5 Free and Useful Web Design Mini Tools

I’ve recently been coding the new design of my Web site when suddenly, I realized that I’ve been using a lot of FREE tools to aid me in my design and coding needs. These free mini tools, when used altogether, can be great additions to your already existing, memory hungry Web design software. By the way, this is for Windows users only.

I use an old Athlon XP Palo, 512 MB computer so conserving resources is important for me. I can’t load image and Web editors and a bunch of Web browsers at the same time. Part of my Web design task is to decide which ones should be loaded and which ones should be closed. Yeah, I know how unfortunate I am. It must be fun switching between Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Illustrator while checking your design in Firefox and a few other Web browsers. However, conserving resources was a practice that I’ve treasured since having my 486 computer.

Alright, on with the good stuff. I’ll be presenting the 5 Free and Useful Web Design Mini Tools through a scenario approach (which I think is more effective) so you could get a glimpse of my methods.

Scenario:
You have nothing open but Firefox and Windows Explorer. You tested your design in Firefox and realized that you wanted to change the color of a certain header. What would you do?

Method:
Open Dreamweaver? Too heavy. View Source? Nah. Open With Notepad? Nadda. Web Developer Toolbar? Hmmm….maybe. How about Notepad2? Notepad2 is a free text editor that loads as quickly as Windows Notepad but supports color coding and line numbers as well.

Notable features:

• Syntax highlighting: HTML, XML, PHP, ASP (JS, VBS), CSS, JavaScript, VBScript, C/C++, C#, Resource Script, Makefiles, Java, Visual Basic, Pascal, Assembly, SQL, Perl, Python, Configuration Files, Apache Config Files, Batch Files, Diff Files
• Basic regular expression search and replace
• Brace matching, auto indent, long line marker, zoom functions
• Support for Unicode, UTF-8, Unix and Mac text files

 

Scenario:
You need to decide on which typeface you’d use for your paragraphs. You need to browse through your installed fonts.

Method:
Fonts folder? Huh? Open MS Word? Nah. Open Photoshop? Nah. How about browsing through The Font Thing? Yes, the good old font browser that’s still useful today. The Font Thing is a freeware program for managing TrueType fonts in Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0.

Notable features:

• Browse installed and uninstalled fonts
• View sample text and individual characters in your choice of colours
• Install or uninstall any number of fonts at once
• Filter fonts according to their type

 

Scenario:
You want to find out the color value from a certain portion of your header image so you can add it to your color scheme. How would you do it?

Method:
No idea? How about Photoshop? Too heavy. Then try ColorPix. Most of you may already be using this. ColorPix is a useful little color picker that grabs the pixel under your mouse and transforms it into a number of different color formats.

 

Scenario:

After identifying the value of that color, you want to see which shades fit a Visited Link color. How would you do it?

Method:
Photoshop Color Picker? Like I said, it’s too heavy! Alright, calm down. Here’s ColorPic.

Notable features:

• Colors shown in hex and decimal
• Adjust Hue, Saturation, Value, Red, Green and Blue values
• Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black percentages shown
• Resizable magnification area
• Use arrow keys to nudge mouse pointer
• Easy to use collapsible sections

 

Finally! This isn’t really a Web design tool, but in case you have some content that needs conversion, Convert is the right tool for you. Convert is a free and easy to use unit conversion program that will convert the most popular units of distance, temperature, volume, time, speed, mass, power, density, pressure, energy and many others, including the ability to create custom conversions!

 

Here’s a bonus! Want to view your comp when coding your design? FastStone MaxView is a great image viewer with intuitive zooming and panning featues. It’s definitely more than an alternative to Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. FastStone MaxView is a tiny, very fast and innovative image viewer that supports all major graphic formats.

I truly enjoyed using these free and useful Web design mini tools myself. In case you’ve used them, don’t forget to drop by at the authors’ Websites and give them a pat in the back.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 at 9:29 and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.