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35 CSS-Lifesavers For Efficient Web Design

CSS-design is not easy. We need to find workaround across browser inconsistencies, not that easy CSS-concepts and quite counterintuitive CSS-solutions. However, there are effective and useful CSS-tools and Smashing Magazine reviewed many of them in our previous posts. Now it's time to present you with some fresh (or not mentioned earlier) tools that can assist designers in their work.

Today, we will look at 35 new and useful CSS tools, generators and resources that can significantly improve your workflow and reduce your time efforts for CSS-coding. Whether you're writing, compiling, refining or experimenting with CSS code – or all of the above – these tools can help you get the job done faster and better than ever before.

You may want to take a look at the following related articles:

• 50 Extremely Useful And Powerful CSS Tools
• Powerful CSS-Techniques For Effective Coding
• 53 CSS Techniques You Couldn't Live Without

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50 Fresh JavaScript Tools That Will Improve Your Workflow

JavaScript is an integral part of the RIA revolution. JavaScript allows developers to create rich and interactive web interfaces and establish asynchronous communication with servers for constantly up-to-date data without a page refresh.

Many things that were once accomplished using Flash objects can now be built using JavaScript - with the added benefit that it is free, typically more web and mobile accessible under most circumstances using best practices for development techniques, and without the need to use proprietary software for development.

Though JavaScript has been around for a while, new tools, techniques, and information are constantly being pumped out to continually push the technology into greater heights. In this article, we wish to share with you a huge list of fresh and new tools and resources that JavaScript developers will find useful and informative.

Here are a few other posts that you might find interesting:

• 50 Useful JavaScript Tools
• 40 Useful JavaScript Libraries
• jQuery and JavaScript Coding

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Why Web Developers Don’t Need A Mac

As Web developers, we never stop hearing about the Mac. A lot of people love to talk about their Macs, but despite the "elite" status of the Apple computer, is there any need for a Web developer to splash money on one? A few weeks ago, Mark Nutter wrote here on Smashing Magazine in favor of swapping your PC for a Mac, and while some of his reasons are good, there are plenty of reasons to stick with (or switch back to!) Windows.

This article explores the best aspects of the Windows PC and, more importantly, the different apps that Web developers can use to become more efficient in their work. Every piece of software mentioned here is free to use.

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25 Text Batch Processing Tools Reviewed

Have you ever fainted from the sheer idea of having to find and replace text in millions of files? Have you ever felt helpless because you needed to search and replace different data 50 times at once? Have you ever lost original files while doing normal text processing tasks? If you’ve found yourself in any of these situations, then it is time to feel a bit tougher, at least mentally.

Below, we review 25 useful text batch processing tools. These tools will help you search and replace text in millions of files in the blink of an eye. Many of them even allow you to use regular expressions to improve your search and replace operations, saving you precious hours on day-to-day text-processing tasks.

These tools can be used by programmers and developers, novice and experienced alike, to perform repetitive text-processing tasks. At the end of this post, you’ll find a table summarizing the features of the tools reviewed here, which will help you decide on the best tool for your particular purpose. You many want to take a look at 15 Useful Batch Image Processors as well.

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Adobe AIR Developer’s Toolbox: Resources And Tutorials

Originally called Apollo, Adobe Air was released in beta back in 2007 and has gone from strength to strength ever since. You can build an Adobe Air app using HTML, JavaScript, Flash or ActionScript relatively simply. Basically anyone with even a little knowledge of programming and a little patience can create rich Internet applications.

Below, we present the Adobe AIR Developer’s Toolbox: Resources and Tutorials, a round-up of tutorials, links, references, cheat sheets and showcases that will help you create the next popular app. Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) is a cross-platform runtime environment for building rich Internet applications using Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, HTML, or Ajax, that can be deployed as a desktop application. The runtime bridges the "classic" user experience within Web-applications and rich, highly sophisticated user experience in modern desktop-applications.

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Typography Keyboard Layout: Download Now!

In January we commissioned Ilya Birman, a Russian designer with passion for typography, to adapt his typography keyboard layout (which has become a common typographer's tool in Russia) to create a version for English-speaking designers, artists and, of course, typographers across the globe.

The main idea was to provide the web design community with a handy tool that would let designers enter characters that are usually unavailable on a keyboard easier and quicker. If you already tried to enter such words like naïve or résumé or used special symbols (trademark symbol ™) or pay attention to diacritics (en-dash, em-dash, hyphen etc.), you probably know what we mean.

