99 Cool Resources for Web 2.0 Design

BADGES

Web 2.0 Badges – A set of free badges to download and use in your own designs.

Fresh Badge – Quickly generate your own badge.

adClustr – Starburst badges.

Deziner Folio – A collection of different badges.

BittBox – Free vector badges.

Official Seal Generator – An alternative to the typical badge.

Photoshop Tutorial – A quick lesson on making your own badge.

Glossy Photoshop Tutorial – Create a glossy badge with this tutorial.

BUTTONS

My Cool Button – A nice online tool that will help you to quickly create the button that you want.

Adam Kalsey’s Button Maker – Simple tool to make your own buttons.

Button Maker from Blog Flux – Create your own custom button.

Brilliant Button Maker – A similar button maker to the previous 2.

CSS Buttons – Choose the text, border, and background.

Buttonator – A paid option for creating buttons.

RSS Button Maker – The name pretty much says it all.

Button Boost – A little bit different than some of the other button generators.

ButtonGenerator.com – Create buttons for navigation menus.

Crystal Button – Slick web buttons made easy.

Chicklet Creator – Create buttons that allow visitors to subscribe in their feed reader of choice.

ROUNDED CORNERS

Rounded corners are a staple in web 2.0 design. Here are some tools and scripts that will help you to quickly create your own rounded corners.

RoundedCornr

Corner Shop

Spiffy Box

Canvas Corner

Spanky Corners

Sliding Doors Text Box

Smart Rounded Corners

Rounded Corners in CSS

News List

LOGOS

Each of these tools will create a simple web 2.0 style logo.

Web 2.0 Logo Creator

Web 2.0 Logo Creatr

Web 2.0 Logo Creator

Web 2.0 Stylr

ICONS

A web 2.0 site can’t ignore icons. Here are some free collections of icons to use in your own projects.

UtomBox – A great collection of web 2.0 icons.

Feed Icons – The standard RSS icon.

Map Icon Factory – Create your own map icon.

Perishable Press – A nice collection of RSS icons.

Glass Style RSS Icons

Snap2Objects – Vector RSS icons.

31 Sources of Quality, Free Icons

GRADIENT IMAGES

Another common element of web 2.0 is gradient images. Here are a few tools to help you.

Gradient Image Maker

Gradient Generator

Online Gradient Image Maker (OGIM)

SPEECH BUBBLES

Speech bubbles are commonly used for styling comments or blockquotes.

Will Mayo

Bubblesnaps

CSS Play

XHTML Speech Bubbles

WigFlip

Fluid CSS Speech Bubbles

MySpace Speech Bubble Generator

Photoshop Tutorial

BACKGROUND IMAGES

Background Image Maker – Create background images with choices like transparency and gradients.

Stripe Generator 2.0 – If you’re looking to add a striped background to an element on your page, you can use this tool to customize the look you want.

Stripe Designer – Easily create striped images.

Tartan Maker – Create a tartan background image.

Texture Generator – Creates textured images that you can use as a background.

All Free Backgrounds – Choose the background you want.

COLORS

The Colors of Web 2.0 – Are you looking to match the color of a popular web 2.0 site?

Web 2.0 Color Pallete – Popular web 2.o colors.

Color Schemer Gallery – Having problems choosing a color scheme? Find one you like in this gallery.

COLOURlovers – More samples of color combinations.

Website Color Picker – Test color combinations quickly.

I Like Your Colors – Get the colors used by a particular site.

NAVIGATION

CSS Menu Generator – Easily create attractive CSS menus.

Listamatic – Collection of CSS menus.

List-O-Matic – Create your own CSS menus.

List-U-Like – Another tool to create your own navigation bars.

Tabs Generator – Create tabbed images for navigation.

Flash Buttons – Create navigation menus with flash buttons

CSS Play – An extensive collection of CSS menus.

Exploding Boy – Tabbed CSS navigation menus.

