Fresh Resources for Web Designers and Developers (September 2014)

By Thoriq Firdaus. in Web Design. Updated on August 24, 2022.

We’ve journeyed through the depths of the Internet and yes, we are back with a bunch of new tools for you to choose from.

This time we’ve got free books to help beginners get started on Typography and Node.js. We’ve also got a couple of Javascript libraries and even a little something for you Emoji fans. Let’s dive right in.

Practical Typography

Typography is one thing that determines content readability. Though mastering typography would take you years of practice, if you are keen, you can start now by reading Practical Typography composed by Matthew Butterick. It will walk you through anything about Typography from A to Z. Personally, I’m blown away. I think this book might be comparable to four semesters of learning the subject in college.

Node Beginner

Node has taken over the Internet. Its implementation and application can be seen in many different ways – from being a handy web developer tool like Grunt and Gulp to blasting fast server services like Heroku. If you are new to Node, read this online book: Node Beginner. Additionally, you might also want to check out our previous post on the subject, Beginner’s Guide To Node.Js (Server-Side JavaScript).

Beautiful Open Source

Open Source has changed the course of software development. While it used to come with a hefty price because of a business monopoly, we can now find plenty of open source codes and applications that we can freely extend, modify, and even transform into a commercial product. Find the best open source projects at ‘Beautiful Open Source.’

Trianglify

You might have seen a couple of websites display a mesmerizing background as shown below. If you’re wondering how you can create such a background for your own website, then this JavaScript library is for you. Trianglify will generate the background pattern using SVG. Trianglify also provides a handful of options for output customization.

Onsen

Emojify

People these days speak with Emojis, that tiny icon that depicts a facial expression. Use Emojify to add emojis to your own website. Emojify works by turning the keywords as listed in the Emoji Cheat Sheet into the respective icons.

Read Also: Clever And Funny Use Of Emojis

Patternbolt

Patternbolt is a collection of SVG patterns. The patterns come in a CSS or SCSS file. You can implement the backgrounds on your website easily through the drop-in classes. At the time of the writing, Patternbolt has around 16 backgrounds with (hopefully) more to come.

Pexels

Need free images? Look no further. Pexels has collected a bunch of high-resolution images that, as mentioned, you can use for free – not to mention that it will keep uploading 30 free images every week. Definitely worth bookmarking.

MatchHeight

Achieving equal column height is tricky. Hence, there are many methods to do so, and one of the ways is with this jQuery plugin, MatchHeight. As the name suggests, MatchHeight lets you set multiple columns in the website layout with ease. The plugin takes care of all the hurdles of calculating and matching column heights. Simply call the script and configure the output with a series of provided options.

Read Also: Equal Column Height With CSS

To-Markdown

Markdown is a simplified way to write for the web, which will then have to be compiled into HTML format with the appropriate wrapping elements. If you need to convert HTML into Markdown instead, use this tool, To-Markdown.

Read Also: Writing Web Content With Markdown