Further more with Lumzy, you can create prototypes of how the site or application will function by adding events within your Lumzy controls. For instance, what happens when the user clicks a button? You can create Message Alerts, Page navigation or Links to external content, when your client interacts with your Mockup, yet with the hand drawn feel of a sketch.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://lumzy.com/app
License: License Free

Sponsors

Pixmac: Stock Photos, Royalty Free Pictures and Images

Below, you’ll find 15 Best Free Online Tools for Web Design and Development. Rather than narrow our focus, we’ve covered various aspects of the design and development process, to include the admin side of freelancing or running a small business.

No two tools listed below perform the same function; we’ve chosen our favorite tool for doing each job. You’ll find the best free online tool for project management, one for invoicing, one for screen sharing, one for instant messaging, one for mocking up layouts, and much more besides.

1. Redmine

Redmine is a great, free alternative to other pricey project management apps available online. It does pretty much everything you could possibly desire, albeit in a less polished way than some of its more expensive rivals. With Redmine, you can manage a large number of projects simultaneously, defining personal roles and assigning tasks to specific team members if necessary. You can track time and issues, create Gannt charts and calendars, create project wikis and forums, and manage documents and files.

2. Billing Boss

Billing Boss is a fantastic, free invoicing tool, designed especially for small businesses and freelancers, which lets you send an unlimited number of invoices to an unlimited number of clients, quickly and easily. All of your invoices are saved automatically and catalogued in a logical, understandable way. Billing Boss supports multiple currencies, is integrated with PayPal and is mobile friendly. You can even share your account with your bookkeeper or accountant.

3. Yuuguu

Yuuguu is a multi-platform screen-sharing tool, which allows Windows, Mac and Linux users to collaborate. You can quickly initiate an instant messaging session with a client or team member, sharing each others’ screens at the touch of a button. It’s perfect for working together on document presentations or for writing and editing documents in a group.

With Yuuguu, there’s nothing to download at either end, which means you can start sharing and communicating in seconds. The free Yuuguu package includes unlimited use with other Yuuguu users and 100mins/month use with non-Yuuguu users, as well as up to 5 participants in a single session.

4. FavIcon Generator

Looking for a quick and easy way to create favicons for your website, then look no further than Dynamic Drive’s excellent FavIcon Generator. It’s effortless to use, just select any image (provided it’s a gif, jpg, png, or bmp) you want to turn into a favicon and press Create Icon. Follow the simple instructions generated to create an eye-catching favicon that will help your website stand out in your users’ favourite lists.

5. Dropbox

For online storage, look no further than Dropbox, an ingenious tool for storing and sharing files between all of your computers and with other team members. Once installed, a Dropbox folder appears on your computer’s desktop. Drag files into the folder and they will automatically appear in the Dropbox folder on each one of your computers, laptops and smartphones. What’s more, every file is automatically added to another Dropbox folder on the Dropbox website, which is accessible from any computer in the world. Invite associates to access your Dropbox folder, for quick and easy file sharing.

6. BrowserShots

BrowserShots is a straightforward, free tool for checking what your website looks like in a wide range of different browsers. It really couldn’t be simpler to use. All you have to do is enter your website’s URL into the address bar at the top, check or uncheck to select which browsers you would like to get a screenshot from, and press Submit. You can fine-tune your search by screen size and color depth, as well as enabling or disabling JavaScript, Java and Flash.

7. toggl

toggl is the perfect time tracking tool for freelance web developers and designers who tend to get paid by the hour. As an online tool, it’s available from anywhere, which is great for those of us who frequently work away from the office. As well allowing you to create projects and start timing in a few clicks, toggl produces performance charts and other reports for you and your whole team to analyze. Toggl can be embedded in iGoogle, Netvibes and Gmail so that you can share your performance with others. It’s free for up to 5 users.