CSS Navigation Menu Generator – A tool to help you create your own menu.

FAVICONS

Favicon Generator – Create your own favicon from an image on your computer.

Favicon from Pics – Create a favicon from a photo.

Favicon Editor – Upload a photo, create a favicon.

Favicon.cc – Another option for favicons.

Photoshop Tutorial – Creating a favicon with Photoshop.

CHARTS

PHP/SWF Charts – Create attractive charts.

amCharts – Flash charts.

OTHER

Avatar Maker – Create and edit an avatar.

Shrink Pictures – Create an avatar from your photo.

ScaleNine – Collection of skins and themes created for Flex and Adobe AIR.

VectorMagic – Converts bitmap images to vector art.

Templatr – Create a layout.

PsycHo – Blog template generator.

Web 2.0 Generator – Creates layouts.

Typetester – Compare fonts on-screen.

BlogPoll – Create a free poll for your blog.

RSSxl – Convert an HTML page to RSS.

Meta Tag Generator – Easily create meta tags for your pages.

URL Rewrite – Create search engine-friendly URLs for dynamic pages.

.htacces generator – Quickly create an .htaccess file.

Thumbnail Generator – Create thumbnails for a large amount of images.

Reflection.js – Adds reflections to your photos.

Drop Shadow – Improve your images with a drop shadow.

CSS Sprite Generator – From Website Performance.

Vecteezy – Stupid name. Cool vectors.

Brusheezy – Photoshop brushes.

PSBrushes.net – More Photoshop brushes.

deviantART – Photoshop brushes at deviantART

Some freeware for your web development

GIMP – versatile graphics manipulation package

GIMP – versatile graphics manipulation package

GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.

Each task requires a different environment and GIMP allows you to customize the view and behavior the way you like it. Starting from the widget theme, allowing you to change colors, widget spacings and icon sizes to custom tool sets in the toolbox. The interface is modulized into so called docks, allowing you to stack them into tabs or keep them open in their own window.

HTML Kit for more than editing HTML

HTML Kit for more than editing HTML

HTML Kit is a full-featured free editor for HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and other text file types. Over 400 plugins are also available, including HTML Tidy for creating standards-compliant HTML/XHTML pages. HTML-Kit has received 95% thumbs up out of 2900+ Download.com user reviews and over 4 million overall downloads.

Inkscape – Vector Drawing Graphics SVG PNG

Inkscape – Vector Drawing Graphics SVG PNG:

“Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Supported SVG features include shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, patterns, and grouping. Inkscape also supports Creative Commons meta-data, node editing, layers, complex path operations, bitmap tracing, text-on-path, flowed text, direct XML editing, and more.

It imports formats such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and others and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats.”

This software has solved my SVG view and Convert to PNG Problem. I got some icons from GNOME Art – Artwork & Themes which were SVG and was stuck. Then i found more SVG here Open Clip Art Library .

VIM – Advanced text editor VI

VIM – Advanced text editor VI

Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the de-facto Unix editor ‘Vi’, with a more complete feature set. It’s useful whether you’re already using vi or using a different editor.

Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is distributed free as charityware.

Thingamablog blogging application

Thingamablog blogging application

Thingamablog is a cross-platform, standalone blogging application that makes authoring and publishing your weblogs almost effortless. Unlike most blogging solutions, Thingamablog does NOT require a third-party blogging host, a cgi/php enabled web host, or a MySQL database. In fact, all you need to setup, and manage, a blog with Thingamablog is FTP, SFTP, or network access to a web server.

