this opens up the ability to change the look of nearly everything with CSS only.

23.Loading JavaScript In Footer In WordPress 2.8

In this tutorial Lesterchan will demonstrate how to load JavaScript in the theme’s footer in WordPress 2.8 Nightly using his WP-Polls as an example.

24.Displaying Author Meta Information in Wordpress 2.8

In this quick tutorial, you will look at some potential uses for the recently overhauled Author Meta template tag.

25.Display Random Posts from Specific Tags or Categories

26. Display a Random Post (with AJAX Refresh)

27. How to Remove the WordPress Version Number (The Right Way)

Don’t display your WordPress version number publicly. Many WordPress developers often display the WordPress version in the source code. But having this information publicly available makes it easy for attackers to exploit known vulnerabilities on a particular WordPress version.

28.9 Ways to Set Dynamic Body IDs via PHP and WordPress

29.Related Posts on Category

Useful function, which is listing related posts based on the category ID. It is better possibility reader will be interested in related posts which are in the same category than anything else.

30.Escaping API updates for WordPress 2.8

The WordPress escaping API functions have been updated. Escaping is a way of using untrusted text that “neuters” anything that could do damage. Escaping is used in WordPress to avoid SQL injection and cross-site scripting/script injection (XSS), among other things.

31.Disable Syntax Highlighting in WordPress 2.8

32.The Ultimate Wordpress 2.8 Optimization Guide

This comprehensive article focus on optimising Wordpress, a popular free open source blogging platform that runs on PHP.

33.Tag descriptions in WordPress 2.8

34.Display Thumbnails For Related Posts in Wordpress

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to increase pageviews by adding thumbnails to related posts using the popular YARPP plugin and Wordpress custom fields.

35.Top 10 WordPress hacks from June ‘09

36.10 incredibly cool WordPress shortcodes

Introduced in WordPress 2.5, shortcodes are a very easy way to display lot of things on your blog posts by inserting a very simple code. In this article, you’ll find 10 incredible things shortcodes can do.

37.Wordpress Codex – 2.8 Problems and Solutions (FAQ)

If you have any questions, problems consider checking out Wordpress support forum covering installation and upgrading problems.

Helpful Wordpress Related Sites In Long Run

Actually there could be find a lot more such great tutorials, hacks, but I tried to include here most important and helpful ones in my opinion. For further reading I also listed below several very good blogs which are totally dedicated to Wordpress or write very helpful articles about Wordpress pretty often. If you are Wordpress developer, I strongly recommend to subscribe to these blogs or at least keep eye on them. I am sure in future these blogs will keep delivering amazing tutorials, tips and tricks about Wordpress new versions and everything Wordpress related.

1.WpEngineer

I just cannot stop to enjoy regular and extremely helpful posts WpEngineer editors are releasing.

2.Justin Tadlock – Life, Blogging, Wordpress

I must admire I really love Justin’s Hybrid framework, very well explained tutorials and most important – everything is explained in very easy-to-understand way. Big fan.

3.EpicAlex

4.Perishable Press

5.Digging Into Wordpress

DiggingIntoWordPress.com is the blog home for the upcoming book of the same name by Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr. Books and blogs are the perfect compliment to each other when it comes to learning web technologies. The blog is there for search ability, quick tips, and copy and paste-able code. The book is there for offline reference and that essential full-attention first read through when your brain is ready to soak in a ton of new information. Digging Into WordPress brings you the best of both worlds.

6.Net-Tuts Wordpress Tutorial Section

7.CatsWhoCode

8.BuildInternet Tutorial Section

Here you’ll find wordpress related tutorials pretty often – great resource!

9.CSS-Tricks

Just type in search tag “wordpress” and you’ll get a nice list of Wordpress related tutorials.

10.WpCrowd

11.WpScoop

And again I feature WpScoop – Wordpress social news and bookmarking site totally dedicated to collect the best Wordpress related stuff possible.

I am sure there are many good Wordpress tutorial sites I missed – if you know some more feel free to share them on comments section, I will add them to list!

70 Typographic Web Designs !

2009-08-06T23:00:00.000-07:00

It’s time for little inspiration and this time I wanted to showcase something different. You may know that very popular designer slogan – “More is Less”, and yes it’s often so true – unexperienced people tend to overcrowd, use too much colors in their designs. I just love these designs – they are very light, clean and usually uses only monochrome color scheme and just one or two bright colors for links or headers.

You may also notice for such designs it’s more about grid, harmonic distribution through whole page and very silent, elegant accents. It’s not about many colorful photos,images or icons, crazy backgrounds or experimentation. Almost all of those designs are very clean, slightly increasing web page loading time, sometimes it’s crucial to have as light designs as possible, for example reddit, digg, stumbleupon social networks also consist of very few images and where is possible just color and CSS is used.

1. Brilliancy

One of the best clean, light and elegant websites I came across in this research. Really brilliant!

2. OffSet Media

3. PixelBot

4. Pixel Umbrella

5. Kristi Hines

Very clean, yet professional web design.

6 .Made By On

7. Hot Meteor

Hot Meteor specializes in web, print, and branding. Their site looks really professional and clean, good design is one of the best ways how to attract new clients.

8. Mark Boulton Design

Excellent accents leading your eye through whole page in the way author wants it. Follow me to this through – magazine photo + new(s) design is the first point which grabs attention, author explains there what is this site and company about – that first attention grabber is very important. Only then you look at his logo and read further – work, our clients, news, contact sections.

9. BKWLD

10. Concentric-Studio

11. Vitor Lourenco

Visit his homepage – starting from index page you’ll get amazed how effectively Vitor Lourenco uses white space.

12. Forget Foo

13. GetFinch

14. ShaunInMan

15. Arty Papers

Beautiful website using just few very subtle, monochrome colors and only pink color in logo is used to highlight most important links.

16. Vesess

17. SimpleBits

18. DesignWorkPlan

19. MadeBySofa

20. 80/20 Studio

21. Clear Left

22. Aentan

On this site so much is going on – I mean so many sections and categories, but still it looks pretty clean.

23. Huge Inc

24. Rustin Jessez

25. Daniel Oliver

26. Subtraction

27. Information Architects

28. The Man In The Sea

29. Built By Buffalo

30. Corporate Risk Watch

Site looks really professional and clean aligned in left side of the screen, also try their navigation – really unique approach!

31. Pixel Haven

32. Design Hotels

33. Jon Tangerine

34. Winnie Lim

35. Wonderful Union

36. Apple

Obvious, but I could not resist myself and not to include Apple minimalist ethalon page, though everyone knows about it already I am sure.