8. Google Docs

Google Docs is an online word processor and spreadsheet tool that’s free to everyone with a Google account. It works in much the same way as Microsoft Word, offering similar features in the form of multiple fonts, font sizes and colors, page numbering, bullet points, alignment, tables and spacing etc. It does not, however, offer headers and footers, footnotes or a powerful find and replace feature, which some people simply can’t live without.

The best thing about Google Docs is that it works seamlessly with Word, so you won’t have to worry about compatibility issues when working as part of a team. Google Docs really comes into its own when it comes to collaboration, however. Press the Collaborate tab to work on a document with several people at once.

9. mockingbird

mockingbird is a wonderfully useful tool, which lets you create mockups of websites in minutes. Simply drag and drop user interface elements into mockingbird, rearranging and resizing as you go to create a perfectly balanced page. You can add as many pages as you like, linking them all together to show clients or associates how users might navigate through your site.

Once you’ve created and saved a mockup, mockingbird issues you with a link which you can share with other people, or an embed code so that you can embed a mockup in your own website. It’s a lightweight tool with few features (there are, for instance, no templates to follow), but this makes it really quick and easy to use.

10. kuler

If you find choosing colors tricky, then take a look at kuler, a fully database driven Flash site created by Adobe Labs. With kuler, you can choose, create, modify, mix and match colors to your heart’s content, for free of course, until you happen upon the perfect color scheme for your website. Not only can you create your own color swatches, complete with RGB and HEX codes, you can save them and download other peoples’ swatches too. You can even extract color palettes from illustrations and photographs, uploading them or selecting them on Flickr. Once you’ve chosen the ideal color pallet, you can download it for use in Adobe Creative Suite.

11. Bespin

Bespin is a browser based code editor which attempts and succeeds to match the quality of traditional desktop editors. It offers standard editing features, as well as syntax highlighting, support for large files, undo/redo, preview files in browser and import/export projects. Bespin not only gives you access to your entire coding environment from any computer, it lets you collaborate in an effortless way, without the need for firewall configuration. Tweak away to your hearts content by using various plugins until youve created the perfect editor for you.

12. Pingdom Tools

Pingdoms Full Page Test imitates the way a web page is loaded in a browser, showing you exactly how long it takes for each object, including images, CSS, JavaScript, RSS, Flash and frames, to appear. The load time of each object is shown as a series of colored bars for quick and easy visual comparison. Order each object into a hierarchy to identify any problem areas. The Test also uncovers useful, general stats, such as total number of objects and total load time.

13. W3C Markup Validation Service

The Markup Validator is a free tool and service that validates markup: in other words, it checks the syntax of Web documents, written in formats such as (X)HTML. The Validator is sort of like lint for C. It compares your HTML document to the defined syntax of HTML and reports any discrepancies.

14. net2ftp

If youre stuck on a computer without an FTP client, try net2ftp. Its a free, web based FTP client which features all the standard FTP functions youd expect as well as various other features, including the ability to extract files and directories and download a selected group of files or directories as an archive. There are numerous plugins available to enhance your net2ftp experience and its integrated with Drupal, Joomla, Mambo, XOOPS and other Content Management Systems.

15.Pixlr

Looking for a solid image editor that doesnt cost an arm and a leg? Available in 13 languages, Pixlr provides a great, free alternative to Adobe Photoshop. Of course, it offers nowhere near the same level of functionality or performance, but you wouldnt expect it to. It can, however, handle most editing that designers do on a day-to-day basis. You can use layers and an array of filters and effects.

About the Author

Tom Walker is a writer and designer from Great Britain where he works for a Manchester based supplier of printing supplies including HP laser cartridges, inks and paper. His other creative writing is available on their blog, CreativeCloud.

Sponsors

Pixmac: Stock Photos, Royalty Free Pictures and Images

PHP hide_email() encrypts your E-mail address and generates the javascript that decrypts it. Most bots and spiders can’t execute javascript and that is what makes this work. A visitor of your web page will not notice that you used this script as long as he/she has javascript enabled. The visitor will see “[javascript protected email address]” in stead of the E-mail address if he/she has javascript disabled.

