As web designers, web developers and graphic designers we are constantly looking at for those new resources, tools and application that can help us increase our productivity while working on client or personal work.
Down below is a quick look at some the recently created resources that really deserve your attention — everything from some great JavaScript tools, jQuery plugins, Apps for your Desktop, Web & Mobile devices to some awesome items in HTML5, CSS, Prototyping, mobile development and including some frameworks. For those WordPress lovers I’ve also includes some themes and plugins and last but not lease i’ve added some design files such as icons and fonts.
JavaScript & jQuery Plugins
Packery
Packery is a JavaScript layout library that uses a bin-packing algorithm. This is a fancy way of saying “it fills empty gaps.” Packery layouts can be intelligently ordered or organically wild. Elements can be stamped in place, fit in an ideal spot, or dragged around.
Flexisel
Flexisel is a jQuery responsive carousel plugin that works well on screen sizes down-to-mobile. It has settings for enabling autoplay, defining the animation speed and stopping on hover or not. The standard layout of Flexisel adapts to different screen sizes but also the plugin provides an option to customise the “number of visible items” for the screen sizes preferred which offers a great experience for users.
Lightbox Me
Lightbox_me is a unique lightbox plugin that can automatically convert any DOM element into a lightbox.
PhotoCradle
photocradle.js is a simple javascript image gallery that delivers photos you store on services like Flickr or Picasa to your personal website or blog
Map Escape
This jquery plugin detects if the viewable area on your map is greater than or beyond the screen height, and places a scrollable area to the right of your map. This scrollable area then allows you to scroll out of the map and reach the rest of the content on your web page.
Kudos
Kudos is a little widgets that sits next to each post that enable users to give “Kudos” to posts they really like. You hover over the widget, it gives a fun little animation, and changes the icon and count after a moment.
Heap Shot
HeapShot is a jQuery plugin which helps you create an image gallery plugin with a particular effect.
Chocolate
Chocolate is a webapp framework built on node.js and using Coffeescript. It includes source control with Git, an HTML markup language for building web UIs with pure Coffeescript, witn an added online documentation editing tool, among other features.
Datamock
Datamock.js lets you easily add fake data to your mockups. Usage is straightforward; be sure to check out the demo to see just how easy it is to use.
RaptorJS
RaptorJS is an end-to-end JavaScript toolkit for creating adaptive modules and UI components. It includes an optimizer, module loader, widget framework, templates, and more. Unique to RaptorJS is its adaptive packaging, which lets developers target specific code for different browsers, devices, frameworks, and more.
Mobify
Mobify.js is an open source library for capturing and manipulating your site’s DOM before any resources have downloaded, which enables resource control, conditional loading and more. Mobify.js powers millions of daily mobile visits to your favourite websites.
Accounting.js
Accounting.js is a tiny JavaScript library for number, money and currency formatting, with optional excel-style column rendering (to line up symbols and decimals). It’s lightweight, fully localisable and has zero dependencies.
Bespoke.js
Bespoke.js provides the foundation, then gets out of your way so you can focus on uniquely crafting your own personal deck style. Using keyboard and touch events, Bespoke.js adds classes to your slides, while you provide the CSS transitions. With its robust plugin system, new functionality can be added to Bespoke.js easily.
Desktop, Mobile & Web Applications
WiFi Explorer – Mac App – $3.99
WiFi Explorer is a wireless networks scanner tool to quickly identify channel conflicts, signal overlapping or configuration problems that may be affecting the connectivity and performance of your home or office wireless network.
Briefs – Mac App -$199
Briefs is the essential app design tool built for a professional design workflow. Lifeless mockups don’t tell the entire story, but you don’t have time to build a prototype. We’ve been there, too. Your clients needed a clearer picture, so give them something to touch.
With Briefs, you can deliver iterations of your design that people can play with on their phone and start giving you feedback. Before you know it, you’ve cut months of back and forth from your schedule without a dime of development. Powerful enough for you?