37. Darren Hoyt

38. Ronnie San

39. Shift PX

40. 5ThirtyOne

41. Andy Rutledge

42. Anthony James Bruno

43. Astheria

44. Big Kid

45. Cade Martin Photography

46. David Airey

47. Eight Face

48. Feed A Fever

49. Fell Swoop

50. Hello Stefan

51. Jamie Gregory

52. LindenTibbets

53. Matt Bango

54. Martin Hipp

55. Site Inspire

56. Welcome To Human Resources

57. z8

Click on Portfolio and Contact buttons, you’ll see nice Javascript animation going on there.

58. Kyle Steed

59. Joni Korpi

60. The Portfolio of David Arias

61. El Candor

62. I Love Typography

63. The NetSetter

64. Jeff Doe Design

65. Kyle Standing

66. GB Studio

67. Poccuo

68. Zurb

69. 39/18 Company

70. F5 Fest

I will soon continue with Part 2, because there are a lot more beautiful light designs so stay with us!

30 Logo Designs Using Gradient 3D Effects !

2009-08-06T22:58:00.000-07:00

This is already the third part in gradient effect series, I hope you’ll enjoy this one as you might like previous articles.

First one was about showcasing resources and premade gradients for Photoshop to get started, on the second part I made a research on how gradient effects are used in web designs and tried to look a little bit behind the scenes. Today you’ll see 30 logo designs using the same gradient effects to get 3D effect using beautiful colors. Actually it’s not so easy to create good looking logo using gradients, it comes from a lot of learning, but also that’s great way to easily create unique logo design, if you know how to use gradients in right way. This is kind of inspirational article to show great examples of gradient use, in the next and last gradient related article I’ll try to find really good Photoshop, Illustrator tutorials teaching you how to use gradients correctly, so stay with us and get inspired this time!

1. Creative Atelier by vudstok

2. Aramova by grafikonline

3. Loop by chek

4. Webics by lalohead

5. Candeo by nido

6. Samarras by holajoan

7. SideWinder by Logomotive

8. adff.ly by pravin john

9. FYC by ACMair

10. Geneauter & Marino by imix.design

11. Union by Houston-we

12. Guevaras Mexican Imports by bartodell

13. OS by oscarsanchez

14. Simply Stunning by TheEmpire

15. Communtini by tini1

16. Volume Studios revised by ckee

17. Grey & Saurian by squeaky

18. H+H by eldropper

19. Flutterfly by OcularInk

20. Vavao by idastudios

21. Funnel interactive by riteshsriv88

22. M40ON by plantingSeeds

23. NIVID 2 by jithinac

24. Yncense by vudstok

25. ConnectSoft by Anck

26. Celebrationz by satish@logopond

Maybe not really usable but looking good however.

27. Shape by jerron

28. Sterling Plating by strangeideas

29. BananasFilms by javo_rc

30. CocoaStuff by Denis Olenik

15 Freelancer Creative Job Boards !

2009-08-06T22:55:00.000-07:00

I believe many readers of my site are designers and developer themselves and freelancing is great way to earn extra income..or even better make it full time one with free conditions. This article is created to help you – find your potential clients or exactly opposite – to find who can do job for you. There are even job board directly related to help find programmer – designer and contrary. There are times when you can think, that you can do everything by yourself – but for me, I am better designer, and there is no way I will be very good PHP coder – I can get job done, but it takes a lot of precious time. Sometimes it’s better to hire somebody, so you can do what you do the best and not waste your time! Time is money remember!

This list features 15 best design related job boards in my opinion, hope you’ll find this article useful! In future I think to evolve this article and create other one just related to bloggers, because there are many services which offers affiliate programs, paid posts and things like that. I think it’s valuable at least to know such sites, can be good for article ideas too sometimes.

1. Jobs Freelanceswitch

Place an advert on our job board for absolutely nothing! You’ll get talented freelance professionals contacting you to discuss your project immediately.

Categories:

All Jobs
Design
Development
Writing
Illustration
Flash
Misc

2. Krop

Krop is a Job Board and career resource website for creative professionals. Whether you’re looking for job, or hunting top-notch talent, Krop’s simple and powerful tools are geared towards connecting the worlds brightest minds with the best companies.

Pay to post: Jobs stay active for 60 days and are posted with credits. 1 Credit = 1 Job. $199 each, with additional discounts for bulk purchases. Credits never expire.

Categories:

Design
Development
Photography
Programming

A lot more sections for creative with excellent interface.

3. Odesk

Whether you are looking for new talent or already have a remote team, oDesk offers a complete solution for working online.

oDesk is the marketplace for online workteams, with the best business model for both buyers and providers. Unique approach guarantees to buyers that an hour billed is an hour worked, while guaranteeing to providers that an hour worked is an hour paid.

Categories:

Web Development
Software Development
Networking&Information Systems
Writing&Translation
Administrative Support
Design&Multimedia
Customer Service
Sales&Marketing
Business Services

4. Smashing Jobs

Why to use Smashing Jobs:

Your openings are featured in one of the top 20 blogs of the world
Your credits are valid for unlimited time
You can change your job postings whenever you like
Job postings are online immediately

Pay to post: $200 for full time, $100 for freelance, 30 days.

Categories:

All jobs
Design
Programming
Other

5. Design Jobs On The Wall

When you post your job here, it will be instantly featured on Web Designer Wall and their network sites where designers will see it. Due to site strong following, Web Designer Wall appears on loads of online portals and design publications such as Web Designer magazine, Practical Web Design (.Net magazine), and Computer Arts Projects. Posting your job opening here means it will be seen by thousands of talented designers and developers who visit WebDesignerWall every day.

Pay to post: Freelance – $50/post, Full-Time = 75$/post for 30 days

Categories:

Design
Coding
Others

6. Elance

Elance is the leading site for online work where businesses connect with independent professionals to get work done.

Elance delivers an immediate, cost-effective and flexible way to hire, manage and pay independent professionals and contractors online. Companies tap into Elance’s skilled talent pool to distribute their work, while professionals use Elance to meet clients, stay independent and get paid for delivering great results.

Categories:

Web & Programming
Design & Multimedia
Writing & Translation
Admin. Support
Sales & Marketing
Finance & Mgt.
Legal
Engineering & Mfg.

7. SoloGig

Sologig.com is a niche website specializing in connecting contract-to-hire, contractors, freelancers, and consultants with quality employers looking for seasoned professionals. Registration is free, and unlike other project based websites, they never charge you project fees. There’s also no bidding on Sologig – you choose which projects you are interested in and negotiate pricing directly with the employer.

