As a web designer, there are some tools that make life a lot easier when it comes to creating designs for the web. Just like we have things we wouldn't leave the house without, these are five tools that a designer shouldn't go without:
Paparazzi!:
Paparazzi! is a great way to save a full webpage screenshot. While there are shortcuts on the Mac and PC that will take a screenshot of your screen, you cannot get a full webpage easily this way. Paparazzi! makes this task easy and fast.
Color Scheme Designer:
This is a great tool to find complementary colors to use for a color scheme for a site. If you have one color you know you want to use, you can enter it in the color wheel and find out what other colors work with it.
Lorem Ipsum Generator:
Sometimes you know there's going to be text on a page, but you don't have the content for it yet. Lorem Ipsum has been used for a long time as dummy text for print and web to fill that space. The Lipsum Generator is a nice tool for choosing how much text you want and getting the dummy text to paste into your design.
HTML & CSS Validation:
When you have to code a design, it's always a good idea to make sure your code is correct. W3C has tools online for checking both HTML and CSS. It will tell you exactly where the errors are in your code and will provide suggestions for how to fix it.
Web Developer Add-On for Firefox:
Finally, if you want to get a quick preview of your web design mockup in a browser, the web developer toolbar has an easy way to see how it will look in different window sizes. There are also a ton of other resources in this add-on if you're working with code.
Download Web Developer Toolbar
What other Web Design Tools do you Use?
Of course there are a ton of other resources out there for web designers. What are some of your favorites?