Reviews, tutorials, and news about apps and software for designers. Learn about the latest and greatest Mac, web, and mobile apps for creatives.
Silverback is a new app which lets you run your own usability tests really easily. It looks set to be a great new tool for designers who want to analyze how users interact with their site. After a recent request for beta testers, a few interesting details are emerging.
Keeping track of visitors to your website is vital, and these ten tools can allow you to monitor and review traffic in different ways. Some are free, some require a small charge – all of them will help you optimize your website and know exactly who is passing eyes over your design.
You’ve probably heard about Ruby on Rails by now, but it might not be something you have ever really got to grips with. A List Apart have published two great articles as an introduction to Ruby On Rails.
A common problem I encounter when designing a site in a team is the lack of a tool to easily allow us to collaborate and co-ordinate our work. There are several tools available to manage workflow and tasks, but few to actually help with the problem of overwriting someone else’s code.
Open the safari preferences window, click on the ‘advanced’ option and then select the box entitled ‘Show develop menu in menu bar’. Straight forward! The result is a new field in the top menu which looks like the following:
A sure sign of a rock solid, well coded CSS layout is that it displays consistently across browsers and platforms. A look at recent global browser stats shows that, while Internet Explorer continues to be the most popular web browser in general use, its user base is fairly evenly split between versions 6 and 7.
And although other browsers such as Firefox, Opera and Safari have a relatively small share of the browser market, it would be unwise for any web designer or developer to ignore them when testing their work.
CSSEdit is, as the name implies, a CSS editor for the Mac. It has come on leaps and bounds in the latest version and is now one of the best apps available on the Mac for designers. CSSEdit is created by the great delopers over at MacRabbit, who are also responsible for DeskShade.
One of the strongest features of CSSEdit is the simple, easy to navigate and beautiful interface. Even people who have no experience in styling web pages can find their way around this amazing app and create some stunning web pages. In this tutorial we’re going to be looking at the interface and how to get the most out of it.
You start by selecting a colour. This can be done either through a colour palette, or through an eyedropper tool which allows you to sample a colour from anywhere on the screen – really useful. The software then generates a whole selection of colours based on the one you chose. Two sliders allow you to alter the colour diversity and lightness diversity, so you can select complementary or contrasting colour comparisons.
Many web professionals use Apple’s OSX for design and despite what you may think, it’s not difficult to test your website in the big three browsers – Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. This article talks you through how to easily test your site and gain access to these browsers on a Mac.
Coda is the latest application from Panic, the creater of other great apps such as Transmit – by far the most popular FTP program on the Mac. It’s aim is to combine all the tools you use regularly as a designer into one easy to use application. It combines a version of Transmit with code editing features, preview capabilities and keeps track of everything you change to make publishing your site a breeze.