100 Fantastic Resources For Web Designers

By Web Design | 57 comments | Roundups | Tags: 100 Fantastic Web Design Resources, Best Free Tutorials, Design Resource List, Fantastic Web Resources, Free Icons, Free PSD Web Templates, Icon Creation, Resources For Web Design, Ultimate Web Design Resource List, Web Design Apps, Web Design Resource Showcase, Web Design Resources, Web Design Tutorials, Web Design Wordpress Plugins

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Today Andy and I decided to produce a top list of our favorite 100 resources that we have used and enjoyed over the past few months. These resources include icons (my personal favorite), WordPress Themes, Plugins, Software, Applications and some really cool tutorials made by us and other great websites. Let us know which ones you use and what other resources you think should be added to the list! Enjoy!

Icons

Adobe Work Folders

The adobe product collection in the form of folder icons.

City Icons

An awesome variety of different icons in this set.

Simplexity File Icons

A great set of 120 different file extension icons both in png and ico format.

Web Applications

A funky set of web application icons.

Social Networking Icons

Some great sets listed here! High quality social networking and app icons.

Vector Icons

A top botch set of vector icons, including the classic magnifying glass and email icon.

Vista Icons

A great collection of free vista icons.

Onibari

A set of leopard made folders.

Ultimate RSS Icon Collection

The biggest set of RSS icons.

Function App Icons

A quality icon collection of various different objects. Made by the famous function.

Simply Bold Vector Set

A premium vector set, but well worth the money. Made by Nick La.

Tweet Me Up

Vector twitter pack with various twitter icons.

Circular Social Media Icons

Circular social media icon pack with many different social networks.

6 Twitter Icons

A set of very sweet twitter icons, free to download.

40 Free GUI Icons

A collection of 40 great icon sets exclusive for web designers.

eCommerce Icon Collection

A collection of eCommerce icons to use with a shopping cart.

30 High Quality eCommerce Icon Sets

Here is a compilation of 30 high quality eCommerce icon sets.

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Tutorials

Create An Orange Web Layout

One of our best tutorials on WebdesignDev. You cant miss.

How To Create a Green Grunge Web Layout

One of our recent very popular web design tutorials.

Design a Beautiful Website

Learn how to create a beautiful website from scratch.

Learn Professional Workflow

Vector Tuts teaches us how to use professional workflow for illustrating a comic-style header image.

Create a Web 2.0 Business Layout

This is a clean and simple tutorial where you can create a jazzy business layout.

Create a Portfolio In 17 Steps

PSD Fan teaches us how to create a swish portfolio in 17 easy steps.

Making a Clean Grunge Blog Design

Learn how to make this is a rough blog design.

Sleek Web Design From Scratch

PSD Tuts teaches us how to create this extremely sleek and beautiful web design from the grounds up.

Create a Business PSD Layout In under 10 Minutes

This is a very clean but stunning business PSD layout tutorial.

Clean Business Layout

Another amazing tutorial from Grafpedia. This time a clean business layout that’s very eyecatching.

Create a WordPress Portfolio Layout

Grafpedia teaches us how to create a simple yet outstanding portfolio layout.

Create Apples Navigation Bar

The Apple navigation is extremely stunning. This tutorial from three styles teaches us how to create the apple navigation menu.

Web App Admin User Interface

Web Appers have wrote an amazing turoail on how to create a web app admin interface.

Web Layout Using Textures

Learn how to create a web layout using various different textures in Photoshop.

Design a WordPress Theme using Photoshop

Grafpedia teaches us how to create a professional looking WordPress theme using Adobe Photoshop.

Supercharge Your CSS with PHP Under the Hood

Creating a Usable Contact Form

The most obvious way to receive that feedback is through a contact form. UxBooth teaches us how to create a very usable contact form.

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Scripts

jQuery Scrollable

Here is an awesome script that allows you to add a scrollable function to your site using the jQuery framework.

Moving Boxes

Moving boxes is a very sleek jQuery slider script.

Image Switch

This script built on the jQuery framework allows you to switch images easily with different transition effects.

Lightbox 2

Lightbox 2 is a very easy to use image lightbox that can be added to more a less any website.

Fancybox

Fancybox is an image lightbox thats a bit more fancy and features a different design compared to other image lightboxes.

Facebox

Facebox is a Facebook lightbox clone. You can display images, videos, text, basically any type of content within facebox.

Pure CSS Drop Down Menu

Here is a free drop down menu that runs completely in pure CSS.

Animated Drop Down Menu With jQuery

This is a bit more of a complex drop down menu. It uses jQuery and has some sleek animation.

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Web Applications

Iconfinder

Use iconfinder to search through thousands of free icons and icon sets easily.

Mint

Mint is the best free way to manage your finances online. It has a sleek interface, and is very nice to use.

What The Font

What the font is an amazing tool that helps you identify fonts from images or looking at each letter.

Site Grinder 2

Although you have to pay for Site Grinder, it is an amazing piece of software that slices PSD files up into XHTML and CSS easily.

Adobe Kuler

Kuler is a web app built on Adobe Air. It is one of the best online colour apps out there, free to use aswell!

Dropbox

Dropbox is an easy way for anyone to share their files online. It basically puts a folder on your computer, where anything you put in that folder is available online, and across any other computer you sync your dropbox to.

Bit.ly

Bit.ly is the king of all url shortners. You can manage your clicks and see when people click you link all live!

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WordPress Plugins

Greet Box

This plugin lets you customize a custom message for people when they visit your blog to greet them.

