Tools

SkyFonts: The Best Way to Use Google Fonts on Your Desktop

Google Fonts, this is the new name of the former Google Web Fonts, the well-known web font directory under Open Source license. There is nothing new to this announcement, other than the name change. You might associate the possibility to not only use Google Fonts on the web with the new name. Yet, this possibility has been there eversince. What I want to introduce you to today is the integration of Google Fonts into Skyfonts by Monotype. This definitely will interest you…

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Glimpse, a Chrome Extension for Mobile Web Developers

Mobile web development is lots more demanding than classical desktop design, because it extends the stage to screen sizes you usually do not have at hand while developing. Of course you might be able to do proper testing on target devices, but doing so on every step of the way would blow up the efforts unbearably. Glimpse, a Chrome extension, does especially come in handy in those frequently occurring cases where you just tweaked that tiny bit and want to see if it totally breaks things or not.

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JPEGmini: Drastically Reduces the File Size of Your Images on the Web, on a Mac and Using Windows [+ Win a License]

It’s been one and a half years since ICVT, a startup from Israel, surprised us with the inception of a web service able to reduce uploaded JPG images to one fifth of their original size. Most remarkably, the pictures don’t lose quality visibly. The larger the original file is, the higher the achievable reduction result. For months the service had only been available as a web app, then a Mac app was started. Two days ago, ICVT launched the long-awaited app for Windows users. We show you what JPEGmini is all about and have five licenses for the Windows and Mac versions to give away…

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“Retinize It” Simplifies the Creation of Retina-Ready Images in Photoshop

Creating retina-ready images from within Photoshop is no rocket-science. Still, it is a tedious task no designer is likely to associate the term fun with. Help in shortening the amount of life-time that has to be put therein will be much appreciated. Artiom Dashinsky from Tel-Aviv is the one to be thankful for as he developed the freely usable Photoshop action Retinize It.

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Web Developer Checklist and Userium: 2 Useful Helpers for Oblivious Web Developers

I’ll admit, you need not be oblivious to benefit from the two services I am about to introduce you to. It is not easy to keep proper track of all important aspects of clean and modern web design. I’m sure you will have created your own notes, hints, checklists as your experience developed throughout the years. In my case only the painful experiences made me jot things down for future reference. Today’s article shows you Userium and Web Developer Checklist. The two can help developers with lesser experience, yet still be of value to more experienced ones who declare themselves a notes grouch.

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Efficiency and Economy: Responsive Design On a Budget

The word ‘budget’ is deemed in some quarters to be a dirty word with negative connotations suggesting shortcuts, unreliability and even lower quality. You’ll be pleased to hear the approach I’m suggesting doesn’t manifest in any of those shortcomings and in fact the ‘budget’ approach could actually improve the end product. That’s right, streamlining your design and build processes to produce cost effective responsive solutions might actually be the best thing that ever happened to you.

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Atmail Cloud: Modern Email Solution For Web-Working Professionals [Review]

Email – there is no getting around it. You need a reliable, fast and secure service to host the mail-related part of your business life. Self-hosting is always an option, but alternatives are valid, too. Cloud-hosted mail services are no newcomers in the field. Almost any internet user will be a client of one or more of them. Today, we will take a look at a modern service from sunny Australia, aiming at small to medium teams and their collaboration requirements. Let’s see, what Atmail Cloud has got to offer…

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Mozilla Labs TowTruck: Brand-new Real-Time Collaboration Tool Tested

Mozilla Labs achieves amazing things. And this is more of an under- than an overstatement. The latest sprout from Mozilla’s garden, interestingly named TowTruck, makes no exception and promises a lot. TowTruck lets you integrate collaboration features into any website with a mere two lines of code. Once done, people can communicate, collaborate, create together right inside any website. They can even talk to each other via WebRTC. Noupe took a closer look…

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CSS Matic – “What You See Is What You Get” for CSS Developers

Long gone are the times where we had to code CSS entirely by hand. It’s already been a while since more and more little helpers started to get created. These little helpers usually cover one single aspect of CSS and support it with a more or less elaborate graphical UI for visual development in the likes of WYSIWYG. Today I want to introduce you to a rather new service from Spain, which comes to cover four basic missions every CSS developer has to accomplish. The service is called CSS Matic and its creators are quite known in the field of web design.

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Small Tools: 5 jQuery Plugins for Developer’s Daily Routine

Developers around jQuery are very active. At an hourly rate new plugins are brought up, that previously had not or not in this form been available. You can hardly keep track of the progress. There are big, disruptive projects, but lots more small helpers for various use-cases. We have dug up five of these little helpers for you.

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