In this post we release the Typography Keyboard Layout – a simple, yet useful tool that lets you enter characters that are usually unavailable on a keyboard with ease. Hopefully it will help you to achieve better typography in your designs.

We asked our Twitter followers to participate in our beta-testing. And after we received a lot of positive feedback, we implemented some of your suggestions in the final version.

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MySQL Admin and Development Tools Round Up

The most popular and best open source database is MySQL. Simple as that. It is consistently fast , reliabile and very, very easy to use. One of MySQLs main features is its cross-platform support, it will run on almost all operating systems, including Windows, OSX, Linux and many more. So, MySQL is the best database, and we all use it. The question now is which is the best MySQL Admin and Development Tool?

In the overview below we present some of the most useful and most popular MySQL Admin and Development Tools for Mac, Windows and Linux, for beginners and for professionals. Among other tools we feature phpMyAdmin, MySQL Workbench, HeidiSQL and SequelPro. Please let us know if some useful MySQL-tool is missing in the list by commenting upon this article.

You may be interested in the following related posts:

• 8 Useful WordPress SQL Hacks
• Cheat Sheet Round-Up: Ajax, CSS, MySQL, Ruby…

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100% Google AdSense: Tools, Tips and Resources

Google AdSense is a simple and low-risk way for publishers to quickly monetize their content. The pay-per-click ad system has created an opportunity for anyone to instantly have advertising on their website, without the hassle of having to actively sell ad space. AdSense makes up a good portion of the advertising revenue for many websites, and other websites may use AdSense to earn the bulk of their revenues. Either way, AdSense is an excellent system for monetizing your content.

In this post we present an ultimate collection of resources, tools and tips to help you make the most out of Google AdSense. Among other things, this post covers various Google AdSense tools, Firefox-extensions, WordPress-plugins and related resources. Please feel free to suggest related tools in the comments to this post. You may also be interested in our post Google AdSense: Facts, FAQs and Tools that was published two years ago.

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99 Essential Twitter Tools And Applications

If you haven't heard of Twitter by now, you must be living under a rock! It is everywhere, and everyone is using it. To say that the rise of Twitter has been explosive would be an understatement. As a result of this growth, the number of Twitter apps and tools available has become extensive. So, in this post we have filtered them down to a respectable 99.

Below, we present 99 Essential Twitter Tools and Applications, split into the following categories: Tools and Productivity Apps, Statistics and Analytics, Find New Twitter Friends Apps, Search Twitter Apps, Web-Based Mobile Apps, WordPress Twitter Plug-Ins, Adobe Air Twitter Apps and Firefox Twitter Extensions.

You may want to take a look at the following related posts:

• 50 Twitter Tools and Tutorials For Designers and Developers
• 15 Useful Twitter Plugins and Hacks For WordPress
• 8 Useful Tips To Become Successful With Twitter

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50 Twitter Tools and Tutorials For Designers and Developers

Twitter appears on innumerable personal and professional websites nowadays, whether it is a simple "Follow me" badge in the header or a display of the author's latest tweets in the sidebar. No longer a fad, Twitter is now a necessity for every website, not just for sharing your thoughts and keeping in touch with people, but also for marketing, advertising and even searching. But you may be wondering, How can I make Twitter work the way I want on my website?

Below, we present Twitter Web Designer and Developer Toolbox, API and Tutorials, a series of tutorials, links, references, libraries and plug-ins that will help you do everything you've always wanted to do with Twitter.

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10 Useful Tips For Ruby On Rails Developers

Rails is an model-view-controller Web framework written in the Ruby programming language. One of its great appeals is being able to quickly crank out CRUD-based Web applications. A big advantage of Rails over other frameworks is that it values convention over configuration. If you follow the correct conventions, you can avoid lengthy configuration of files, and things just work! Therefore, you spend less time writing boring config files and more time focusing on business logic.

Now, we love Rails. But don’t get us wrong. Like any tool, it’s not the perfect solution to every problem. A lot of the biggest complaints people have about the framework come from using it in situations where something simpler, smaller and more lightweight would do just fine. We love Sinatra for anything with minimal server-side involvement. Merb is another excellent minimal framework. And nothing beats apps that run completely in the browser with JavaScript: they can be deployed nearly for free, can scale almost infinitely and never have to be restarted.