Categories:

Engineering & Aerospace
Creative & Design
Law & Paralegal
Clinical & Scientific
Sales & Marketing
Finance & Accounting
IT & Technica
Health Care
Energy
Construction
Other

8. Guru

Use Guru.com’s free service to search for and find Freelancers. Post your project. Get free quotes within hours. Outsource your contract work today.

Free service. No obligation to hire.
Pay Freelancers risk-free. With our SafePay Escrow service, your satisfaction is completely guaranteed.
Escrow guarantee
Get up to 2% money back and a chance to win $100 when you pay Freelancers via SafePay.
No tax form hassles. We issue 1099 tax forms for you for free.

Categories:

Websites & Ecommerce
Graphic Design & Multimedia
Illustration & Art
Marketing & Communications
Engineering & CAD
Networking & Telephone Systems
Legal, Fashion & Interior Designs
Programming & Databases
Writing
Editing & Translation
Admin Support
Sales & Telemarketing
Business Consulting
Photography & Videography
Finance & Accounting
Broadcasting

9. Authentic Jobs

Authentic Jobs is a targeted destination for web and creative professionals, and the companies seeking to hire them.

Categories:

Design
Development

10. CoroFlot

Coroflot’s job board is the largest and most active site on the internet specifically targeted at hiring designers and other creative professionals. Coroflot counts Fuseproject, Frog Design, Microsoft, Nokia, Landor, RIM, Nike, Intel, Blu Dot, and Sony among our clients, and they’ve all returned to use Coroflot again, for one reason: it works.

Sounds pretty impressive to at least try this one!

Categories:

3-D Modeling and CAD
Advertising
Architecture
Design
Education
Design
Management
Exhibit Design
Fashion Design
Graphic Design
Industrial Design
Interaction Design
Interior Design
Product Development
Research & Strategy
Sales & Marketing
Web Design

11. Fresh Web Jobs

One more job board for web professionals – currently 176 web jobs available.

Pay to post: $75 for 30 days listing.

Categories:

Programming
Design
Other

12. Get A Coder

Find Freelance Programmers, Web Designers and Freelance Writers for your next request. Outsource jobs to your home country or to countries where labor is cheap. Post a request for free and start receiving bids within minutes. Thousands of outsourced jobs prove that GetACoder is a cost-effective way to get the best talent in the world at an amazing low price. Grow your business and achieve a greater return on investment by using GetACoder.

Categories:

Web Design / Development
Database Development
Writing
Computer Platforms
Engineering
Testing / Quality Assurance
Project Management
Enterprise Resource Planning
Training
Programming
Graphics / Multimedia
Marketing / Promotion
Gaming
Security
Administrative Support
Requirements
Legal

13. Programmer Meet Designer

This is a site for programmers,web developers,designers,entrepreneurs and writers to find each other and work together to create websites that look and function great.

Categories: You can search through huge list of tags in this site.

14. 37 Signals Job Board

Industry leaders such as Apple, The New York Times, CNET, Facebook, Adobe, Trek, and American Express use this Job Board to reach today’s best and brightest web minds. Discover why this job board will find you better people than other job sites.

Pay to post: Jobs are $300 for 30 days, internships are $50 for 30 days.

Categories:

Design Jobs
Programming Jobs
Miscellaneous Jobs
Customer Service/Support Jobs
Business/Exec Jobs
iPhone Developer Jobs

15. Simply Hired

Excellent job search engine on the web. This site search thousands of job sites and companies, so you can easily find everything in one place! Also you can use several nifty tools to find local jobs, identify trends, research salaries, and secure that offer letter.

Categories: I will not list all of them here, since this site offers really wide variety, better check it out for yourself!

16. Behance Network

Sorry, I totally forgot about Behance Network website.

It is great place to submit and place your portfolio and get big exposure, find new clients in easy way. Very popular network and totally related to design creative!

And yes -good luck!

32 Gradient Sets and Effects !

2009-08-06T22:52:00.000-07:00

In my opinion gradient effects are very hard to master, all the beautiful vector icons, illustrations are made on basis of good gradient usage. Gradient mesh tool in Illustrator is the most powerful one, learn how to use it correctly and understand what can be done with it. I found many beautiful tutorials and ordered them from instructional to intermediate tutorials to lead you easier through learning process. I think you should get great starting point here and even if you’re experienced designer, you should find some new tips here definitely.

This article completes gradient article series, make sure you read through them all:

Put them in good use and here Part 4 starts:

1. Blending Gradients in Illustrator [ Video Tutorial]

How do you make a gradient bend to the shape you are creating? The answer is in Illustrator’s under-used Blend tool.

2. Tutorial – An Introduction To Mesh Tool

In the following tutorial you will be given an introduction to using of mesh tool.

3. Illustrator Gradient Mesh Tool Tutorial

Very simple tutorial showing you gradient mesh feature in easy to follow example.

4. Adobe Illustrator CS3 Tutorial: ‘Everything about Gradients’

Very comprehensive article with a lot of screenshots explaining everything about gradients in easy to follow way.

5. A Tutorial on using the Gradient Mesh tool in Adobe Illustrator 10

In this tutorial, you will create part of the image shown above using the gradient mesh tool, then using the skills you learned, you will finish off the image yourself.

6. Adobe Illustrator Gradient Mesh Portrait Tutorial

This amazing advanced tutorial will show you how gradient mesh portrait creation happens and will walk you through that process.

7. Adobe Illustrator CS, CS4: Gradient Mesh Tool, Gradients & Blends

In Adobe Illustrator CS, tonal gradations are rendered via the Gradient Mesh tool (U) and the Gradient Tool (G). The Gradient tool is fairly straightforward in its approach to rendering a gradation and blending subtle tonal and color gradations. On the other hand, the Gradient Mesh tool is one of the more labor intensive and frustrating tools in the Illustrator tool pallet, especially for the Illustrator newcomer.

This tutorial will show you basic overview about these tools.

8. Create Abstract Backgrounds

Abstract backgrounds are easy to create in Illustrator with a couple of simple techniques. Using Gradient Meshes, Steps Blends and Opacity Masks you can quickly create an abstract background – this tutorial will show you how.

9. Illustrator 101: One Gradient Across Multiple Paths

In this quick tip, you will touch on the importance of compound paths, as opposed to groups, when applying a single gradient across multiple shapes in Illustrator.

10. Creating Realistic Texture and a Sharp Vector Knife

Creating convincing vectors can be a daunting task. Dan Hess from Vectortuts will show you how to make wood and metal textures for a vector knife using the Gradient Mesh Tool, layering Gradients, and the Pathfinder Tools.

11. Gradient Flower Icon in Illustrator

In this tutorial you are going to use the Pen, Reflect, Scissors and Gradient tool, and of course super time saving Transform again technique.