Thingamablog allows you to:

• Set up a blog in minutes via an intuitive wizard
• Maintain multiple blogs
• Effortlessly manage thousands of entries
• Dynamically update blog content
• Write entries offline (Dialup users)
• Publish your blog with a single click
• Create a unique layout with customizable templates
• Import entries from RSS/Atom feeds
• Set up flexible archiving options
• Organize your entries by category or date
• Save entries as drafts
• Define your own custom template tags
• Syndicate your blog via an RSS or Atom feed
• Ping services like weblogs.com, BlogRolling, and Blo.gs

You have to install Java to run Thingamablog. Java. Java Technology is required to run applications, hese are usable in multiple operating Systems and use a JVM or Java Virtual Machine. – Java Software from Sun

Zoundry Raven – Portable WYSIWYG Publisher

Zoundry Raven – Portable WYSIWYG Publisher

“Multiple Blogs Made Easy – Do you have multiple blogs for different audiences? We make it easy to write and publish to separate blogs all with one editor.”

Tabbed true WYSIWYG Editing – True WYSIWYG writing and XHTML source editing. Drag and drop images, video, and text from the Web. Unicode (UTF-8) support. Preview posts in your blog’s template.

WordPress 2.2+ Page & Tag support – Use Raven to create and modify your WordPress Pages just like any other blog post. Set WordPress tags as well as import tags from all of your posts.

Raven2Go: Portable Application support – Install Raven as a Portable Application on your flash/thumb drive. We’ll stay out of your Windows registry and let you take your Blogging on the road.

BlogDesk – Offline Weblog Client

As an offline weblog client, BlogDesk lets you comfortably write and effortlessly publish new entries to your blog.

No need to use those annoying HTML Tags in the WYSIWYG editor. Images can be directly inserted and are automatically uploaded. Even publishing simultaneously to multiple blogs is a matter of a click.

With the ImageWizard you can not only insert images to your posts – it’s possible to edit them as well (crop, resize, rotate, shadow etc., see Examples). Even Thumbnails can be created – the preview will be shown in the blog and a click on the image will open it in its original size (just like here in the right column). Linking and uploading those images is automatically done by BlogDesk.

BlogDesk is totaly free of charge and optimized for the blog systems

• WordPress (
• MovableType
• Drupal
• Serendipity
• ExpressionEngine (pMachine)

10 Needful Steps to Help Cut Costs in the Slow Economy

There’s no escaping the slowing economy. Layoffs are being announced and companies are in cost cutting mode. Whether you are a tech at a big company or a small one man operation it’s time to cut the fat before you get cut out of work. Unnecessary expenses have to go and inefficient ways of working need to be analyzed and improved.

If done right, the use of some technologies can greatly reduce costs and make us more efficient.

Here are ten technologies every techie should consider to help cut costs in this slow economy:

1) Open Source
Dump the high cost proprietary systems for equivalent open source systems where you can. There are many operating systems, databases, content management systems, communications tools, networking and administration tools that are open source and free to use. Choose mature products with a strong community following and plenty of available support options either via developers or third party support offerings.

2) Software as a Service
Instead of spending money on time on developing complex in-house solutions to CRM, support and project management use SaaS providers such as Sales Force, Google, 37Signals and Right Now . Not only do you save money by using these third party tools by cutting development costs, but you also reduce costs on specialized hardware to run similar in-house solutions. Many SaaS solutions can also be integrated via the providers API’s.

3) Virtualization
Do you have multiple servers and workstations handling different tasks? Combine them into one machine. With virtualization suites such as ones offered by VMware you can take one machine and turn into multiple virtual machines. One machine can act as your web server, your network share and your exchange server. Each virtual machine will work independent of the other and optimize utilization of hardware resources.

4) Thin Clients
Employees no longer need to use expensive machines for light computing work such as emailing and using basic office work. Low powered thin-clients connected to a single multi-core system with x64 architecture and virtualization can power the work of multiple employees. Besides better utilization of hardware and energy, you also introduce efficiency for IT managers by reducing the # of systems they have to manage.

5) Enterprise 2.0
Get your organization connected and sharing information. Use intranet systems with built in messaging, voice messages, wikis, profiles and contact information. Keeping your employees connected and sharing information about your business can keep the organization from making costly decisions.