In the overview below we present 10 useful tips, ideas and resources for Ruby on Rails-developers (both newbies and professionals). Please feel free to share your tips, ideas and suggestions in the comments to this post!

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50 Useful JavaScript Tools

JavaScript is a powerful client-side scripting language used in many modern websites and Web applications. In the hands of a skilled Web developer, JavaScript can enhance the user's experience of the website and provide rich interactive components and features. But even though syntactically simple in nature, JavaScript is often difficult to author because of the environment it runs in: the Web browser. JavaScript's popularity is evident in emerging technologies, such as Adobe AIR, which use it as a supported language for creating desktop-based applications.

Below, you'll find 50 excellent tools to help you achieve various tasks involved in authoring JavaScript code. You'll find useful tools to speed up your coding processes, including debugging tools to hunt down places where your scripts break, unit testing and validation tools to test your scripts in various situations, security vulnerability scanners and code optimization tools to make sure your scripts are light as a feather.

You'll also find a few new and alternative JavaScript and AJAX frameworks to help you explore options beyond the big names (i.e. MooTools, jQuery, YUI, Dojo, Prototype), in addition to useful scripts to help you accomplish a host of design and development tasks related to JavaScript.

Also, be sure to check out the following related posts:

• 75 (Really) Useful JavaScript Techniques
• 60 AJAX- and Javascript Solutions For Professional Coding
• jQuery and JavaScript Coding: Examples and Best Practices
• 50 Extremely Useful And Powerful CSS Tools

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50 Useful Design Tools For Beautiful Web Typography

Typography is elegant when it is attractive and communicates the designer’s ideas. When chosen wisely and used carefully, it can be very effective in supporting the overall design. Designers are always exploring different techniques with type: some use images or sIFR to produce very beautiful typography, while others prefer CSS alone to get the typography just right.

Today, we will look at 50 most useful typographic tools, techniques and resources for creating effective and expressive designs. We will also look at some hands-on typography tools that help designers and developers learn how to style their Web content, test it interactively and see the changes instantly. These tools are great for experimenting with different font types for your website.

Below we cover typographic tools, useful typographic references, font browsers, typographic CSS- and JavaScript-techniques, hyphenation techniques, sIFR tools and resources, grids and related tools, free and commercial fonts, a guide to Web typography, examples of great Web typography.

Please feel free to suggest further tools and resources in the comments to this post. And if you like this post please feel free to subscribe to our RSS-feed and follow us on Twitter.

You may want to take a look at the following related articles:

• 50 Extremely Useful PHP Tools
• 50 Extremely Useful CSS Tools

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50 Extremely Useful PHP Tools

PHP is one of the most widely used open-source server-side scripting languages that exist today. With over 20 million indexed domains using PHP, including major websites like Facebook, Digg and WordPress, there are good reasons why many Web developers prefer it to other server-side scripting languages, such as Python and Ruby.

PHP is faster (updated), and it is the most used scripting language in practice; it has detailed documentation, a huge community, numerous ready-to-use scripts and well-supported frameworks; and most importantly, it’s much easier to get started with PHP than with other scripting languages (Python, for example). That’s why it makes perfect sense to provide the huge community of PHP developers with an overview of useful tools and resources that can make their development process easier and more effective.

This post presents 50 useful PHP tools that can significantly improve your programming workflow. Among other things, you’ll find a plethora of libraries and classes that aid in debugging, testing, profiling and code-authoring in PHP.

You may also want to take a look at the following related posts:

• 50 Extremely Useful And Powerful CSS Tools
• 15 Helpful In-Browser Web-Development Tools

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45+ New jQuery Techniques For Good User Experience

JavaScipt libraries have made huge leaps and bounds in helping developers write code and develop products more quickly. jQuery is one of the most popular JavaScript frameworks, with powerful tools that improve the user’s interaction with Web applications. jQuery has an additional advantage in that it allows developers to select elements on a page using CSS-like syntax.

To help you take it up a notch, we share below some methods that can help you give visitors to your website an amazing user experience. Here are over 45 impressive jQuery plug-ins and techniques that have been recently created and that could make the development of your next website an easier and more interesting experience than the last.