12. Illustrator swatches gradient background effect

The Adobe’s Creative Suite 4 packages have this interesting gradient style effect. It looks like a grid of swatches going from one color to another in subtle gradient effect. If you have ever wondered how you create this effect, then this tutorial is just for you!

13. Quick Tutorial: Gradient Strokes

This is quick tutorial about how to create gradient strokes. This super simple technique use the Appearance panel and effects to create editable gradient strokes in Illustrator.

14. Make a Shiny Gum Ball Machine with Mesh Gradients

In this tutorial, Simona Pfreundner from Vectortuts will explain how to create a gum ball machine with mesh gradient. This is an advanced tutorial and the pace is fairly quick. Intermediated Illustrator knowledge is required.

15. Tips for Working with the Gradient Mesh Tool In Illustrator

In this tutorial, you’ll learn several tips that will improve your Mesh work so read through carefully!

16. Illustrate a Pair of Sweet Gradient Mesh Cherries

In this tutorial, Simona Pfreundner from Vectortuts will explain how to create a pair of cherries solely with the Gradient Mesh tool. If you’re not familiar with the Gradient Mesh tool, then this is a great tutorial to learn how to start using it. You can create artwork with a semi-realistic to very realistic look with that tool. It can take effort to master, but it’s worth your time.

17. Make an Aurora Borealis Design in Illustrator

To recreate the light patterns of the Aurora Borealis you’d probably turn to Photoshop’s filters and effects. Use Illustrator however, and you’ll not only achieve a stunning end result, but you’ll also benefit from the flexibility of working with vectors. This is an intermediate level tutorial rewarding you with an attractive desktop wallpaper for your efforts!

18. Create a Glowing Abstract Light Vector Graphic

Create beautiful vector illustration and learn how to utilize blends, different blend modes, and gradient meshes to use them later on other works!

19. Illustrator Tutorial: Gradient Mesh Flower

Gradient Mesh can be a wonderful tool to master but the learning curve canbring a bit of frustration to the beginner, so this tutorial is great learning point to get known gradient mesh tool better!

20. Create a Stylized Gradient Mesh Soccer Ball Illustration

This advanced Adobe Illustrator tutorial will show you how to create a realistic looking soccer ball with mesh objects and how to create reflections with the Opacity Mask.

21. Make a Fairy-Tale Inspired Magical Hand Shaped Vine

Intermediate tutorial teaching how to make a fairy-tale inspired magical vine that is shaped like a hand. You should have a basic understanding of Adobe Illustrator tools before you begin this tutorial.

22. Illustrate a Vector Lifesaver From Scratch

Create a unique lifesaver that can be used as an icon or design element. you’ll be working with the Pathfinder Tools to create the shapes. The Mesh Tool will help us to apply the color and highlights to give our object the desired “realistic” look, you’ll also take advantage of the Duplicate and Rotate Tools, to get a balanced look.

23. Design a Vector Audio Speaker Icon In Illustrator

This intermediate tutorial will show you how to create a vector speaker icon. You’ll learn to use some ellipses with gradients, the Grid Tool, and the Mesh Tool to create this icon design.

24. How to Create Vector Clouds with the Gradient Mesh Tool

Create impressionistic, infinitely-scalable vector clouds with the Gradient Mesh tool. It’s easy to start, but it takes a lot of time to master. There are several ways of approaching the Gradient Mesh – this one may be new to you.

Photoshop Tutorials

25. Photoshop Sunset: Warm Golden Sunsets With Gradient Maps

In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial, you’re going to look at how to easily improve and enhance a photo of a sunset using a Gradient Map!

26. Gradient Mapping effect in Adobe Photoshop

Learn how to use the gradient mapping tool to transform a standard photograph for use with a specific colour scheme or brand image.

27. Light and Shadows – Feathering Gradients in Photoshop

Tutorial explaining how to use feathering in your works in photoshop.

Feathering softens the edges of the gradient, which will help create convincing lighting that will blend nicely. You will be making use of the marquee tool frequently throughout this tutorial, so you’ll save yourself some time if you are already familiar with it.

28. Using Gradients to Make Light and Shadow – and a Coffee Cup!

In this tutorial, you’re going to use some simple circles and gradients to make a cup of coffee viewed from above. The end result isn’t that useful, but the process is interesting nonetheless.

29. Create Stylish Web-header using Photoshop Gradient tool

This tutorial will show you how to easily create stylish web header using only Gradient Tool Gradient Tool , Vector mask and Layer effect. The final web header image will include 3 layers consisted of 3 separate gradient this will allow you to easily edit each part later.

30. Tutorial: Rays of Light

Simple and fast tutorial explaining how to get effect as in the image below.

31. Using Photoshop Gradient Tool

Comprehensive article showing how to use Photoshop gradient tool correctly with many tips.

32. A Gradient Tutorial

Simple, yet very useful gradient tutorial to teach you how to create really subtle and good gradients.

If you know more such gradient tutorials, let me know and I will make this list even better!

49 Top Sites To Find Free Icon Sets !

2009-08-06T22:50:00.002-07:00

Pictures talk a lot more than words do, so placing icon in websites and blogs in key areas will gain the attention of the readers. Web designers work a lot searching for best icons to include in the site and to make their site more effective and reachable. You can also use these icons to replace the icons on your computer folders, etc.. to make them look attractive and to able to know what the folder contains in a symbolic way.

Here you’ll find some of the best websites that offer various free icon set collections as well as just separate good collections in other sites, so browse through the sites and download the icon sets for free.

1) Icons Etc

You can find more than 104,297 icons in this site. So you are sure to find the right icon set that you are looking for. You can download the free icon sets and clipart stock images as whole or browse through the icon set and download a single icon that you need. All the icons present in this site are of high quality and there are some 3D icon sets available for download as well.

2) FreeIconsWeb

FreeIconWeb offers hundreds of icon sets for free download. It hosts various kinds of icon sets from basic icons to 3D icons. Icon sets are present in different formats like .PNG and GIF. This website enables you to preview the icon set prior to download. You can also submit your icons on this site.

3) FreeIcons Download

Browse through number of icon sets and download the one you like. You can browse through the icon sets by categories for easy finding. There are icons for every need like computer icons, food, animals, people, etc.

4) Iconarchive

If you are looking for art icons, then this is the place where you have to look for. Find icons for windows, Mac and Linux computers in Iconarchive. Web designers can also find the icons they are looking for easily.

5) Icon Stick

Icon Stick hosts number of vibrant icon sets that you can download for free. You can find various kinds of icons in different formats like PNG, GIF, vector and pixel icons. You can download icons for Windows, MAC and Linux operating system.

