Speed Development Using Following:

1.    MVC Framework

The framework of a website is similar to an architectural plan. There are two basic ways to develop codes; the first is to put everything that you need into a file. The second way is to write the codes separately according to their right place.

There are several PHP developers and MVC framework programs available, such as:

•    Code Igniter: open source web application.

•    CakePHP: rapid development framework providing extensive architecture for development, maintenance and deploying applications.

2. Validation Tools

It is not necessary to own several operating systems in order to test your website development. While browser shots tend to run very slowly, there are free browser testers that allow you to use a number of different OS and browsers to use for testing your website.

Some validation tools that are useful are:

•    W3C Validation Tools: this site has a unified validator, a mark up validator, and a link checker.
•    Firebug: use to inspect and edit JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.

3.    Text Editor

When it comes to editing your text, you can spend hours going through it on your own or you can use one of these programs to do all of the work for you. There is several great text editing programs available such as:

•    Notepad++: supports several languages and is an all in one editor.

•    Vim: this is a program that will take some time to learn how to use, best for people familiar with programming.

4.    Image Editor

It has come to the point that if you are a web designer, you will have to focus on the aesthetics of a page. It is not only about the functionality anymore. If you want to get ahead in the business, you will have to learn to do it all. One of the best tools available, one because it is free and two because it provides you with several tools to use such as Photoshop, is Gimp.

5.    Code Generators

You may think that a code generator defeats the purpose of learning coding language in depth. However, these generators merely help speed up the process. Beginners and experts in the field can learn a lot from using this type of tool when developing their site. There are several sites that can provide you with the codes that are needed with just a few clicks. Some of these sites are dbQwikSite and PHP Maker.

6.    Join Forums

One of the best things to do whether you are a beginner or an expert is to join forums and learn from others in the field. This is the best way to get answers to questions or problems that you may be having. If you have friends in the business, collaborate with them to increase your knowledge in the field as well.

There are many tools available to help you develop your craft efficiently, just take the time to look for them and always be willing to look for help from other people as well.

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Here are some suggestions given during interviews with web designer professionals that can be of help to emerging web designers and those wishing to keep in touch with fast growing trends.

Ironically, many web designers suggest that those who want to expand their knowledge in the field should browse through real books on design and typography rather than the Internet. However, these can be pretty expensive to buy, especially for students who can have access to this more technical material in local Borders.

Some experts say that the best way to attract customers is to have a good network system. Keeping in contact and making sure people know about your good work helps attract new business. Promoting your profession is undoubtedly the most difficult phase in a business, but once you start pleasing customers with professional web designs then other prospective clients will start rolling in.

It is interesting to know how web designer proceed with their projects and one can learn a lot from their methods. Some webmasters admit that their designing process does not necessarily follow predetermined schemes. A lot of their work process will depend on what the project involves, although most web designers start from the logo. They begin with a rough sketch then scan it on the computer and start processing it with an illustrator’s software. If websites are very complex, then most web designers suggest it is best to begin with the wire-framing and the more complex areas of the web design. Once customers have vetoed the overall design, then web designers can pass on to issues concerning CSS and HTML.

Icons and logos are very important as they are the window through which potential customers pass into the website. Simplicity and impact are the rules to follow if one wishes to attract attention, the simpler and more direct the message is the more forceful the impact will be.

Some tips web designers suggest for finding clients, especially at the beginning of their career all focus on one fundamental aspect. Go out and find your clients, they will not come to you. Any method, whether it is e-mailing, direct mailing or any form of getting through to potential customers will work, the important issue to keep in mind is that it must be done.

In general the biggest obstacle most web designers are faced with nowadays is that they do not have enough time to keep up with evolving technology, be it on the internet or with new software. There is so much out there to learn and master but not enough time. It is also difficult to explain to users and clients how to take full advantage of their new website, as the application is often too sophisticated to use, but unfortunately must reflect the trends if a website wants to be effective.

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The following is 25 time saving Mozilla add-ons that will assist web designers and developers.

1. Fire Shot

Create screenshots of webpages with this Firefox extension.

2. Fire PHP

This tool makes it easy to log on to your Firebug Console by using a PHP method call.

3. Font Finder

An application that is custom made for web designers, developers, typographers and cartographers for viewing font types and doing replacements.

4. HTML Validator

This application adds HTML and validates it.

5. Fire Bug

This integrative application lets you surf the Internet while you do a lot of ‘stuff like editing, debugging and monitoring CSS, HTML and JavaScript.

6. ImTranslator

There are over two thousand language combinations presented by ImTranslato, thus catering to many languages spoken around the world.

7. Color Zilla

It contains different goodies that can enhance your photos or other graphic material.

