As a developer, anything that can save you just a little bit of time is well worth its weight in gold. If you agree with that statement, you will love this. What we have for you is our selection of the best, the most useful and the most innovative tools and resources from 2011. That includes frameworks, boilerplates, apps, Javascript resources, CSS3 animations tools…and on…and on. So, no matter what, you are guaranteed to discover something completely new and really, [...]

This is our weekly column were we share our favorites design related articles, resources and resources all from the previous week. If you would like to be kept up to date with loads of fresh design news and resources, you can follow us on Twitter, on Facebook, on Stumbleupon or by subscribing to our RSS feed.

There are many tools built to help with CSS, and improved ones are constantly being created. The fresh tools we have for you in this article will greatly improve your work-flow, whether that be by solving validation or debugging snags, or taking care of many of those tedious repetitive tasks that every project requires, or by simply offering solutions to many of those tasks that are time consuming (like sprites) and at times challenging (CSS3 animations). You’ll certainly appreciate this [...]

CodeIgniter is a powerful framework that lets you create web apps very simply and elegantly. It’s an open source PHP framework with a very small footprint, built for PHP coders who need a simple and elegant toolkit to create full-featured web applications. Cool, that sounds great, so how do you get started using it? Well, this article features some essential CodeIgniter resources to help with your web app development: think of it as the CodeIgniter toolbox. Whether you need a [...]

Why reinvent the wheel? And by extension, why keep re-typing or copy/pasting commonly-used pieces of code over and over again? Copying and pasting pieces of code into text files and the like is disorganized and wastes your precious time. Instead, you can use code snippets to quickly call code you repeatedly use. There are applications that let you save, organize, and use your code snippets – for practically all of the major programming languages. And this article features 10 free [...]

Firefox is a widely-used browser – not just by users but web developers. Simply put, Firefox and its addons can make developing for the web easier and simpler. And with the release of Firefox 4, it got even easier. This article features 20 essential Firefox 4 addons for web developers. Before diving into the Firefox 4 addons, though, here’s a quick glimpse into some of the noteworthy new Firefox 4 features that benefit web developers: • Improved HTML5: Gecko now [...]

It is fundamental that every app designer have a selection of pre-designed and editable UI elements that will allow them to optimize, organize and speed-up work-flow. To help streamline your iPad design work, we have put accumulated a comprehensive selection of iPad specific GUI Kits & Stencils, Wireframing kits, Sketching Templates and fully editable PSD templates that will allow you to rapidly prototype beautiful designed apps. We have also previously published a post that focuses on iPhone GUIs and Stencils, [...]

Users should be able to simply, quickly, and intuitively use any web app, like with any tool in life, be it a car, phone, or anything else. After all, a useful web app doesn’t do much good if it’s a pain in the butt to use – many users will eventually give up and go to an easier-to-use alternative. So how do you maximize usability in your web app? In this article we share 10 Web Application Usability Guidelines that [...]

Let’s face it, our digital era is moving towards mobile technology faster than we can keep up. Gadgets and doohickeys which were released 14 months ago are now considered extinct amongst the most techno-savvy. This is all part of a social evolution of sorts – with the smartest braniacs leading the herd. Mobile isn’t just a realm of games and fun apps. It’s also a serious market for business networking and contacting clients. Smartphones offer abilities which we couldn’t have [...]

Web development is about getting stuff done, not figuring out how to get it done. Frameworks and libraries help you, the web developer, focus on creating rather than figuring stuff out. Rather than reinventing the wheel, you can use a framework or library to delegate brunt, non-creative and repetitive work, freeing up your time and energy to create the actual website or application. This article highlights 20 New Frameworks and Libraries that will help speed up and make your web [...]

The wireframing process is the straight-to-the-point and completely non-tech stage of any web project. It only requires that you define a skeletal outline of essential page elements such as headers, footers, navigation and content area and should illustrate how to cater and respond to any possible interaction from a user. It is the most important, yet underused, stage of any web or apps development. There are several avenues you could take for sketching a wireframe, most notably pen and paper [...]

We are not suggesting for a moment, with this post, that your Android mobile device would be a good alternative as a development platform to your desktop or laptop. All it shows with the current apps available, that it could be and the potential for more is certainly there. Maybe not so much with a mobile, but if you have one of the many iPad-a-like Android tablets that are currently available it certainly could be a reality.

Over the past year or so I have bookmarked hundreds of various tools and resources covering all aspects of web & mobile development – There are tools that will improve your work-flow, resources that will clean and validate code, apps that will allow you to collaborate with any number of colleagues, bookmarklets that let you create mockups within your browser, productivity checklists, sites that will track and keep a watchful eye on your sites… and on … and on. So, [...]