Flipping Book

This is a wordpress plugin that allows you to add a creative page flipping book to your blog.

WordPress Super Cache

WP Super Cache is a plugin that saves you bandwidth and decreases the loading time of your blog.

Sociable

Sociable is an easy way for people to submit your WordPress posts to different social networks.

Pretty Link

Shrink, track and share any URL on the Internet from your WordPress website. Unlike other link shrinking services like tinyurl, budurl, and bit.ly, this plugin allows you to create shortlinks coming from your own domain!

Slide Panel

If you’ve got a large client list and endless examples of previous work, then you might struggle to upload everything you want to your blog without it getting cluttered and confusing.

Insights

Insights is a great tool for inserting images, videos, maps, Wikipedia Links and many more items into your WordPress posts.

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Web Design Articles

Create a mobile version of your blog

Learn how to implement a mobile version of your blog in three simple steps.

Guide to About Me Pages

This is a really good guide to creating the perfect about page.

40 Web Background Techniques

Forty Creative and Inspiring Website Backgrounds Techniques (quality post!).

9 WordPress Hacks to Encourage User Interactivity

Learn how to encourage user activity on your blog with these awesome WordPress hacks.

How to Blog Effectively

You could be blogging for a long time, but blogging effectively is what you need to be doing.

6 Ways To Improve Your Web Typography

Improve your web typography with this great article by Net Tuts.

15 Resources for WordPress Designers

If your a WordPress theme designer, then this article is for you. 15 Exceptionally Useful Resources for WordPress Theme Designers.

HTML 5 Cheat Sheet

This cheat sheet is essentially a simple visual grid with a list of all HTML tags and of their related attributes supported by HTML versions 4.01 and/or 5.

6 Vital Reasons to Comment on Other Blogs

Comments make a blog and are the life of it and its community. Provided here are 6 reasons why you should comment on other blogs.

10 Productivity Tips for Web Designers and Developers

Productivity is something that all web designers and developers strive for. We all have too much work to do so anything that can help us along the way can make a big difference.

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Browser Plugins

CodeBurner

Codeburner is an extension for Firefox that allows you to see code from web pages, compatibility, and examples of it. Its a developers best friend.

SEO for Firefox

SEO is a free plugin for Firefox is a toolbar that has search engine optimization information on it for whatever website you are viewing.

Link Diagnosis

This tool can show you all the important information about your competitor’s links. The report includes PageRank, anchor texts, no-follow information and more.

HTML Validator

HTML Validator is a Mozilla extension that adds HTML validation inside Firefox and Mozilla. The number of errors of a HTML page is seen on the form of an icon in the status bar when browsing.

Rank Checker

This free firefox plugin allows you to easily check your search engine rankings for many different search engines.

Smart Pagerank

Smart PageRank’s ‘Smart Toolbar’ is small, simple, and powerful. It gives you quick access to powerful SEO tools.

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PSD’s

Vibrant Paints

A beautiful free downloadable PSD template.

Summer of Love

Summer of love features a nice design, and can be edited and sliced up into a website that fits to your spec.

Funky Design

Big links, nice graphics, and bets of all free!

Hello – Online Portfolio

This is one of the best free psd templates I have seen. Its a must see!

GrungeFolio 2

If you like splatter, and grunge objects within a website, then you must download this psd website template.

En Construccion

A writers desk style free downloadable psd theme.

Sunsite Book Layout

If your a book lover, please download this free book layout psd for a top notch design.

My Personal Blog

This is a personal styled psd blog template all ready to be sliced up.

Green Leaves

If your a nature lover, or even love some of the effects within this psd template, you have to download it.

Shape + 5 PSD Themes

Smashing Magazine has provided us with 6 free beautiful psd templates.

Old Burned Paper

An old burned paper style PSD template to adapt into a web design.

Toxic Green

A nice psd template that has a toxic green twist.

Ruby Red

Ruby red is a free psd design to slice up and code into a web design.

Grey Blue Template

A beautiful blue / grey themes psd design for free download.

Golfing Template

This doesn’t just have to be a golfing template. Its a nice green template with a sweet header design.

Blog Source

A nice designed blog psd template.

Base Dance Clue

This psd uses some great colours and artwork, and can be adapted into a poster, flyer, website design for many different things.

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Software

Coffee Cup HTML Editor

This is a great HTML editor from Coffee Cup software. Easy to use and free to download.

Coffee Cup FTP

If you want a free file transfer protocol to connect to your server and upload files, look no further than Coffee Cup FTP.

Tweet Deck

Tweet Deck is a great free piece of software that runs on Adobe Air and is used to manage multiple twitter accounts.

Color Schemer

Color Schemer is avaliable for Mac, Linux and Windows. Although it costs, its one of the best color applications on the market today.

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WordPress Themes

Evidens

This is a free 3 column full width WordPredd theme.

Yoghourt

Version 2 of the Yoghourt WordPress theme is really good, and features many new things. Plus its free to download.

Curved

Curved has an unusual look to it. It has many features and is free to download.

Thoughtlog

This is a three column WordPress theme, which features a Spring-themed header in shades of purple and beige.

WP Premier Theme

The free wp premier theme which is developed by CSSace has many awesome features. Its worth downloading!

Live Green

Livegreen is a great free WordPress theme, and comes widget ready and coded in valid XHTML and CSS.

Aspire

Aspire is a beautiful WordPress theme and is available to download free of charge.