8. Fire FTP

It is free, secure and easy to use.

9. YSlow

Why is your webpage loading slow? Use this app to see why.

10. Measure It

You can measure anything on a webpage like width, height, or alignment of page elements.

11. Codetch

Codetch mimics Dreamweaver within Firefox.  You can edit your document as you browse the Internet.

12. Screen Grab

The name of the app describes its purpose, capturing the whole page or a selection.

13. Image Zoom

It can zoom and rotate your images.

14. Palette Grabber

This tool creates a color palette for many image manipulators like GIMP, Photoshop, Fireworks, Paint.NET, or OS X.

15. Total Validator

Doing validations is easy with this app.

16. Grid Fox

Placing a grid over a web page is no big thing with this tool. Just open up Firefox and overlay a grid on top of it.

17. X Ray

See tags without viewing their source code.

18. Foxy Proxy

This is an sophisticated proxy management tool that supplants Firefox‘s limited proxying capabilities.

19. Professor X

This tool lets you see the insides of a web page’s head without the necessity of viewing the source code.

20. Web Developer

This tool allows you to add various web developer tools to a browser.

21. TinEye Reverse Image Search

This neat app allows you to find an image’s location, what it is being used for and it’s other versions that might exist.

22. iMacros

Are you tired of doing repetitive tasks such as going to same web sites, completing forms, and recalling passwords?  Then iMacros for Firefox is what you have been searching for.

23. Auto Copy

Just choose the text you want, and it is copied to the clipboard with no other steps.

24. Stylish

This tool allows you to augment your various websites (Google, Facebook, YouTube) with ease.

25. Picnik

Importing images are easier to import with this application, allowing for a menu and toolbar options.

Conclusion
These add-ons will assist web developers be it a front-end or back-end related task.

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SEOmoz Toolbar

You probably already have toolbars loaded onto your web browser, but this toolbar is a must.  You install this toolbar into either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, and use it while you browse through the internet.  Each time you go to a website the SEOmoz toolbar tells you the domain authority and age.  This is what determines the strength of links and ranking.  If you look at web sites via a search engine, such as Google, it will give you an uncluttered search engine result’s page.
The SEOmoz toolbar also provides you with an entire page analysis of a website, while you are viewing it.  This includes information with respect to ranking, inbound and outbound links, keywords, page source.  You can export this information and save it.
Market Samurai:

It is multifunctional software that is very useful for SEO.
•    The keyword search tool provides you with various keyword types you can use that relate to your website.
•    It will search websites, similar to yours, and give you details of their website.  This information can be used as just a comparison, or can be used to try to beat them in the search engine ranks.
•    It assists in finding a domain name that is rich in keywords.
•    It can locate products that you can promote, related to your products or services.
•    It will gauge your web sites and their search engine rank.

Rank Checker:

It is exactly as its name says.  It will check the rank of your website in all the major search engines.  In particular, it shows how you rank with respect to your keywords.  As well, it allows you to perform multiple searches of keywords and put them into a spreadsheet.

In addition to an attractive, information filled, keyword rich website you must be sure that it is search engine optimized.  The tools mentioned above will be very useful in this regard.

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MobilyMap is a relatively small jQuery plugin, only 7KB. It can easily create ‘maps’ that look like Google Maps from any image. It also has a slideshow function so that you can link your ‘maps’ together.

liteAccordion

This application views like an accordion, so, the name of the application, and is only 4.5KB. However, the themes do not display any images in the background. You can link any content in this viewer such as text, photographs, animation, etc.

Subway Map Visualization

In this application, data is displayed by the generation of HTML that looks like a London Underground map. It would be fun to see your data displayed like an Underground map.

Awkward Viewline

This easy to use plugin can display any type of media organized in a line diagram. It can also view media in a full screen mode.  Some other features are that you can add thumbnails for viewing the media.
Zoomy

Zoomy, as apparent in its name, will zoom into any picture.  It is easy to use and loads up quickly.  It only requires two copies: one, the display image and the other, the zoomed in image. There are also features to customize this application.

Arbor.js

This application is a graph library enabled with Web Workers and jQuery. Instead of attempting to be “everything to everybody”, Arbor.js provides an easy to understand visualization for graphs and screen refreshing. However, I had trouble going into this website at times and this made reviewing the application somewhat taxing.
Waypoints

This is another small jQuery plugin. It is easy to use to pull up a function. All you have to do is scroll to the function you want to use.

Activity Indicator

This jQuery plugin creates a translucent activity indicator, also known as a ‘spinner.’ It utilizes SVG or VML.