6) abb soft

Abb soft is very rich in icon set collections. All the icon sets are arranged in categories for easy finding. It sports icon manager that makes you even easy to find the icon set that you are looking for.

7) Icon factory

This is one another icon rich site where you can download icon sets for Windows, Linux and Mac system. You can also find desktop pictures to download for widescreen, full screen and wallpaper sizes.

8 ) Dry icons

It has got some excellent icon set collections you can download in .IOC or .PNG or .ICNS format. All the icons present in this site are of high quality such that you can insert them into the web site without any corrections or resizing.

9) bestfreeicons.com

This site holds more than 20,000 free high quality icons and many more are been added every day. Browse through the different categories to find the icon set you need and download it for free use.

10) Deviant ART

This site hosts a variety of icon sets which are shared by users. You can find icons for various needs and it also hosts avatars to download.

11) Icon Dock

It has got many free and stock icon sets which are compiled from various sites, such that you can download all of them from one place.

12) Elite by Design

This web site adds new icon sets every day so that you can find new icon sets daily. In this site you can view and download high quality icon sets for free.

13) Smashing Magazine

This website offers 35 cool icon sets to include in your web design project or for use on your computer. You can see icons of animals to latest gadgets to choose from for free download.

14) SpeckyBoy

In this post the author has included some 96 free icon sets. These icon sets will be useful for the web designers, developers and bloggers. Most of the icon sets are of high quality and are available in various formats.

15) Comment.net

If you are looking for free bright icons, then you must have a look at this site. Here you can find about 40 free icon sets that are bright and milky with high quality icons.

16) Hongkiat.com

This site contains some of the cool icon sets for WordPress and other applications. You can download most of the icons for free which are of high resolution and quality. This site is especially useful for the web designers and developers.

17) Nigraphic

Here you can find free icon sets for websites and applications. Icon sets from other websites are also included to help you find the most useful resources possible.

18) Iconpot

Hundreds of different icon sets are present in this site with credits to the name and link of author of each icon set.

19) Iconbuffet

It features many icon sets and you can download them for free in this site. It also features stock icons, standard icons, blog and vector iocns for free. You can also preview the icon sets before you download.

20) Graphic Push

This site has a good collection of blog icons, XML and RSS, file, folder and application management icon packs. They are available for free download and use, very useful for web designers.

21 Naldz Graphics

This blog post contains links to 44 awesome icon sets ranging from browser icons to iPhone icon sets. You can also find latest icon sets like transformers, etc., which look cool on any of the gaming sites.

22) Spheres Graphics

In this site you can find icon set in 4 different colors and you can download it in different formats and sizes. For windows 48 x 48 and 128 x 128 icon set is available and for Mac 128 x 128 icon sets are available.

23) Ganato design

This website is for freelance web designers and developers. In this site you can find different styles for a single icon type so that you can choose to select the best out of all. There are about 24 icon sets are present and all of them are PSD icons.

24) FAMFAMFAM

It has got four icon sets which are very useful to anyone. In this site you can find flags icon set which has many country’s flags. The icon sets are available in GIF and PNG formats.

25) Graphic Design

In this site the developer has aggregated a list of cool icon sets in one place. Such that you can download or have a quick preview of the icon sets directly. You can find icon sets for use in social bookmarking and networking most of the icon sets are useful for the web developers and designers.

26) Directory for designers

In this site you can find 50 icon sets for social media and also to use on your blog. Most of the icons are of high quality and you can also find some free hand drawing icon sets in this site.

27) Six Revisions

About 40 icon sets are present in this site which you can use for many ways. In total there are more than 3000 individual icons in this article.

28) Tutsaz

A large collection of free and commercial icon sets in one place. You can find icon sets like functional, milky, silk, blogging, etc., icon sets in this site.

29) Function

This web sites adds information about new icon sets frequently. In this site you can see the work of freelance designers and can find icon sets to include in your work or applications. You can also find icon sets for social media, bookmarking and sharing.

30) Instant Shift

Cool icon set collections are submitted by the users in this site such that you can download these icon sets for free. There are many free vector icon sets are present in various colors, designs and formats to download in this site.

31) We Love Icons

The icon sets present in this site are free for personal use. You can dowload the icon set in the format you want either for Windows, Mac or in png format. It also features icon converter such that you can upload a file or image to generate icons.

32) Pro Blog Design

In this site there is the coolest collection of some of the best free icon sets on the web. There are different kinds of icon sets like the social bookmarking to vector resources. You can easily download the icon sets directly from this site.

33) Back to essentials

Here in this site you can find 120 free icon sets to download. There are different forms of icons you can find icons for MS office to many cartoon character icons. The collection is really cool with thousands of icons you are sure to find one for you.

34) Ntt.cc

There are more than 400 icon sets in this site ranging from simple web application icons to iPhone icon sets.

35) OpenSourceHunter

This site hosts an article with the list of great free social icons. You can have a instant preview of the icon set and download them directly from this site.

36) Pingable

It host some 20 free and royalty free icon sets. You can see icons of daily gadgets like iPods and other items in this site.

37) Noupe

You will find 50 free icon sets in this site. You can find icons for celebrations, social bookmarking and for other purpose in this site.

38) Traffikd

There are 10 social bookmarking icon sets in this article which are of high quality.

39) Novus Volce

The author of this article has given the information of icon lists that are hosted on various sites on the net. By clicking on any of the link you can have access to many icon sets at once.

40) dhtml site

In this site there are 22 essential and free icon sets like Silk icons, mini icons, drunkey icon set, etc., to choose from. Most of the icons are useful for the web designers.

41) Web Design Ledger

There are total of 21 best and free icon sets in this article which can be used for web designing projects or in the blogs. All the 21 icon sets are unique among them and there are icon sets like the ASP .Net icons, Tango Icon Library, etc., such that you can find an icon set for every project.

42) Semlabs

In this site the developer has designed and published some 310 icons in the form of one icon set. This icon set can be proving to be the life line of the web designers when they do not find the required icon anywhere else. The icons are present in 16 x 16 size and in PNG format and are free to use in any project.

43) Web Design Dev

This is one of the popular online journals for the web designers. In this site they have included an article that is containing some cool icon sets for free. You can find social bookmarking icon sets, RSS icon sets, flavors icon set, etc., in this site.

44) Blog Perfume

If you are looking for some of the glossy blogging icon set then you must have a look at this site. It has got only one icon set but the designers have done full justification for their work. Every icon looks like a master peace and there are available in 3 sizes 24 x 24, 36x 36 and 48 x 48 in the PNG format.