6) Digital Documents
Move as much of your company’s paper usage to digital as you can. Not only do you save money with printing you also save money on office space to store all that paperwork. Other ways to save more on printed costs is move to email for memos and letters. Also consider e-fax services as an alternative to fax machines.

7) Fast Efficient Networks
Using all these cost savings technologies will require a fast internal network and fast bandwidth coming in. These days companies and individuals can subscribe to fiber-optic bandwidth providers. With higher bandwidth network such as fiber lines, you can also server voice and video through the same connection. Internally make sure you’ve upgraded as much of your hardware to gigabit speeds. Newer networking gear tends to be more energy efficient and capable of handling faster network speeds. A fast network means less waiting for employees and more working.

8 ) Data Storage
Storing as much of your company’s data and information on the network keeps it accessible for employees and staff to use at any time from any location. This saves employees from physically having to search for the required data or information. The time savings will make your staff more efficient. Saving data on cheap mass storage hard drives saves you office space for storing documents and paper work.

9) Wireless
With wireless connectivity employees can work from anywhere. They are no longer stuck to their desk and their mobile systems such as laptops can move with them from meetings to conference areas. An added benefit of wireless systems are the savings in running wire for hard networking.

10) Virtual Office
Cut the overhead costs of keeping employees on site by allowing them to work from home. Virtual offices reduce the amount of resources required for equipment and office space. Many companies have already instituted virtual office policies and have realized great results from doing so. With virtual offices upfront investments in secure networking will be required. Setting up VPNs and access to other network resources for employees will be a must.

Copied from bytes.com

My best 66 Web2.0 sites on the Web !!!

I’ve put together a list of 66 Web2.0 sites. As far as I can tell, they pretty much the best the web have to offer. If you have any suggestions on new, up and coming sites, please drop it in the comments below.

feedburner.com/fb/a/home

FeedBurner helps online publishers – anyone producing content on the web – to manage, promote and monetize their distributed media.

attensa.com

Use Attensa in conjunction with Outlook in order to keep yourself and your team up-to-date.

wetpaint.com

Wetpaint’s wikis come fully equipped with smart navigation, tag clouds, awesome editing interfaces and neat customization features that allow users to make their wikis as beautiful as possible.

twitter.com

Find out what other people are doing in real time. Become part of a world-wide community that keeps in touch by answering the question, “what are you doing?”

last.fm

Let Last.fm take note of what you like to listen to and let is present you with music it thinks you’ll also enjoy. Take a look at what other people are listening to and what’s hot in the community.

statsaholic.com

Keep track of sites’ popularity, as reported by Alexa. Compare sites’ stats and download widgets for your blog.

maps.google.com

The web’s most popular and concise collection of maps and satellite images. Get directions, view amazingly detailed images of landmarks or zoom in on your favorite locations!

plugim.com

A social news site, this is the place to find what people are currently talking about in the world of internet marketing.

furl.net

Store your favorite corners of the internet and let others discover the cool stuff you’ve found. Comment on the content you find and read what other users are saying about your bookmarks.

clipmarks.com

Save the web content that makes you sit up and take notice, not just the webpage you found that content on. Share that content with others in the hope that it will make them think, “wow!” as well!

lulu.com

Avoid the hassles of publishers and agents – publish your own manuscripts with Lulu. Browse the content that others have published via the site and vie to be featured on Lulu’s front page!

biblio.com

Search for out-of-print books from independent booksellers and buy them through Biblio’s user-friendly site.

librarything.com

Connect with people who read similar books to you, and get suggestions as to what you should read next.

squidoo.com

Create a Squidoo “lens” to market yourself, your products or just something that you’re passionate about. View and rate other people’s lenses and hope your content is rated well by others!

.htaccess Tricks and Hacks every webmaster must know

The .htaccess files (Hypertext Access file) is a very powerful configuration tool on Apache web server. The Apache web server has a number of configuration options that are available to the server administrator. The .htaccess is a simple ASCII text file placed in your website root directory. You can create and edit an .htaccess file using a text editor like notepad.