You may want to take a look at the following related posts:

• jQuery and JavaScript Coding: Examples and Best Practices
• 75 (Really) Useful JavaScript Techniques
• 80+ AJAX-Solutions For Professional Coding
• 60 More AJAX- and Javascript Solutions For Professional Coding

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The Ultimate Web Developer’s Christmas Wish List

As the mistletoe is hung and egg nog served, friends and family of Web developers around the world are pulling their hair trying to figure out what to get someone who works on the Web for a living. Our loved ones typically have no idea what to get us for Christmas, because for many, our job and online world are very foreign places. Instead of getting the traditional pack of underwear, neck ties or socks, you can give your friends and family a nudge in the right direction with a gift idea from this list.

Please notice that often it's even a better idea to take a closer look at the blog of a web-developer to find a wish list containing concrete items that a designer, blogger or programmer would like to get for Christmas. Once you know the environment, you can better find out what is needed and how an untraditional Christmas gift can become a pleasant Christmas surprise.

It’s been said that “It is better to give than to receive,” so let’s help our friends and family give to us by providing an extensive list of tools that we’d love to see under the Christmas tree this year. Feel free to send this list to your relatives if you'd like to get a solid, useful gift for the upcoming holidays!

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50 Extremely Useful And Powerful CSS Tools

We love useful stuff. For months, we have been bookmarking interesting, useful and creative CSS tools and related resources. We have been contacting developers, encouraging them to improve their tools and release their handy little apps to the public. Last year we prepared and published some of them in a series of smashing posts about CSS. Now again is the time to give these tools the attention they deserve. Big thanks to all designers and developers who contributed to the design community over the last months and years. We — our community and the design community — truly appreciate your efforts.

Below, we present 50 extremely useful CSS tools, generators, templates and resources. We did not include “traditional” CSS tools, such as Firebug or the Web Developer extension, but tried to focus on rather unknown tools that are definitely worth a look. Some tools are new and some are old, but hopefully everybody will find a couple of new useful or at least inspiring tools.

We strongly encourage you to develop these tools further, build on the ideas presented here, release new tools for the public and let us know about them. We would love to feature your handy tool in our next review.

Please take a look at the following related posts:

• Powerful CSS-Techniques For Effective Coding
• 53 CSS Techniques You Couldn't Live Without
• CSS: Techniques, Tutorials, Layouts
• 75 (Really) Useful JavaScript Techniques

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15 Helpful In-Browser Web Development Tools

There are many useful Web development tools that integrate in your browser. These in-browser tools are commonly known as add-ons or extensions. Though add-ons and extensions aren't just for Web development, many of them out there are designed specifically for Web developers. In-browser tools vary greatly in the jobs they perform; for example, some of them help you diagnose issues with CSS, HTML and JavaScript, while others evaluate the accessibility of your website.

In this article, we explore some of the most popular and useful in-browser Web development tools. You'll find tools for popular Web browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer. Whether you need to debug and inspect your HTML, inspect HTTP headers, access FTP source files, evaluate accessibility or just figure out what color a Web page element is, you may find a variety of tools discussed here useful.

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15 Useful Project Management Tools

There is a huge variety of project management applications out there. Most are general purpose apps, not aimed at any one industry. But there are a growing number of project management apps aimed specifically at one industry or another. Applications geared toward creative types are becoming more readily available, and some of the offerings are really quite good.

Many of these project management apps have built in code repositories and subversion browsers (or are built around them). A few have built in bug and issue tracking. Others include more than just basic project management. All of them can help you keep track of activities and team members. There are both free and paid options. Some have very slick interfaces, and some are modeled more after desktop applications. All are relatively easy to use and easy to set up.

Below are 15 useful project management applications, almost all of which are targeted directly at web developers, designers (both web and graphic) and other creative types. The last one is not geared specifically at creative types, but is the most unique project management application I've found, and was included on that basis as well as its potential usefulness for designers and developers.

Also consider our previous articles:

• Web Applications: Improve Your Workflow

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Textpattern Developer’s Toolbox

Textpattern is a PHP-based open-source content management system that is popular with both bloggers and website owners. The system is flexible and can be used for a very wide variety of purposes. Like other open-source CMS options, such as WordPress and Drupal, Textpattern has a strong online community with plenty of resources available. Here you’ll find the most comprehensive collection of resources, tutorials, plug-ins and more for Textpattern.

You may also be interested in these related posts:

• WordPress Developer’s Toolbox
• Drupal Developer’s Toolbox
• ExpressionEngine Developer’s Toolbox

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