Fresh Resources for Web Designers and Developers (November 2016)

Back for more fresh resources? This round includes a few more tools for developers, a book on how to maintain CSS for large-scale organizations, two different user interfaces – one graphical, the other command line – and plenty more.

Also available in the mix is a fun tool to create your own cartoon avatar as well as a font vault for your typographical needs.

Zipplist

Zipplist is a collection of websites for all creatives. Whether you are looking for photos, videos, icons, mockups, or patterns, you can find and get them from the websites listed in Zipplist for free. This makes Zipplist top of the list of must-bookmarked websites.

TypeNugget

TypeNugget enables you to generate typographic styles more intuitively. TypeNugget features a number of graphical interfaces to select font family, set up the font size, line height, just to name a few, and you can immediately see how your styles look like in the preview pane. You can select the output in LESS, Sass, or plain CSS.

You Might Not Need That WP Plugin

WordPress can be easily extended with a plugin. Whatever you think to add in your website, there is probably a plugin for that. But that doesn’t mean you actually need it.

This website, as the name implies, features a number of snippets that you can include in your theme functions.php, add it in .htaccess that will deliver the same functionalities.

JPEG.io

JPEG.io is a web tool to convert any image formats including WEBP, SVG, and EPS into JPEG. Backed by Kraken.io, a well-known service for JPEG compression, the output will be compressed while still retaining the image quality. Add images by drag-n-drop, or import it through Dropbox, Google Drive or Box.

Milligram

Milligram is a CSS framework with very minimal footprint. Still, it comes with all the necessary components and styles for a website: buttons, forms, basic typography styles, etc. If you build only a small to medium website scale or maybe tire of Bootstrap and Foundation bloats, you should be looking into Milligram.

Git Stats

Git Stats is a utility that will show your git activity statistics similar to GitHub, only it’s shown in your Terminal through a command line. The command line allows you to generate the stats of a certain month, date, author, or in a select range of months.

Cash

Cash is a lightweight alternative to jQuery for modern browsers. The library covers many frequently used jQuery APIs including DOM selectors, utility functions such as $.isArray(), and the AJAX functions. If your project is targeting only modern browsers (ie IE10 and above), this is the library to consider.

Adorable Avatars

As the name implies, you can create an adorable cartoon avatar through this web app. To get one, add a random username or email address, change the size and add rounded corners. The app generates the the URL where you can view your avatar image. If you cannot find any good photos for your public profiles, consider creating one with this app.

Hotel

Hotel is a handy app that allows you to create a local domain for development conveniently. It works cross-platform and servers no matter if you use PHP, Ruby, or Node. It also supports SSL.

Enduring CSS

Enduring CSS is an online book consisting a number of chapters that walk you through authoring CSS for large-scale or enterprise websites. The book will teach readers principles, tools, ideas, conventions to construct CSS that will still be relevant for years to come.

Ionic Lab

The Ionic app lets you build mobile applications using the Ionic framework. The app makes it easier and quicker to kick off an app with the pre-defined Ionic templates, previewing, building, and testing the app on real devices. It is free and works in OS X, Linux, and Windows 10.

Open Foundry

Open Foundry is a collection of free typefaces. Keep in mind the usage license though as some fonts many be used on the web, and some fonts can only be used for personal projects. Nonetheless, these fonts are gorgeous and a great alternative to Google Fonts.

GitKraken

GitKraken is a git graphic interface. It allows you to intuitively perform git tasks like merging and commiting through clicks and drag-and-drop. As GitKraken is built with web technologies, it allows the interface to be responsive at any viewport size, and it works cross-platform. Plus, it’s free to use.

YouGet

YouGet is a command line interface to download content such as images, videos, and audios from a webpage easily. Simply run the command you-get and point out the page URL, and it will download files from that page. You can also use the command to search relevant content in Google and let it download files of the most relevant search results.