Chronos – Mac App – $5.99
Chronos is a time tracking application with a clean and intuitive user interface. It is designed to be minimalist, so you can focus on your work. Tracked work periods are organized in projects and tasks. Time tracking can be started or stopped from within any application using custom global shortcuts or the menu bar item. Projects can be exported as CSV files.
Shotcut – Multi OS App – Free
Shotcut is a great video editor with lots of compatibility and which can be install on your 64-bit linux, Apple OS X, 32-bit Linux, 4-bit Fedora Linux 16 – 18 or to your Windows computer
ProtoTouch – iOS App – $1.99
Create, Preview, Share and Install in any iPhone iPod iPad or web browser your mobile prototypes without a single line of code. Select your prototype info: icon, splash screen, status bar type and views. Then connect these views with cool iPhone effects. Get the views from your Dropbox, using the iPhone library or taking pictures from drawings. You could use mockups, wireframes, drawings or final designs, everything adapts easily in ProtoTouch.
Handsome Stats – Web App – Free
Handsome Stats connects to your existing Google Analytics and simplifies the overwhelming world of web stats. We find it superb for helping our clients understand their site traffic.
Gridwax – Web App – Free
Gridmax is a bookmarklet that lets you easily add an adjustable vertical baseline to any site right in your browser/s. Just drag the bookmark into your bookmark bar and click on it, then just adjust the height with your arrow keys.
Copy – Web/Desktop App – $Price varies
Copy is the easiest way to store, protect and share amazing things. It keeps your computers in sync and your files available from anywhere, even on your mobile devices. With Copy, you can also easily share files with anyone publicly or privately.
Any file you save with Copy on your computer, smartphone, or tablet is automatically accessible from any device you use no matter if you use Android, iOS, MacOS, Windows, Linux platform
CSS, HTML5, Mobile Dev, Frameworks & Prototyping
TimeJump
TimeJump seemlessly adds deep linking capabilities to HTML5 audio and video podcasts. It works quietly behind-the-scenes to add a standardized API to your episode pages.
Flat Surface Shader
Flat Surface Shader is a great alternative for creating 3D effects with WebGL which currently isn’t entire cross-platform compatible but for the demo. It can also work with the 2D context of a canvas element or an array of SVG polygons and it uses Float32Arrays to store numerical data which is much more efficient at calculations.
Polycode
Polycode is an open-source framework for creating cross-platform applications and games. You can write your code in C++ or Lua using the Polycode IDE. Polycode supports the one-click publishing, 2D and 3D graphics, animation, font rendering and much much more.
Helios
Helios is an open-source framework that provides essential backend services for iOS apps, from data synchronization and push notifications to in-app purchases and passbook integration. It allows developers to get a client-server app up-and-running in just a few minutes, and seamlessly incorporate functionality as necessary.
Pedestal
Pedestal is a set of open source tools for building Clojure web applications. Pedestal is made up of Clojure libraries and components that play nicely together so they can be configured and re-assembled as you need them.
Chaplin
Chaplin is an architecture for JavaScript applications using the Backbone.js library. Chaplin addresses Backbone’s limitations by providing a lightweight and flexible structure that features well-proven design patterns and best practices.
CSSCSS
CSSCSS analyses your CSS files to see which rulesets have duplicate declarations. This makes your CSS lighter and easier to maintain. It’s simple to install as a ruby gem and runs in the command line.
Kartograph
Kartograph is a simple and lightweight framework for building interactive map applications without Google Maps or any other mapping service. It was created with the needs of designers and data journalists in mind.
iio Engine
The iio Engine (pronounced ‘ee-oh’) is an extensive application framework that helps with the creation and deployment of HTML5 applications. The framework provides a feature rich SDK, an advanced debugging system, and a cross-platform deployment engine. The iio Engine has no dependencies and can be interfaced with Box2D. The core platform is open source and totally free.
Markup Framework
The Markup Framework is a collection of layouts, widgets, typographic styles and other UI components to use as a starting point for your own Web designs.