45) Icon Joy

In this site the developer had included brighter and lighter versions of the icon sets such that the user can choose which icon set to use according to the shade of the background. There is only one icon set is available for free download and use where as you can buy others at low price.

46) Tha Slayer

With in-depth knowledge of web design and latest industry standards the author of this article has included the most useful and high quality icon sets that are useful for the web designers and bloggers. The icon sets are available in different sizes and formats.

47) Best Design Options

This is a blog site that is completely dedicated to help web designers. In this site there is a blog post which contains 18 very useful icon sets for the web designers and bloggers alike. There are icon sets in 3 different sized and are available in various formats.

48) Superb Hosting

In this site there are links to the popular icon set hosting sites so you can browse through all the sites and find the best one to include in your project.

49) CSS Reflex

50) IconFinder *updated

Search through 106,839 icons or browse 167 icon sets. Beautiful website with really huge collections of free icons, in my opinion first place to look for big research.

52 Really High Quality Free Fonts !

2009-08-06T22:50:00.001-07:00

I am big fan of typography myself and was surprised I haven’t done any good font collection yet! While doing research I was amazed how many really high quality fonts are available for free. And now with Sifr and similar tools you can use any font in your web-design actually, but if you are graphic designer you get even bigger enjoyment through such detailed and beautiful fonts. Balance between readability, elegance and use fonts with artistic approach to get best out of them, really that’s all you need to do. And by the way I am thinking about inspiring and effective typography article in soon future to show you very best examples – stay with us – get inspired and save your time because research has been done already for you!

Finally be sure to check license to these fonts, they may be free but some of them require reference or may not be used for commercial projects for free, although most of them are.

You may also consider reading these articles:

1. Sansation Typeface

2. Fertigo Pro Typeface

Beautiful font and it’s still unbelievable it is free! Now Fertigo Pro version is released with extended language support and more.

3. Megalopolis Extra Typeface

Revamped version of the 2004 one. Now in OT with extended language support and OpenType features with alternates, ligatures, different styles of figures, etc.

4. Walkway Typeface

5. Nadia Serif Typeface

6. Modeno Font

7. M+ OUTLINE Typeface

Really beautiful font with many variations – thin, light, regular, medium, black, heavy – be sure to check this free premium font.

8. Fontin Sans Typeface

9. Diavlo Typeface

Diavlo is a free font that contains 5 weights: Light, Book, SemiBold Medium, Bold and Black. Read and look more to this one in this *.pdf document.

10. Museo Typeface

This OpenType font family comes in five weights and offers supports CE languages and even Esperanto. Besides ligatures, contextual alternatives, stylistic alternates, fractions and proportional/tabular figures MUSEO also has a ‘case’ feature for case sensitive forms.

11. Gentium Typeface

12. Delicious Typeface

This font has been my favorite for some time, beautiful detail, every character has unique shape too.

13. Junction Typeface

Created by Caroline Hadilaksono

Inspired by my favorite humanist sans serif typefaces, such as Meta, Myriad, and Scala, Junction is where the best qualities of serif and sans serif typefaces come together. It has the hand drawn and human qualities of a serif, and still retains the clarity and efficiencies of a sans serif typeface. It combines the best of both worlds.

14. CartoGothic Std Typeface

15. Anivers Typeface

This OpenType font family comes in regular, italic, bold and small caps and has some nice OpenType features. Besides ligatures, contextual alternatives, fractions, oldstyle/tabular numerals, Anivers also has a ‘case’ feature for case sensitive forms and tabular numerals … so Anivers can crunch numbers with ease.

16. Medio Typeface

17. Birra Stout Typeface

18. Rezland Typeface

19. OFTEN Typeface

20. Engel Light Typeface

21. Contra Typeface

22. Nilland Typeface

Created by Manfred Klein

23. Calluna Typeface

Calluna supports a very wide range in languages and is a very complete OpenType typeface. Each font counts 723 glyphs. You can find detailed info on he character set and the OpenType features in the Calluna PDF specimen.

24. QuickSand Typeface

This is a free and elegant sans serif typeface.

25. Mentone Typeface

26. Vegur Typeface

27. Swansea Typeface

28. GeoSans Light Typeface

Created by Manfred Klein

I enjoy this font because of it’s thin and elegant font lines displaying text in really fashion way.

29. COM4t Nuvu Regular Typeface

30. Steiner Typeface

31. Chunk Typeface

Created by Meredith Mandel

Chunk is an ultra-bold slab serif typeface that is reminiscent of old American Western woodcuts, broadsides, and newspaper headlines. Used mainly for display, the fat block lettering is unreserved yet refined for contemporary use.

32. Aller Sans Typeface

Check out *.pdf document for full examination.

33. Juvelo Typeface

Self explaining image below, but I enjoy this font because of its unique glance and serifs.

34. Goudy Bookletter 1911 Typeface

35. Temporarium Typeface

36. Bellerose Typeface

37. Ambrosia Demo Typeface

Here’s a demo version of font called Ambrosia. It has all letters, numbers and a few symbols.

38. Surrounding Typeface

39. Circled Typeface

Very sharp and elegant letters, new font but it got my sympathies right away!

40. Nevis Typeface

This strong, angular typeface is ideal for headings. It features 96 of the most commonly used glyphs (characters).

41. Zephyr Typeface

42. Advent Pro Typeface

Excellent and very popular unique font with many, many different variations to play with.

43. SerifBeta Typeface

This is called as beta version, but still seems very complete for me – included in the set are Regular,Italic,Bold,Bold Italic for optical sizes 72, 12 and 6. Size 72 also includes italic swash characters and Black weights. (demo pdf)

44. Evolution True Type Font

Note that you have to give credit if you use this font and you must contact author before using in commercial projects!

45. Sliced AB Typeface

46. Technical Forest v2 Typeface

Only for non-commercial use.

47. Alte Haas Grotesk Typeface

48. Comfortaa Typeface

Comfortaa is a simple, good looking, true type font with an amazingly large number of 466 different characters and symbols. You can see them all in the preview.

It is absolutely free, both for personal and commercial use.

49. MOD™ font

MOD is applicable for any type of graphic design – web, print, motion graphics etc and perfect for t-shirts and other items like logos, pictograms, 215 character set.

50. Whiteboard Modern Typeface

Created by Jay Hilgert

Whiteboard Modern is a hand-drawn face resembling the flowing motion and freedom of writing in an open space, such as a dry-erase board.

51. Neighbourhood Type

52. Soraya Font by JustMyType

On JustMyType site you can find several more very unique and interesting letters.Half serif, half sans serif. Capital letters A-Z, available only in Illustrator AI format.

