Box of Bundles is a fresh website featuring a set of creative design resources that are available for free.
The bundle contains items like various vector UI elements, icons, templates (website, mobile, e-mail), CSS3 buttons and more.
They are designed by different designers around the world (you can submit new items for the next month's bundle as well) and free to be used in personal and commercial projects.
When designing anything with content (websites, brochures, etc.), if you don't have the real content, using Lorem Ipsum is the most common way to fill those spaces.
However, for anyone who designs regularly and needs such filler text, it is pretty boring to use Lorem Ipsum again and again.
If you want to try an alternative to Lorem Ipsum, there are several web-based generators which are easy-to-use, customizable and, usually, fun. Check them out:
P.S. If you also want to complement placeholder text with images, I suggest checking 8 Free Placeholder Image Services For Instant Dummy Images.
A meaty alternative for generating dummy text. It is even kind enough to ask for "all meat" or "meat and filler".
The service has a JSON API, an Android app and a supportive image placeholder service for generating a mockup full of bacon.
Didn't like Bacon Ipsum? Ok, here is veggie lorem ipsum alternative.
Vegan Ipsum will bring all the freshness of season vegetables into your mockups.
It uses quotes from movies which Samuel L Jackson has starred in and comes with 3 modes, lorem ipsum, default and a lite version.
This is a dangerous alternative to lorem ipsum: So, please use responsibly.
Today, the development toolkit of many web designers/developers consist of the features that come with HTML5, CSS3 and probably jQuery.
The talented team at IconShock has created a set of web technologies icons exclusively for WRD readers with items from this kit and Ruby on Rails (considering the ease it provides).
There are 24 icons which come in transparent PNG and completely layered AI files.
Hope that they can add a visual beauty to your designs when referring to these technologies and they are free to be used in both personal + commercial projects (icons can not be redistributed without permission).
Iconshock
Icons are created by the guys of Iconshock, with more than 350 icon sets on its stock, the same designers of the fantastic free bundles for WP lovers behind WordPressThemeShock and the design blog WebDesignShock.
Bert Appward of Google Chrome Developer Relations team has just released an online "Field Guide to Web Applications".
It aims to guide web developers to create great web apps and discusses topics like the properties of web apps, design fundamentals, tips for creating awesome experiences and some case studies with best practices.
The guide is so easy-to-read, includes so many useful tips and real-world examples/links for them.
Website of the guide is also built around the principles mentioned, comes in a HTML5 canvas-powered flipping page interface which is responsive, works offline and includes many CSS3 tricks to provide a rich visual experience.
For anyone with design and HTML/CSS development expertise, creating a website from scratch is all about creativity as, usually, there is no technology to get stuck at.
However, for designers (and non-designers) without HTML/CSS experience, converting a design into a fully-functional website is pretty hard.
IM-Creator is a drag 'n' drop website creator that eases the process of building a HTML website so easy. And, they are giving away 3 "lifetime" licenses to WRD readers.
The application has a set of ready-to-use and stylish templates to choose from where they can be used as a base and customized with custom images + content just by selecting /editing each item.
Another option is to start with a blank page which is the way to go if you have a JPG/PNG mockup and want to slice + position each item accordingly.
There are lots of elements that can be inserted into web pages like images, videos, image galleries, slideshows or contact forms.
Also, various widgets can be instantly integrated including Twitter feeds, Google Maps, SoundCloud, Tumblr blogs and more.
If you are not a web designer and/or prejudiced on web-based website creators, give IM-Creator a chance and you'll probably be impressed with the simplicity.
In order to win one of the "lifetime" licenses (normally priced: $95/annual), just comment to this post and winners will be selected with the query below randomly on 21 Feb 2012 (1 week later).
SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=2829 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3
Good luck to everyone.
noty is a jQuery plugin for creating user-friendly, "JavaScript-alert alternative" notifications very easily.
It has built-in support for alert, success, error and confirmation messages and they can either be displayed as HTML elements that fade in/out or as modal boxes.
The notifications can be displayed on any part of a web page (top, bottom, center, top left or top right) and many options exist for customization (speed of open/close animations, display duration, being closeable or not and more).
Each notification is displayed from a queue in an order which is nice for making sure each item is shown.
There are various callbacks provided and an online editor exists for customizing the notifications.
Metro Icon Pack is a set of slick icons whose designs are inspired from the Windows 7 Phone (code named Metro).
The set includes 33 unique icons with 4 different variations (white, black and with/without circles).
Items are all action icons, comes as .PNG and they are free to be used in both personal or commercial projects.
PhotoShow is a free and open source PHP application for creating and managing a web gallery.
The application works without a database and uses the folder structure for creating the hierarchy of the galleries (supports unlimited sub-galleries).
Images can be added either from the admin panel via a drag 'n' drop uploader or directly from the filesystem. Organizing the folders/images, editing and deleting them are also accomplished with the same methods.
There is support for multiple users and groups where each can have different permissions.
PhotoShow can auto-generate thumbnails of images, display the EXIF data and allows others to comment them.
Tooltips are tiny user interface elements which are very useful in displaying information "on request" without breaking the attention/focus.
WRD had previously featured qTip and it now has a new version, qTip2, with lots of improvements and new, exciting features.
The plugin can display the tooltip in any position wanted, plays nicely with image maps and they can be set to follow any element (handy for drag 'n' dropped and animated items) or mouse.
Tooltips can be styled completely, there is an optional Themeroller support and they can even be displayed as modal windows.
It has built-in Ajax integration and can load any remote data. qTip2's website has lots of creative demos including 3rd part service and various popular plugin integrations.
P.S. The download package can be customized to ÅŸnclude only the features needed and a converter exists for upgrading from the 1st version.
If you have (or somehow controlling) multiple websites built with WordPress, than you know the difficulty of managing all of them.
WordPress releases a new version regularly and websites built with it needs to be up-to-date to stay secure, the same goes with the plugins and the need to remember all passwords.
ManageWP is a hosted service that offers a platform for managing any number of WordPress blogs under the same admin interface.
About the giveaway: They are giving away 2 annual Business accounts to WRD readers and details can be found at the bottom of the post.
Besides the ability to switch between websites with a click, the service can bulk update the sites with the new WordPress versions, plugins and themes.
Also, it is possible to install new plugins or themes to multiple websites at the same time.
There is a good chance that each website gets a hosting switch every few years which is a time-consuming process. What if we need to move many WordPress blogs to this new account? Ouch! But, as you guess, ManageWP can also handle this; it can clone a website from one domain to another.
One of the best features is its integrated backup. You can schedule backups to make sure that all your websites have recent copies when needed. It also monitors the uptime of your websites via the integration with the free uptime monitoring service: Uptime Robot.
The service brings a similar beauty for the publishing part: you can post an entry to multiple sites, manage the blogroll links or add users, all in bulk.
ManageWP has a free plan that allow controlling up to 3 websites and bigger packages exist (which would be a good fit for anyone/web agency with many WP websites).
2 annual Business accounts are being given away and, in order to get a chance to win one:
and winners will be selected by ManageWP from the 2 best entries on 17 Feb 2012 (8 days later).
Good luck to all.
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