Our Top 10 Web Design Tools

At SJL Web Design we use a number of online tools to make our lives easier, here is a short list of some of the tools we couldn’t live without.

Firefox

Since its launch over 5 years ago Firefox has revolutionise the browser world, starting from the ground up it has changed the way we surf the net, it has also changed the way we build and analyse websites. A number of our favourite tools are add-ons for this browser so it felt strange not to include it.

Web Developer Toolbar

Excellent add-on to the Firefox browser allowing you to toggle CSS, view Javascript as well as a number of other useful features. We really can’t stress how often we use this add-on on a day to day basis, it is certainly one of our favourite Firefox add-ons.

Net Renderer

We tend to use Macs when designing and developing the majority of our websites, so it can be a struggle to quickly check Internet Explorer while developing; thankfully NetRender has helped us overcome this obstacle. NetRendered offers almost realtime screenshots of IE5.5, IE6, IE7 and IE8, it is also available to download as a Firefox add-on, allowing you to check your sites in IE even faster!

Icon Finder

Icon Finder is one of the most comprehensive icon search engines on the net with over 150,000 icons! In our opinion the first place to look for snazzy icons.

Texture Lovers

Fantastic resource for hundreds of high quality textures to really help add that ‘WOW’ factor to a design.

Design Shack

Our favourite CSS Gallery and the first place we go for inspiration. Design Shack currently lists thousands of beautiful websites, all sortable by colour, layout and style.

Firebug

Our second favourite Firefox plugin, Firebug allows you to edit, debug, and analyse CSS, HTML, and JavaScript on any live website.

Whatthefont

Have you ever seen a font that you want to use on one of your own designs but you have no idea what it’s called or how to find it? Worry no more, Whatthefont can analyse an image of your new favourite font and can tell you a list of possible matches.

HTML-Ipsum

HTML-Ipsum offers a range of preformatted Lorem Ipsum text perfect for filling initial mock designs and templates before sending to a client.

SEOpen

Very handy SEO add-on for Firefox, SEOpen allows you to quickly access Yahoo, Google & Bing backlinks as well as Alexa information. It also installs quick links to DMOZ, Whois and the W3C HTML Validator to name a few.

So there you have it ladies and gentlement our run down of our most used web design tools, do you think we are missing a trick? Let us know!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 4:47 am and is filed under Search Engine Optimisation, 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.