You can also use the generator if you have no PHP support on your web server. Change the E-mail address into your own E-mail address and press “Generate”. Cut and paste the generated XHTML into your own web page.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.maurits.vdschee.nl/php_hide_email/
License: License Free

Sponsors

Pixmac: Stock Photos, Royalty Free Pictures and Images

CatchMyFame found this very useful and immediately created Before/After jQuery Plugin for the same purpose. The possibilities for this plugin are endless. Doctors can have before and after images of patients, Photoshop users can show the before and after differences between images, remodelers can show the before and after images of projects and on and on. This plugin weighs in at only 7K and can be used multiple times on a page.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://www.catchmyfame.com/jquery/demo/8/
License: Creative Commons License

Sponsors

Pixmac: Stock Photos, Royalty Free Pictures and Images

Simply login to Twitter, choose your background (pattern or photo) and your colours. You can preview your changes instantly. Drag and drop colors to arrange the order they’re in your pattern or profile settings. Save your settings and share your work!

Requirements: -
Demo: http://colourlovers.com/themeleon/twitter
License: License Free

Sponsors

Pixmac: Stock Photos, Royalty Free Pictures and Images

You can manage your projects: edit, comment & share any moment of the developing process with colleagues and clients. You can also add editors & reviewers to your projects within just a view steps and as you like. HotGloo is free for the beta testing phase. However they are thinking about a reasonable monthly pricing model for after the beta testing stage.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://hello.hotgloo.com/
License: License Free

Sponsors

Pixmac: Stock Photos, Royalty Free Pictures and Images

You can pull many types of information from an XML document like the value of an XML node, the value of an attribute of an XML node, or the number of <items> in an XML document. jParse jQuery Plugin has been tested on Firefox 2+, IE 6+, Safari 3+ and Opera 9+.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://jparse.kylerush.net/demo
License: MIT License

Sponsors

Pixmac: Stock Photos, Royalty Free Pictures and Images

You can give feedback quickly and easily on design, content and code of a website or application on any page. One of the finest things about this tool is that now it is easy to contribute with any page of a website. You can do it without leaving the browser.

Using this product, your team will be able to participate through visual feedback on screenshots. It is a page capture utility. It has got strong annotation features which allow you pinpoint copy, design elements and even code which needs to be tweaked. Notable is the best comprehensive feedback tool on the Web.

Notable gives you the chance to express your opinion in a very simple way. It enables you to capture visual, code and copy notes on your browser or even with an iPhone app with the click of a button. You can also upload the capture to your account. You will be able to utilize this solution irrespective of where you are and what computer you are using without any bloated software.

The site is simple when it comes to answering the queries you might be having regarding the privacy of your pages or to know about the products you are interested in. All you have to do is install a Firefox extension or you can download the iPhone app. It will take only 10 seconds or less.

Permissions can be controlled easily and it is shared only with those you choose. You can take screenshot of a page and then annotate any part of that particular page with comments. For multiple projects you can create separate workspaces and share it with associated teams.

There is a plan for Personal use, which is Free. It allows up to 3 users, with 3GB storage. You can have unlimited sets on 1 Private Workspace. And it supports iPhone Application as well.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.notableapp.com/
License: See Plans

Sponsors

Pixmac: Stock Photos, Royalty Free Pictures and Images

Nothing to download or install, create and access your mockups from anywhere. You can share your mockups in private/public mode and get feedback from your clients & users, As simple as sharing an URL. The Basic account is completely free with 10 MB storage.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://mockflow.com/
License: License Free

Sponsors

Pixmac: Stock Photos, Royalty Free Pictures and Images

To change the twitter accounts that are shown in the ticker, you’ll need to modify the tweetUsers array. If you provide two or more twitter names, their tweets will be shown together. Only the 50 most recent tweets from the past 7 days will be returned.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://demo.tutorialzine.com/2009/10/jquery-twitter-ticker/demo.html
License: License Free

Sponsors

Pixmac: Stock Photos, Royalty Free Pictures and Images