Thursday Roundup # 64
This is our web design and web development news series where we share our favorite design/development related articles, resources, tutorials and awesome freebies.
NEW DEVELOPMENT RESOURCES AND TOOLS
It is like Monsoon of Free Dribbble Invites…
eGrappler is offering more FREE Dribbble invites to its readers in the month of February and March. It is like monsoon of Dribbble invites. Lucky winners of our first Dribbble invite contest were announced on our facebook fan page earlier in January. We got such an immense response that we decided to continue sending FREE Dribbble invites to creative designers.
Reveal Animations When You Scroll – Wow
WOW.js is a JS library for revealing animations on scroll with some easy to customize features.
A Cross Browser Canvas-based Graphing Library for jQuery. – Bobbograph
Bobbograph is a highly configurable Canvas-based graphing library for jQuery. It provides you with the power to render great looking graphs across all modern browsers. Bobbograph is also built to utilize Excanvas for older versions of IE that do not support Canvas.
Google Publisher Plugin
The Google Publisher Plugin enables you to easily use Google’s products – including AdSense and Webmaster Tools – with your WordPress site.
Adding AdSense ads usually requires you to generate snippets in AdSense and paste these into your site, or to manually edit PHP files. This plugin lets you place AdSense ads using a simple point-and-click UI.
Free jQuery Plugin for Beautiful Lightboxe Galleries – Fluidbox
Fluidbox is designed to be versatile, flexible and easy to implement. It works with linked images that satisfy the criteria stipulated above — regardless of how they are arranged on the page.
Stylish jQuery Accordion Plugin (FREE): Akordeon
Akordeon is a stylish jQuery plugin for adding efficient accordion style menu to a web page. The idea behind Akordeon is to provide a lightweight and customizable interface for collapsible panels that can hold any kind of data in a limited space.
Github Info Card – Octocard
Octocard shows your public github info on your website, it gives a highly flexible github info card for every github lover. And it’s open source.
Embed Google Maps in Your Site – ClassyMap
ClassyMap is a jQuery plugin that gives you the ability to embed Google Maps in your site using just HTML5 code.
Free Multi-Node Range and Data Slider: JQ Slider
JQ Slider is a multi-node range and data slider that allows to provide easy-to-use user data selection and filter tool. It can be used in many ways.
Speed Up Your Website – InstantClick
InstantClick is a JavaScript library that dramatically speeds up your website, making navigation effectively instant in most cases.
jQuery WYSIWYG Editor – Froala
A beautiful jQuery WYSIWYG text editor built on the latest technologies and according to the latest industry trends.
Simple and yet the most complete WYSIWYG text editor with lots of customization options. Style it your way for the best editing experience!
Free, Interactive jQuery Plugin for Feedback Collection: Opineo
Built on simple JavaScript and CSS, Opineo is free jQuery plugin for feedback collection by Greepit. It can be easily integrated with any website or application to quickly enable feedback collection.
Editorially Makes Collaborative Writing Easy
Editorially is a new collaborative writing and editing platform. Their goal is to support and encourage that writing process — from the first flash of inspiration all the way through to publication, and at every point in between.
Editorially achieves this goal in many ways: a Markdown-based writing environment lets you focus on the words and create clean markup easily; collaboration tools let you invite friends and trusted colleagues to review or edit your work; a document version system lets you mark points in a document’s history and compare versions to see what changed; notes and activity feeds encourage you to reflect on your work, for yourself and for others; and discussion threads recognize that the conversation around a text is just as important as the text itself.
jQuery Sliding Content Bar Plugin: PushUp Content Bar
It is a smart and quick content bar that you can integrate easily in any website or web application. It is integrated seamlessly in your website and can be popped up whenever required. PushUp Content Bar is easy to customize and strong enough to rely upon. You can add your contact details, location map via Google Maps, and a simple contact form that visitors can use to make contact with you.
Embed a Panorama Pictures on Your Website – JQuery Panorama Viewer
jQuery Panorama Viewer helps you embed Panorama Pictures on your website. You can now display your panorama photos on your site with this plugin. To do this, first you have to include the latest jQuery library together with jquery.panorama_viewer.js and panorama_viewer.css into your document’s <head>, and then add your image to your HTML with class name “panorama”. Modern browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, and Safari on both desktop and smartphones have been tested.
Javascript Implementation of OpenSceneGraph
OSGJS is a WebGL framework based on OpenSceneGraph concepts. It allows an individual to use an “OpenSceneGraph-like” toolbox to interact with WebGL via JavaScript, and provides facilities for exporting various assets to the osgjs format. The API is kept as similar to OpenSceneGraph as possible, providing a familiar environment to veterans of the library and introducing newcomers to a popular and heavily-scrutinzed set of interfaces.
Slinky.js is a jQuery plugin for creating beautiful scrolling navigation lists with stacking headers.
Total.js – Free Server Framework for Node.js
Total.js is one of the best web application frameworks for creating a rich web sites and web services. The framework has good documentation and contains many examples. It supports friendly URL, XHR, JSON, LESS CSS (CSS 3), JavaScript minifier, XSS protected, resources, modules and supports MVC architecture.
WordPress Theme Options Framework – Vafpress Framework
Build the administration side of your WordPress Theme like never before!
Creating Image Parallax Effects – Parallax ImageScroll
jQuery plugin to create a parallax effect with images.
The plugin is really simple to use with some options to tweek. It makes use of CSS3 transform for animation where supported and falls back to top and left positioning for old browsers.
Learn How to Make Games in HTML5
Build Simple, Scroll-based Pages and Interactions
A jQuery UI widget for building simple, scroll-based pages and interactions.
Kerning on the Web
Kerning can refer to one of two things: spacing instructions that type designers put into font files to mitigate awkward character combinations, or spacing adjustments that graphic designers make as they typeset text. In today’s post, we’re talking about the former, though we’ve covered the use of Kern.js and Lettering.js here before for readers interested in learning even more.
Imagine each character in a string of text has a box drawn around its outer edges. Without kerning, characters would line up at the edges of these boxes. Kerning enables these edges to overlap so the space between each character can be adjusted to be tighter or looser.
Principles of User Interface Design
To design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit; it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to modify, to dignify, to dramatize, to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse.
FREE TEMPLATES AND THEMES
Free Responsive Tumblog Theme- Crates
Crates is a responsive tumblog theme. It’s a grid based layout with an optional 2 column blog layout which makes it ideal for casual bloggers and photographers.
Free Simple Blog PSD Template
Free Travel Template PSD
Fresh Resume/CV IA Package (Free)
DESIGN FREEBIES
Free download: Awesome low-poly PSD backgrounds
Free Pixel-perfect Vector Icons Set
177 Free Design icons (AI + PSD)
Free Font – Streetwear
Streetwear is bold and stylish retro inspired script typeface suitable for logo, poster, branding, packaging and t-shirt design. It looks like 1960s and 70s fashion and sport related typeface, unique and fun at the same time. You can access Streetwear’s alternate characters by using OpenType savvy program such as Adobe Illustrator and InDesign.