16 Free Javascript Code Syntax Highlighters !

2009-08-06T22:48:00.000-07:00

If you are programmer or actually if you at least have some basic coding skills, you’ll find this article useful. For example just look at this page source – without highlighting that whole code is just a bunch of plain black text and it is really hard to find specific things if everything looks the same. Thankfully there are many highlighting scripts available, for example Notepad++ also supports and highlights different code snippets. These code syntax highlighters actually are doing mainly the same thing, but with more options, big coding language support, better integration – really in our days you just need to choose one – there are too many tools available anyway.

Use these syntax highlighters in daily coding or just in cases where you are sharing code with friends, want to add that code in your blog post (by the way there is SyntaxHighlighter Wordpress plugin available too) or just want to rapidly read and maintain it – use online syntax highlighters in that case and pick your favorite one from this article!

1. SyntaxHighlighter

I definitely think this syntax highlighter tool should be your choice – this tool is supported very well and offers many options, extensions and integrations with other programs and platforms, but however I want to offer you other tools too to choose from.

SyntaxHighlighter is here to help a developer/coder to post code snippets online with ease and have it look pretty. It’s 100% Java Script based and it doesn’t care what you have on your server.

The idea behind SyntaxHighlighter is to allow insertion of colored code snippets on a web page without relying on any server side scripts. SyntaxHighlighter isn’t for those looking for ability to edit highlighted code.

Extensions & Integration – check out this page too, because you can find there Wordpress extensions, Ruby on Rail plugins and much more integration extensions, should be handy!

Check out demo page

Download link

2. GeSHi – Generic Syntax Highlighter

GeSHi supports PHP5 and Windows, and has even been used to highlight code on ASP pages, it really supports and highlights almost every coding language, you should check out his website to read more – very powerful tool!

GeSHi aims to be a simple but powerful highlighting class, with the following goals:

Support for a wide range of popular languages
Easy to add a new language for highlighting
Highly customizable output formats

Check out demo page

Download link

3. Quick Highlighter

Doesn’t get any easier than this to create a web page from your source code. This online highlighter tool offers many coding languages you can choose to highlight together with several options, you can check/uncheck before highlighting code:

Combine Style and HTML Code
Highlight inbuilt keywords, data types etc.
Strict Mode
Wrap overflowing text

4. Google Code Prettify

A Javascript module and CSS file that allows syntax highlighting of source code snippets in an html page.

The comments in prettify.js are authoritative but the lexer should work on a number of languages including C and friends, Java, Python, Bash, SQL, HTML, XML, CSS, Javascript, and Makefiles. It works passably on Ruby, PHP, VB, and Awk and a decent subset of Perl and Ruby, but, because of commenting conventions, doesn’t work on Smalltalk, or CAML-like languages.

Features:

Works on HTML pages
Works even if code contains embedded links, line numbers, etc.
Simple API : include some JS&CSS and add an onload handler.
Lightweights : small download and does not block page from loading while running.
Customizable styles via CSS.
Supports all C-like, Bash-like, and XML-like languages. No need to specify the language
Extensible language handlers for other languages. You can specify the language.
Widely used with good cross-browser support.

Check out demo page

5. Pygments – Python Syntax Highlighter

Pygments is a generic syntax highlighter for general use in all kinds of software such as forum systems, wikis or other applications that need to prettify source code.

Pygments supports an ever-growing range of languages, you can check full list supported language listing here

Check out demo page

Download link

6. Highlight.JS Syntax Highlighter

Highlight.js highlights syntax in code examples on blogs, forums and in fact on any web pages. It’s very easy to use because it works automatically: finds blocks of code, detects a language, highlights it.

This program supports following languages – 1C, AVR Assembler, Apache, Axapta, Bash, C#, C++, CSS, DOS .bat, Delphi, Django, HTML, XML, Ini, Java, Javascript, Lisp, MEL (Maya Embedded Language), PHP, Perl, Python, Python profile, RenderMan (RIB, RSL), Ruby, SQL, Smalltalk, VBScript, diff.

Check out demo page

Download link

7. Lighter.js – Syntax Highlighter written in MooTools

There isn’t available actual demo page just download link, but it is very easy to use this highlighter as all others by the way.

8. SHJS – Syntax Highlighting in JavaScript

SHJS is a JavaScript program which highlights source code passages in HTML documents. Documents using SHJS are highlighted on the client side by the web browser.

SHJS Support many languages too – Bison, CC++, C#, ChangeLog, CSS, Desktop files, DiffFlex, GLSL, Haxe, HTML, Java, Java properties files,JavaScript, JavaScript with DOM, LaTeX. LDAP files, Log files, LSM (Linux Software Map) files, M4, Makefile, Objective Caml, Oracle SQL, Pascal, Perl, PHP,Prolog, Python, RPM spec files, Ruby, S-Lang, Scala, Shell, SQLSt, andard ML, Tcl, XML, Xorg configuration files.

Download link

9. CodePress – Online Real Time Syntax Highlighting Editor

CodePress is web-based source code editor with syntax highlighting written in JavaScript that colors text in real time while it’s being typed in the browser.

This editor offers several features like real-time syntax highlighting, code snippets, auto completion and multiple windows. Check out their website to see online demo version.

Demo page and download links are on the same first page.

10. Chili 2.2 jQuery code highlighter plugin

Chili is the jQuery code highlighter plugin which is very fast highlighting, trivial setup, fully customizable, thoroughly documented and MIT licensed.

Plugin supports several languages like C++, C#, CSS, Delphi, Java, JavaScript, LotusScript, MySQL, PHP, and XHTML and has many configuration options giving you very good control over code appearance.

Check out demo examples and install

Download link

11. Highlight – Code & Syntax highlighting by Andre Simon

Highlight converts source code to formatted text with syntax highlighting:

Colorized output in HTML, XHTML, RTF, TeX, LaTeX, SVG, BBCode and XML format
Supports 140+ programming languages
Includes 40 colour themes
Platform independent

Check out demo page

Download link

12. BeautyOfCode: jQuery Plugin for Syntax Highlighting

BeautyOfCode is using Syntaxhighlighter as a base, but this plugin enables xhtml compliant syntax in beautiful way.

13. JUSH – JavaScript Syntax Highlighter

JavaScript Syntax Highlighter can be used for client-side syntax highlighting of following languages: html, css, javascript, php, mysql, SQLlite, Apache, PostgreSQL.

