What's new for web designers - July 2011

July 11, 2011

This month's edition of what's new out there for web designers and developers includes a number of new smartphone apps (for both iOS and Android), as well as a few great web apps and some desktop apps. There are also new tools and resources for web design and development, and twenty great new free and paid fonts. As always, if we've missed something you think should have been included, please let us know in the comments. And if you have an app or other resource you'd like to see included next month, tweet it to @cameron_chapman for consideration.

Gridless

Gridless is an HTML5 and CSS3 framework for creating websites that are cross-browser compatible, responsive, and have beautiful typography. It uses a mobile-first architecture with progressive enhancement and uses CSS normalization instead of CSS resets.

Wptuts+

Wptuts+ is the newest blog in the Tuts+ network, from Envato. It covers WordPress development and theming with regular tutorials and other educational posts.

Vectorian

Vectorian offers hand-drawn vector ornaments with Victorian style. There are two packs available: a free pack with 85 vector ornaments and 30 border brushes, or a full pack (for $57) that includes 930 vector ornaments and 230 border brushes.

Automatoon

Automatoon is a web-based animation tool that uses HTML5, built using a new technology called "CBT" or "Composition by Tool". It's free, though there are some premium features that cost extra.

Codeplane

Codeplane offers 2GB of storage space for Git repositories. The include a web interface or you can access everything from your terminal. You can have as many contributors as you want, and as many repositories as you can fit into 2GB. They also offer backups of your repositories, using Amazon S3. There's a 30-day free trial and after that it's only $9/month.

Miro 4

Miro 4 is the newest version of this open source music and video player. Miro will sync with Android devices, lets you purchase music and apps from right inside the app, and will download and play almost any video or music format.

flickrBomb

flickrBomb is a new offering from Zurb that will place relevant images from Flickr into your prototypes. It's easy to use, easy to implement, and it makes it easy to change the images it pulls.

Dummy HTML Snippets

BlindTextGenerator offers a set of Dummy HTML Snippets that you can quickly and easily use in your website prototypes. Choose from Lorem Ipsum or Kafka text, and a variety of commonly used elements (including H1, h1, short and long paragraphs, forms, lists, and more).

UX Stickynotes

UX Stickynotes offers two different kinds of wireframing templates: pre-printed stickynotes, and downloadable templates. They have templates for various browser styles and for the iPhone.

Site Trail

Site Trail offers a website analysis tool that gives you insight into the traffic and potential revenue of competing websites. It also includes social media analysis, SEO analysis, content analysis, and more for some sites.

CSS Lint

CSS Lint will point out potential problems with your CSS code. It checks not only basic syntax, but also applies a set of rules to your code to look for inefficiencies and problematic patterns. You can select which rules you want to apply.

WebBannerLove

WebBannerLove is a gallery of web banners open for anyone to submit to, including designers, developers, creators, and banner fans.

AllYou

AllYou is a new website builder for easily creating online portfolio sites. It's free for 30 days, and then $8/month after that.

Mosaiqy

Mosaiqy is a jQuery and HTML5 plugin that creates a mosaic-style photo gallery. You can configure how many columns and rows it has, and when a thumbnail is clicked on, the grid expands to show that image, with a nice animation effect.

TouchRetouch

TouchRetouch is an Android app for retouching photos and removing unwanted elements. It's a good option for some simple retouching on the go, and is $.99.

Anytime

Anytime is an iOS app that helps you track and analyze the time you spend working. It's useful for managing your project budgets in addition to basic time tracking and analyzing. Anytime is $4.99 through the App Store.

SketchBook Pro for iPad

Sketchbook Pro is a new iPad app from Autodesk. It's a professional-grade drawing and paint application that uses the same paint engine as its desktop counterpart, making it a great choice for pros and amateurs alike (and it's only $4.99).

Daedalus Touch

Daedalus Touch is a text editor for iPad that's completely gesture-based and uses a paper stack rather than file lists and files. Daedalus Touch is $3.99.

