Toolbox
This place is as good as any other to list some handy tools when developing.
Speed up your web development:
- Samuel L. Ipsum: motherfucking Lorem-fucking-ipsum generator.
- The 1140px grid: fluid & responsive.
- Skeleton: barebone responsive boilerplate.
- Bootstrap, Twitter’s boilerplate.
- HTML5Boilerplate, full-on boilerplate.
- Less css with Less CSS or Compass+Sass.
Speed up your web:
- SmartSprites: generate CSS Sprites with PHP.
- .htaccess compression and caching (more snippets here and here).
- Test a web’s performance and speed, from around the world.
- Formalize, show your forms some manners!
- Use a CDN with Google App Engine, instant CDN on App Engine, Amazon S3 or more. And test it.
Code beautifully:
- Setting Type on the Web to a Baseline Grid & Compose to a vertical rythm.
- PX to EM converter.
- JSFiddle, test html/css/js rapidly (most frameworks supported).
- Regex CSS Docs search
- Separate behaviour from presentantion from content (i.e. unobtrusive js)
UX and design:
- Use fonts for icons.
- Critique a web in 30 sec
- See your web on different browsers (more) and on different screen sizes.
- Color contrast.
Bulletproof web:
- SeleniumHQ, automate browser actions (bots doin’ the job).
- JSLint, validate your javascript and CSSLint your CSS.
- ScriptCover, what js is executing when.
- JSUnit, unit testing for JavaScript.
Some plugins/scripts worth mentioning:
Market it
- Use Schema and/or microformats for SEO and other machine-machine stuff (html5 considerations here) (google test)
Inspirational guys in the business:
- Paul Irish: html5boilerplate starter (and more things), great family name.
- Rasmus Andersson: designer, Spotify.
- Chris Coyier: creator of css-tricks.com
- Quora: best designers under 25, best product designers in Sillicon Valley.
- Leah Buley, UX designer.