Features:

Highlights languages embedded into each other
Links to documentation of all languages
Colors can be easily modified via CSS
Recognizes complete PHP syntax including __halt_compiler, heredoc, backticks, {$} variables inside strings, namespaces
Works in all major browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera

Check out demo page

Download link

14. Ultraviolet – Syntax Highlighting Engine

Ultraviolet is a syntax highlighting engine based on Textpow – you must install it to use Ultraviolet first. Since it uses Textmatesyntax files, it offers out of the box syntax highlighting for more than 50 languages and 20 themes. Ultraviolet is at the same time a stand-alone command line utility and a Rubylibrary.

Check out demo page

Download link

15. DlHighlight – JavaScript Syntax Highlighting Engine

This project is an extensive JavaScript-based syntax highlighting engine, check also why you should choose this engine instead of others.

Download and demo links are all in the same page.

16. Syntax highlighter for JavaScript

This online tool will syntax highlight JavaScript 1.2. code. The highlighting is based on patterns, it will not test for valid JavaScript. Put your code into the box, and tell it to syntax highlight. It may take a little while to highlight large amounts of code, be patient and let it finish.

The output format is HTML – designed so that you can create a Web page displaying your code. I enjoyed how this tool really displays code in very clean way!

Of course there are also many programs with already built in syntax highlighting support, but these online versions and JS scripts offer bigger control over highlighting and flexibility.

50 Top Flash Sites !

2009-08-06T22:46:00.000-07:00

It is time for yet another inspirational post, this time I am featuring really creative and inspiring flash websites. Such websites never stop to surprise, because really there are almost no limitations, you can do and create everything there with action-script, animation, include videos and also create really interactive designs or even games!

I got really amazed what can be done with Flash and how limitless possibilities are. You also may notice there are a lot of design, development and interactive agencies in this article, but that’s really self explaining – creative souls and agencies really offer the greatest creativity, because on their own designs they really have no limits. Enjoy!

1. Saizen Media Studios

Excellent digital artwork and animation – dreamy scene!

2.DrawingArt – WebDesign and Development Studio

One of my favorite designs – check it out to understand why!

3. Section Seven

Seriously check out this creative design and development website – you gonna love this – so elegant!

4.Semisture Webdesign

Very creative and beautiful animation saturated webdesign, note interesting flash preloader and line animations when sections loads at first.

5. Fl-2 Interactive Agency

Beautiful typography and mouse hover effects, award winning website.

6. Lecaid Design Studio

7. Esj * Com * AU

Sticky, sticky, very sticky website!

8. Recom CGI

Very nice loading effects – on images, text animation while loading the page – indeed beautiful work!

9. Millice – Cyril Louis

Elegant and light Cyril Louis website, nothing more, nothing less.

10. HYPR – Interactive and Creative Design Studio

Indeed interactive and unique approach.

11. TwistCube

A lot of twisting cubes and elegant approach in this website.

12. Go For Change

Interactive and creative design company encouraging you to go for change!

13.John Wright Photo

Very clean, subtle and professional photography website design, just seems very harmonic and elegant!

14.Timothy Hogan Photography

This is one more beautiful photography flash webdesign, but this one stands out with really huge photographies in full screen leaving everything else in shadow. But photography is his profession, author really shows quality of his works here.

15.LS5 Design Agency

Extremely creative design agency with really a lot of animation going on their website, get cocktail of all the best features!

16. SoyTuaire Labuat

This interactive website gave very strange and inspiring satisfaction feeling!

17. Mattthias Dittrich – Interaction Design Portfolio

Beautiful interactive 3D environment and animation.

18. Museum of Science and Industry

So cute preloader – really made me smile!

Very catching game with scientific taste!

19. Parasol Island – Film Animation Interactive

Company specializing in film animation industry, check out their videos there not only webdesign!

20.Unouplus

Private web-designer and art director flash website with interesting design and subtle animation.

21.MultiAdaptor: Branding & Identify Systems

Colorful branding website with subtle, but cool animation, i think this is very good way to display text and finished works!

22. Chemical Box

Interesting animation effects, mouse hover their logo to create each letter colorful!

23.Hello Monday

Award winning website, voted as one of the best websites in 2008 – unique project display here and beautiful animation.

24. Blanc Fonce

I would describe this site as simple elegance!

25. 2Advanced Studios

Browse through sections and you’ll notice website is full with beautiful digital artworks and animations showing their skill on every step!

26.Magnetic North – An Interactive design company

One more award winning website – draw and discover yourself what’s on the site!

27. In2Media – Digital Agency

Great typography, background animation,preloader and really good color schemes throughout whole website!

28. Cartelle – Interactive Studio

Very inspiring – share the beat!

29.Progetty Studio

Crazy design in totally good way!

30.Narrow Design

Interesting approach how to display many projects vertically in nice timeline. I just love that white grunge background.

31.Yodabaz – Fresh Webdesign

Interesting 3D text approach and in background is going on animation where author just moves all the time creating interesting feeling.

32.Aiala Garcia – Art Director and Webdesigner

Beautiful colors and elegant sliding effects displaying all the finished projects and everything else in one page!

33.PMA – Projects

Nice 3D effects going on in background which are by the way all the finished projects – impressive.

34. Mcinen

Clean and elegant design company’s website!

35. Nvidia Speak Visual

Nvidia website is full of beautiful effects, I enjoy the most creative spotlight section, where people tell about their passions and feelings working at Nvidia, creative facial videos.

36. Okay Dave – Dave Werner Portfolio

Really unique website board which is designer Dave Werner’s home site.

37. Michael Kelley Photography

Simply gorgeous and elegant photography website

38. Maven Interactive

Very unique portfolio page though actually I enjoy whole website from start to finish!

39. Unit 9 – The Creative Mind

Truly amazing website!

40. CreakTif!

Website built in one very interesting kind of house!

41. Experience 159 – Alfa Romeo

Very exclusive Alfa Romeo car company’s website.

Really amazing mouse hover effects – try them out!

42. NikeLab

Almost all big companies have created beautiful website, Nike is no exception, check it out!

43. Morris Code

From design point of view sketching preloader was the one, which cached my interest!

44. CocaCola Zero

Maybe I am not so big fan of CocaCola, but I totally love their website! Cannot even describe how elegant it is!

45. CocaCola Hapiness Factory

I am sure you have seen creative video advertisements in cinemas, this is original website created like interactive game!

46. Living Sasquatch

Website preloader is really stunning like whole website design!

47. Comcast Town

Just sit back and be inspired! Excellent 3D work has been done here!

48. MadeForEachOther

Very interactive illustrated and animated design! I typed “1stwebdesigner” in love letter to get nice effect!

49. Feed Your Ego

Very strong and powerful website, interesting game and interesting ego customization options.

50. BePop Jeans

Huge vector artwork and animation effects has been added to this site, lovely.

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