Useful websites web developer should make use of
Oct 18th
There are quite a few tools lying around on the internet that helps the web development or web design process drastically. It will certainly strike inspirations and surely make your life easier while creating a website. In this post, I have compiled several websites that I have make use of in my progress.
Lorem Lipsum / Sample Content
Yes, the awesome, the all known popular test text lorem ipsum dolor sit amen… something something… To simulate real text rendering on a webpage. If you don’t have this on a notepad lies on your desktop, this website is a blast. It gives you short paragraph, long paragraph, list items to mess around with. Complete with a Coda Clip or Textmate Bundle for your complete convenience. I personally just go onto this website and grab the thing I need.
Colour Combinations / Palettes
Visit ColourLover | Visit ColorCombo | Visit ColourSchemeDesigner
You need some colour combination that works together, but you certainly do not have the time to play around and do experiments.. Of course, when designing a website, look and feel (to please your boss) comes first. So colour combinations must be chosen wisely. I primarily goes to ColorCombo and ColourLover, but when I need to pick a certain colour combo that takes a long time to find, I’ll just make a palette myself. ColourSchemeDesigner offers me all the tool I need to create one.
Font Choosing
This tool helps you grab font from an image or a website that you think looks nice. People have been using the same fonts for ages, so it’s no big deal grabbing some here and there 
Test Absolutely Everything 100+ Tools in One
Yeah, it does what it says it does. This tool can test your website in a lot of different ways, through a lot of different sites. CSS/HTML Validator, SEO, Social Services, Web Proxies, Network Tools, Text Tools, Images Tools and a lot of other tools all aggregated from 100+ sites here for your testing convenience. My definitive choice.
Speed Tester
Visit Pingdom Tools | Visit Load Impact
I often use both of this website to test the speed of my server and by that, optimize page load accordingly. Pingdom tools give me the file name that I should optimize and Load Impact helps me understand how my server would react in heavy load.
Icons
Good looking icons are the heart of the website. It virtually makes the site looks good and worth checking out. They have around 100000 icons in their database and all have been carefully picked and enhanced with various size to choose from. Splendid tools.
CSS Compressor / Tidy / Optimisation
Visit CSSCompressor | Visit CSS Tidy | Visit CSS Optimisation
The compressor reduce the css size so that it’s faster to load. CSS Tidy helps developers read better, fix errors and reduce redundant code. The optimiser does pretty much the same thing + reducing file size.
Huddle Review
Oct 11th
Huddle is my choice for web collaboration system as well as Project Management software.
I was in search of a free, powerful, easy to use, social collaboration software. And Huddle is my final stop, for now.
Huddle allows team members to share documents, and conduct various projects in a multi-agent, multi-user, central, online, collaborative environment. Huddle separates itself from basecamphq by offering a free for all time plan. Of course basecamphq was once offering a free package, but not anymore. Huddle was designed with internet collaboration totally in mind. The project manager can add and assign tasks to each of the team members with a specific deadlines.
All comes with a document SVN-alike version and whiteboard, discussion forum,… complete with video tutorials on how to use each and every function. Users can also subscribe to RSS-feeds and be alerted of any notifications or changes. Huddle main strength is its simplicity and elegant in delivering information.
Huddle interface is nice and sweet. Complete with a calendar and a “what’s new” section. With the free package, the advertisements seem unobtrusive (of which can be removed if upgraded to a paid package). Paid package also allows you to change the look and feel (colour scheme and company logo) of the workspace.
Huddle is ideal for simple, online working environment and emphasize on small to medium business, especially when there are geographical difficulties between team members or employees.
Dropbox Review
Oct 9th
I worked from different computers, I have several machines, not counting the ones I have to use at school labs for printing purposes. Last week, I had a wonderful invention of bringing my USB key everywhere I go by attaching it to my key-chain. Of course, I have a habit of needing my files everywhere I go and always have to have the most updated version of each and every files… I am a picky bastard when it comes to usability and efficiency in file storage.
For years, I have relied on Gmail to store my files due to the my habit of having GMail opened at all times… And for years, I have had the trouble of digging up my files under my large amount of spam and useless emails.
I came across this wonderful software called Dropbox that offers just what I need. A very simple All-In-One production tool. Can’t think of any other method of combining SVN, WebDAV, Online File Storage, Network Storage, Music & File Sharing, FTP Server, Google Docs.
The idea is pretty simple, having a folder of files, that stay sync on all computers. Sweet, isn’t it?
image from dropbox blog
Dropbox is an online storage, data backups, file sharing, data synchronization which is simple enough that I have easily convinced my non-tech girlfriend to have her folders synced with mine to share files with ease. Even though she sits next to my desk at home, the idea of having to “dig through my mess, find a flash drive, copy the file onto it, eject it, plug it in my girlfriend’s pc and eject it again”…. thrilled me.
Without the hassle of emailing files to myself and/or having files transferred onto a flash drive to have it traveled between computers. All you need to do is click the sync button, or better yet, do nothing at all and let it auto-sync. The file in that folder is accessible through different computers on different platform and also, available through the web interface provided my dropbox. Other than that, the sync folder acts just like any other folder on your computer.
With the free plan, Dropbox offered 2GB of storage without a limitation of file size. You can subscribe to a higher storage plan (up to 100GB), but 2GB is sufficient for me and my daily usage. Although if you upload files through the web interface, the file size is capped at 350MB.
Dropbox is available on Windows, MAC, Iphone and Linux. I have an ipod touch 2G and the functionality of dropbox also let me view/edit files on the dropbox folder as well. Pretty neat.
If you accidently deletes or modify a file, dropbox is just there to help. Dropbox is not only a storage service, it’s also utilized a version history function to recover lost or deleted data. Files deleted from the dropbox folder may be recovered from any of the computer in synced.
I am very pleased with this software service and will be using it for my daily use from now on. Unless something cooler happens