Reveal

This small plugin allows you to create modal windows with ease. This is not as exciting as the other jQuery plugins, but worth a view.

jQuery Runloop Plugin

With this jQuery application, one can develop a runloop with keyframes according to your specifications. Code is not a problem as you can put whatever code you want with each keyframe. Arrangement of keyframes is also easy. You can also reuse codes.

Conclusion:
Are these jQuery applications valuable, strictly cosmetic or amusing?  If your work as a website developer can be made easier with the help of these jQuery applications, then it is in your best interest to investigate these new applications by going to their websites.  Most of the websites have the script available with documentation and examples.

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1. Vae

Vae is an inclusive CMS, e-commerce, e-mail and marketing platform.  At the core of this CMS, is a powerful system for property definition for content.  Of particular interest is this platform’s feature that allows for targeting customers by e-mail.  It also allows for third party applications such as WordPress and vBullitent to be easily inserted into the platform. Depending on your firm’s needs, the price can range from $19.95 to $249.94 a month.

2. Light CMS

This CMS is geared toward the web designer. Therefore, design flexibility ease of management and implementation is at its core.  Light CMS offers simplicity, yet has some very powerful features that make it stand out.  The price can range from free to $99 per month However, if you are adding more features, the cost will increase.

3. Business Catalyst

Business Catalyst is an Adobe product focusing on businesses. This all inclusive platform brings together everything that a small business would need such as blogging, e-commerce, marketing and analysis. The aim of this software is results by keeping the client aware of how many persons are visiting and also buying their product.  Its price ranges from an affordable $9 to 39 a month. If you want to be a reseller, Adobe offers partner packages from $0 to $1,995.

4. Squarespace

This CMS features an integrated package: content, a blog and a portfolio website.  Granted this is not uncommon, but Squarespace adds some tools that make it unique. It has an emphasis on design and editing. One of the nice features is that, once you have logged in to the website, you can do all your editing in real time. The price is affordable, $10 to 40 per month. The ranges come with different features depending upon your needs.

5. Webvanta

Webvanta offers a different approach from other CMS hosting platforms. When you start to design your website, you are given the choice of several “smart themes.”  These are fairly straight-forward designs, but they come with the expected options such as shopping cart options, etc.  The price ranges are from free to $99 per month. With a range of prices, you should be able to decide, which one is best.

Conclusion
All these packages have different features for the varying needs of companies or organization. There is not one package that is better than the other.  However, picking one of these CMS hosting packages will have a significant impact on how your company can be a better presence on the Internet. . These seamlessly linked components are what attract companies to use hosted platforms.

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The best way to learn how to match font types together is to check out good examples. There are different websites, which offer combinations of fonts that you can use. Whether you want to find some ideas, or simply use what you see, you can find some great examples. This article will give you a crash course in font matching and send you in the right direction, but you should do your own research if you truly want to master font matching.

Take a look at Douglas Bonneville’s 19 top fonts in 19 top combinations. This is a cheat sheet which shows 19 of the most popular web fonts as headers, and couples them with good body text choices. The sheet even has the pairs shown together, so all you need to do is peruse the list and select a combination that you like. This is a great way to choose the right fonts with some guidance.

If you would like an alternative, check out arrayed infographic codifying 22 possible type combinations. There is not a visual key with this one, but it does give you a lot of suggestions for possible pairings. Now you do not have to select your fonts without some helpful guidance. If you are interested in finding similar cheat sheets it would be a good idea to do a search on Google. Take a look at popular websites and see what types of fonts they have combines to get some ideas.

Making well balanced contrast pairs

Now that you have your sheets of possible pairings, it is to look at a method for choosing your own. Many cheat sheets use contrast as a theme. For example, you can couple serif fonts with sans-serif, which can be done the other way around. The main idea is to find fonts which have small similarities, so that they will go well together while still contrasting.

More reading

Four ways to mix fonts by Hoefler and Frere-Jones list a large amount of font combinations and ideas for using them. The pairings in this article are used as guidelines, rather than listing hard and fast rules for you to follow. Something these designers teach is to find one thing that should stay the same between the fonts, and find something else that will vary.

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Although open source platforms and languages are free, there is a lot of money being made from developers of services and products, which use open source software. This includes things such as premium themes and development frameworks, such as Ruby on Rails and jQuery.

Open source is symbiotic and allow the use of software that would not otherwise be in the market place. The commercial extensions of these sources create a self sustaining economy, while adding versatility and competitiveness. Open source software has two different sides. which are commercial and free. Each brings something unique to the table and people benefit from them both.

Open source: the commercial side

WordPress, Joomla and Drupal and three of the biggest open source CMS platforms available. They are each made using PHP, which is also open source. There are many other management systems out there, which are not as well known.