As a configuration file .htaccess if a very powerful and a slight syntax error can result in a severe malfunction of your server. So to avoid that always try to keep a backup copies of all your files from the server before working with the .htaccess file.

1. Creating a custom error page with .htaccess on a linux apache is a very simple task. Using you a text editor like notepad you create an .htaccess files. Custom error pages give your website an professional look and catch those visitors who reach your website following a back link.

ErrorDocument 401 /error/401.php
ErrorDocument 403 /error/403.php
ErrorDocument 404 /error/404.php
ErrorDocument 500 /error/500.php

The 9 Most Common Browser Error Messages

Browser error messages appear in all browsers, like Internet Explorer, FireFox, etc. Browser error messages are actually called HTTP status codes and appear when there is some kind of error loading the web page.

The most common browser error messages are listed below with helpful tips to help you get past them and on to the web page you were looking for.

400: Bad Request

The 400 Bad Request browser error means that the request you sent to the website server (i.e. a request to load a web page) was somehow malformed therefore the server was unable to understand or process the request.

How to Fix the 400: Bad Request Error

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401: Unauthorized

The 401 Unauthorized browser error means the page you were trying to access can not be loaded until you first log on with a valid user ID and password. If you have just logged on and received the 401 Unauthorized error, it means that the credentials you entered were invalid.

Invalid credentials could mean that you don’t have an account with the web site, your user ID was entered incorrectly, or you password was incorrect.

How to Fix the 401: Unauthorized Error

403: Forbidden

The 403 Forbidden browser error means that accessing the page or resource you were trying to reach is absolutely forbidden.

How to Fix the 403: Forbidden Error

404: Not Found

The 404 Not Found browser error means that the page you were trying to reach could not be found on the web site’s server. This is the most popular browser error message that you will probably see. This browser error message also often appears as The page cannot be found.

How to Fix the 404: Not Found Error

408: Request Timeout

The 408 Request Timeout browser error means the request you sent to the website server (i.e. a request to load a web page) took longer than the website’s server was prepared to wait. In other words, your connection with the web site “timed out”.

How to Fix the 408: Request Timeout Error

500: Internal Server Error

The 500 Internal Server Error is a very general browser error meaning something has gone wrong on the web site’s server but the server could not be more specific on what the exact problem is.

How to Fix the 500: Internal Server Error Error

502: Bad Gateway

The 502 Bad Gateway browser error means that one server received an invalid response from another server that it was accessing while attempting to load the web page or fill another request by the browser.

How to Fix the 502: Bad Gateway Error

503: Service Unavailable

The 503 Service Unavailable browser error means the web site’s server is simply not available at the moment. This is usually due to a temporary overloading or maintenance of the server.

How to Fix the 503: Service Unavailable Error

504: Gateway Timeout

The 504 Gateway Timeout browser error means that one server did not receive a timely response from another server that it was accessing while attempting to load the web page or fill another request by the browser. This usually means that the other server is down or not working properly.

Copied from about.com

Free Online Web Form Builder

Whether you are a novice web designer or a professional programmer, JotForm saves both time and energy and helps you create a form in seconds.

This WYSIWYG editor allows you to add/delete fields in your form without writing a single line of code. You can also set restrictions and change the label and size of any of the fields with just one click. Once you are done creating the form, just copy the code and paste it on your website or blog. If you really want to play with the code, it also allows to edit the actual CSS behind your design and make changes to it.

The also have a few themes that you can chose from. For example the “Baby Blue” theme or the “Jot” theme.

You also have the ability to save your forms and come back to them. It also allows you to email the form to your friends, in case you want a second opinion before publishing it. All these features are available for free, however, there is a limit of 100 submissions which can be removed by paying $9 a month.

Over all, I think it is a pretty handy tool if you don’t have the skills or the time to create a custom form. However, you might have to play around with the CSS a little bit to integrate the theme/colors of the form with your website.