ScatterBrain

ScatterBrain is a free note-taking app for iOS that offers simple organizational tools (like color coding and labeling) and reminders, among other features.

Reeder

Reeder is a new Google Reader app for Mac OS X. It has full Readability integration, to make your feeds easier to read. It also includes support for gestures and customizable shortcuts.

Pulp

Pulp is a new reader application for the iPad and OS X. It reformats your news feeds into a more friendly format for reading. The iPad app is $4.99 and the OS X version is $9.99.

Wren

Wren is a minimalist Twitter app for Mac OS X. It lets you compose and send tweets without getting distracted by your Twitter timeline. It includes link shortening and auto-completion of usernames, and is $4.99 in the Mac App Store.

Qwiki

Qwiki is a new, free wiki app, with around 3,000,000 topics that are formatted specifically for the iPad.

Carousel

Carousel is an Instagram app for your Mac. It lets you view your feed, popular and profile photos, has a variety of app themes, and includes support for drag & drop saving and keyboard shortcuts. Carousel is $4.99.

Color Kick + v1.2

Color Kick + is a new, free color scheme app for iOS. Version 1.2 has bee completely re-written and lets you create, edit, and share your color schemes.

Burvetica (free)

Burvetica comes in two weights and was inspired by the Helvetica and Burbank typefaces. It has a retro, hand-lettered feel to it.

Sucker Font (free)

Sucker Font is a decorative font with a vintage, rock-and-roll feeling.

Mangosteen (free)

Mangosteen is a retro decorative font with understated serifs and rectangular letters. It would be well-suited to antique-style designs, especially posters or product packaging, and looks fantastic in 3D.

Salvo ($140-$180)

Salvo is a family of sans serif and slab serif typefaces from Font Bureau. The twelve typefaces included come in various weights and styles.

Terital United OT ($65)

Terital United OT is a sharply slanted script font that's highly readable and has an organic feeling.

Alphabet Soup Pro ($60)

Alphabet Soup Pro is a rounded, comic-style typeface. It's a heavy font, with well-balanced letters.

Pickworth Old Style Pro ($60)

Pickworth Old Style Pro is an antique-style display font. It has worn edges and some interesting, minimal swashes on some letters.

Telemark ($100)

Telemark is a family of six monolinear slab serif fonts. They have vintage feel, reminiscent of the 19th century. In addition to the three weights, there's an additional label style that makes it easy to create banners, cartouches, and pointers.

Berber ($95)

Berber has a hand-lettered look and was initially inspired by an untitled typeface, and was recently redesigned. It's a very strong, confident sans serif font in two styles (text bold and caps bold).

Cala ($179)

Cala is a set of eight serif fonts with a contemporary look, despite the influence of Venetian Renaissance type. It's stable in small sizes but also work beautifully at display sizes.

Bettendorff

Bettendorff is a display-style "Masthead" font with obvious inspiration from the 1900s. It's specifically designed to make it easy to create cartouche banners and mastheads in moments.

Lobster 1.4 (free)

Lobster 1.4 is a completely-redrawn version of the popular Lobster script font by Pablo Impallari. It has improvements based on user feedback and an extended charset.

Sn Boldface (free)

Sn Boldface is a bold, squared sans-serif display font. It has thick strokes and finely rounded edges, and is a very expressive font.

Podkova (free)

Podkova is a medium-weight slab serif font with angled serifs for lowercase letters.

Sweet Sans (free)

Sweet Sans is a geometric font that comes in both thin and thin small caps styles.

Familiar Pro (free)

Familiar Pro has squared characters and bold strokes. It was designed based on the idea of creating a font metrically compatible with Helvetica, but better than Arial.

Kihachiro Swash (free)

Kihachiro Swash is a display typeface with a classical form and the sharp edges of phototype lettering. The swashes were taken from the logo for Emperor (a line of golf shoes) to give the typeface a Modern/Postmodern era look that offsets the historical base.