Out of the three platforms mentioned above, WordPress is probably the best known. It is open source and free, just like the others. However, if you would like to get more out of your usage, and you are willing to pay fees, you can upgrade to a premium service. Dupal is also open source and free, but there are premium services available. By selling these products companies can be competitive and earn money through open source platforms.

Developers can create plugins and modules for use with open source platforms, like the above mentioned Drupal, WordPress and also Joomla. These give greater functionality beyond the scope of the basic packages, and give users a more versatile experience.

Trying to make money through open source development has its pros and cons. Companies are able to release extensions for existing platforms, utilizing forums to make their work usable by thousands, or even more, people. However, unless you have a team of marketers that know what they are doing, it can be difficult for your work to reach the masses. Small time developers are constantly trying to make their work known so that they can actually make some money.

Following is a list of software market places where you can pick up some modules and extensions that are available.

Chrome web store

This site has themes, apps and extensions available for use with the open source browser, Google Chrome.

Android Market

This site has thousands of free and paid apps, which are all on offer through the open source mobile platform, Andriod.

WP Plugins

WP Plugins is a software market place that distributes WordPress plugins. They have premium plugins which can extend the features of WordPress, such as e-commerce plugins.

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Any user knows the function of a website is just as important as the visual aspects. However, making this clear to a large client might be difficult. Many larger companies simply want their sites to copy other popular designs, without worrying much about how easy their pages are to use. Even though these big corporations have a lot of money to throw around, they often settle for simple text based sites, which are not visually appealing at all. Whichever end of the spectrum you have been asked to design for, you should consider some of the following sites for inspiration.

Adidas

There are few sites, which use the grid design so well. There are separate modules, which can be expanded and contracted to allow for some truly dynamic exploration. This can be a great deal of fun, mainly because there are so many different areas to explore. The images do not accurately reflect what they open up to display. This means that the top menu is a very important aspect of this website.

Citreon

The old technique of gathering small images together to create a larger image has been done time and time again. However, the Citreon website does this very well, creating a new spin on the traditional method. As you move your cursor across the larger image, the smaller photos appear to dance around it. You can then select a section of the bigger picture. This is a great example for others who are creating landing pages.

Heinz

This is one of the best known brands in the world. Heinz has dedicated its website to the consumers of its products. There is a globe, which can be turned around by clicking on different photos, and then recipes are displayed. It does not matter what your skill level is, this website is suited to you. Heinz has discovered a new way to engage customers and bring them back for another visit.

Prologue films

This company makes opening credits and special effects for movies, so you know that their website is going to be visually appealing. The site consists of a grid with a grey color scheme. The simple colors and focused design puts the customs designs and effects up front as the main focus.

Rolex

This site is unique because of its great attention to detail. The gorgeous products are displayed so well that you almost miss the clever effects, such as the clock face, which changes to suit your time zone. The design of this website really makes you realize that attractive design can be seamlessly blended with usability. Rolex has done well with their website design.

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Today we see more and more apps emerging and becoming available. However, often these apps will start up a lot of buzz, be used by people for a while in the beta phase, and then simply disappear. Many of these applications are actually very good, but for some reason they do not gain popularity. There are so many different apps out on the market that there is simply too much competition for some of the smaller developers to cope with. This article will discuss some of the apps that a freelance designer will find useful.

You might be tempted to try every app until you find a handful that can make your life easier. The problem is that many of them do cost money. While freeware software is abundant and many companies are happy just to have their software being used, most companies will want you to pay to use their programs. Luckily, many programmers have released their work as shareware so that you can trial the software for awhile and see if you like it, before you make a purchase.

For an app to be great it must be able to stand the test of time. New versions should be brought out periodically, which improve upon the older ones. Many people love apps these days, especially with the release of the iPhone. People search for and download, as many as they can get, and then often they are left to sit idle. Do not waste your time finding too many apps, but rather find the ones that can really boost your productivity daily.

Basecamp

This application was made by 37 Signals, and is very popular. It allows the management of projects online as well as collaboration with team members. Whether you are working with someone on the other side of the office or the other side of the world, this app can help you. There are many different collaboration programs out there, but they are probably not as popular as Base-camp. There is a greater chance that your co workers will own a copy, so you will be able to get to work at sharing ideas right away. There are a few alternatives, which will work just as well as this software: activeCollab, ThriveSolo and Apollo.

Things

“Things” is a to-do list app. While there are many different to-do lists out there, this is one that stands out from the crowd. It is made for Macs, which might be a problem for the majority of users in the world who own PCs.

You can keep track of your deadlines, add reminders and list your tasks with this app. You can even take Things on the road with you with your iPhone or iPad, and they can sync using Wi-Fi. There are some alternatives to Things: Remember the Milk, The Hit List and TeuxDeux.

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