WordPress Plugins & Themes
WordPress Charts – Free Plugin
Create amazing HTML5 charts easily in WordPress. A flexible and lightweight WordPress chart plugin including 6 customizable chart types (line, bar, pie, radar, polar area and doughnut types) as well as a fallback to provide support for older IE.
Wp App Studio – Free Plugin
Wp App Studio is easy to learn and use design tool for creating fully featured, advanced web apps based on WordPress platform. No coding required.
WordPress Creation Kit – Free Plugin
WordPress Creation Kit consists of three tools that can help you create and maintain custom post types, custom taxonomies and most importantly, custom fields and metaboxes for your posts, pages or CPT’s.
Lush – Premium Plugin – $15
Lush is a flexible content slider. It uses CSS3 native transition and animations to get the best performance taking advantage of the modern browser features, without lose functionality in older browsers. It uses a semantic syntax to describe the animation timeline avoiding complex attributes and keywords. The animation system is completely extensible allowing to add more animations and transitions easily just like adding new CSS classes.
Autocomplete Wizard – Premium Plugin – $14
Autocomplete Wizard plugin helps your users find what they are looking for better and faster. No more searching in the dark, no more 404 errors!
Autocomplete your content and redirect your users, the shortcode adds a dropdown SELECT field with automatic redirection, based on user selection and the function does not interfere with the native search form and can be placed anywhere in a post or a page. The plugin works with jQuery1.9+ and 2.0+.
WP Awesome Support – Premium Plugin – $21
WP Awesome Support is not “just” another support plugin. It is a lot more flexible and powerful than most WordPress support plugin out there. As it has been designed to seamlessly integrate to any WordPress theme. Therefore, don’t worry about design compatibility, robust code by using the native WordPress functions as much as possible and plenty more great reasons why you should use this plugin
Orbit – Free Theme
Orbit Theme adapts your website to mobile devices and the desktop. Theme Options with Color Schemes, Front Page for Business, Fonts Options (include Google Fonts), Social Networking, Slider in Front Page, Search Engine Friendly, 6 Widget Areas (3 in Front Page and 3 for Footer), 2 Menu Positions, 2 page templates with its sidebar and W3C Markup Validated.
Snaps – Free Theme
Snaps is a free portfolio theme for WordPress perfect for showcasing portrait images and galleries.
PlayBook – Free Theme
Playbook is a traditional WordPress theme with a dual column post layout, a fully responsive design, and is jampacked with all MyThemeShop’s best features. Playbook includes SEO optimization, custom widgets, our industry grade options panel, and much more, and best of all, plus it’s 100% free!
The Wetro – Premium Theme – $40
The Wetro is Windows 8 Metro layout inspired HTML5 & CSS3 theme. With it’s powerful wordpress substructure you can manage everything. Most of the pages are built with drag and drop. The Wetro is the best solution for you or your company. You can easily educate you or your company with simple documentation and videos taken by us. It is so easy to manage pages with drag and drop content. It has 20 page elements which you can put whereever you want with just drag and drop.
GoodWork – Premium Theme – $45
GoodWork is the absolutely ultimate theme for your business! It is an elegant & modern solution packed up with an incredibly great amount of high quality features. Shortcodes, sliders, layout builders, theme options, page templates, responsiveness and retina ready, etc., are all in here! Beautiful outside backed by a great framework and supported by professionals, this is the all in one WordPress solution for your business!!
FlatPack – Premium Theme – $50
Flatpack is an incredibly clean, super flexible and fully responsive multipurpose WordPress theme! Flatpack’s name comes from the ability of having FlatPack objects which you can create in to something. Just like the theme whereby you use all of its extensive functionality to get your WordPress website up and running and ready to operate out of the box.
Flatpack has a tonne of great features including, 11 different page templates, superior feature slider, portfolio section, contact page, visual customizer, eCommerce ready, boxed and full-width layouts, array of homepage layouts, sidebar layouts, social links, google fonts, custom post styles and so much more.